Unimailer
2.0

Unimailer manual
(c) 2006 JAPISoft

UniMailer is the ideal companion for announcing new products and services to your customers, delivering and managing newsletters, or simply staying in touch with family and friends. UniMailer will make the process effortless by managing various user groups, adding your own parameters for personalizing each mail, having various attachments. UniMailer works with full text or html text.

General Interface

Global View

The interface is divided into 2 parts :

The mailing group at the left bound to a users target (in the screenshot the current one is "default").
The tabs at the bottom (Data, Template, Mailer, History) working on the current group for defining data for mailing

For working with unimailer, you must :

Choose a group or use the default one ("default")
Insert your data from the Data tab like your customer emails and some parameters you need for personalizing each final mail
Insert your template (this is the main message) and required file attachments
Use the Mailer tab for sending to your customers

You needn't to save your last operations because all is stored automatically when quitting UniMailer. Note that you must terminate the application
in a standard way for maintaining all your data (Like using the Quit action or alt-F4 under Windows environments).

Menu content

Menu File

Item	Meaning
Import a data grid...	Import a data list (*.dat)
Export data grid...	Export the current data list (*.dat)
Import template...	Import a template data (*.tpf)
Export template...	Export the template data (*.tpf)
Import text template...	Import a text template including HTML document (*.txt)
Export text template...	Export a text template (*.txt)
Quit	Quit UniMail, the user will have to confirm the operation

Menu Data

Item	Meaning
Enabled all	Activated all the rows
Disabled all	Desactivated all the rows
Add a column	Add a data column used for the template
Remove a column	Remove the selected data column
Remove the selected rows	Remove the selected rows
Search for a row	Search a row from a data column value

Menu Mailing

Item	Meaning
Start mailing	Start sending mails, the user can stop after the operation
Stop the current mailing	Stop sending mails, the current one will be terminated before
Enabled all the sent status	Enabled all the sent status
Disabled all the sent status	Disabled all the sent status
Previous error	Go to the previous error
Next error	Go to the next error
Change the current Email	Change the select email, it avoids to go to the data grid

Menu Options

Item	Meaning
Preferences...	Update user preferences. Restart The application after changing
Check the last version...	Check for the last release

Menu Help

Item	Meaning
User Manual...	Load the manual from the UniMailer site
Menus content...	Show The user interface content
Tip of the day...	Show an Unimailer tip
Register...	Register for this product
About...	about...

Groups

Management

Add a group with the

(at the left bottom part) action. You can't use several times the same name.
Remove a group with the

(at the left bottom part). Note that you can't remove the default group.

After creating some groups you can switch by clicking on the bound button, each piece of data is stored/restored when switching (you needn't to save or load anything)

Location

Each group is bound to a directory name containing all your data from the following rule : Home_Directory/.unimailer/projects/Group name

An home directory location depends on your operating system, this is in the "Documents and Settings" directory for windows platforms and in your /home/user directory for unix compatible platforms.

This directory contains the internal unimailer database. Each group contains the following files :

userdata.dat : This is a file with your data like email, parameters... This file is compatible with the CSV Excel format. This is the same format when exporting/importing data. Note that the first row contains your column names
template.dat : This file contains your template information like your main mail message and header, the mail targets (TO, CC, BCC). Note that it isn't recommanded to edit this file
mailer.dat : It contains the last mailing state. This file is overrided after each mailing, you musn't edit it.

You can copy/paste anywhere else the Home_Directory/.unimailer directory for :

Sharing data with another machine or account
Creating a backup of the internal database
...

Data Management

Interface

The interface contains a data grid and a toolbar :

data

The data grid contains 2 required columns :

An email column. This is the most important column. If you insert a duplicate email an error will be shown, each time you insert an email a new empty row is added at the end if needed for the next entries.
Enabled : It will activate or desactivate a row. A desactivated email will be ignored for the final mailing step as if it was not present.

When a row is desactivated it appears in a grey line. You have also two icons ( Enabled all

and

) for activating/desactivating all the rows.

The other parameters (columns) are the final parameters for personalizing each mail. In the previous screenshot, we have three parameters :

A Title : We have choosen it for composing the first part of our mailing message
A Message : This is our last message
A Link : Here a link that can be personalized too.

You can add as many parameters you wish. Adding a parameter is equal to add a column and the name of the column is the name of your parameter. Note that the uppercase/lowercase are different meaning you must match in the template part exactly this name.

Column

A column is a parameter used by the mailing step. This parameter is used after inside the mail template (Template tab).

You can add as many columns as you wish except you can't add another "Email" or "Enabled" columns. By default UniMailer adds for you a "User Data" column you can remove. You can insert any data you wish even if you don't use it for the final mailing step.

: Add a column, try not to mix uppdate/lowercase and avoid too long name
Delete a column

: Remove a column, you can remove the first and the second column which are required

Import/Export

The grid data can be exported using the Export grid

action. The default file extension is "dl" (data list). This file is similar to the CSV excel format, meaning you can import this document inside Excel for editing. The character ";" is used for separating each column and the first row contains the titles of each column.

Note that the enabled/disabled states are stored with a special value true/false.

The import operation is done with Import data grid

. If you import an excel file (CSV), be sure to have the required column (Email, Enabled).

Each import/export operations are also available from the File menu.

Here a sample of file for the import operation :

Email;Enabled;First;Last;Phone;Address;City;Postal

aaa@hotmail.com;true;Sarah;McRTYe;11111;#555 28 Helene Street North;Mississauga;REZA

bbb@operamzz.com;true;Arthur;Hanli;22222;"16 Hogarth Ave;";Toronto;TYUE

ccc@utorozz.ca;true;Johanna;John;44444;10 Bay St. Suite 1110;Toronto;HYRE

Note that the column separator is the ';' . It is better to put a value 'true' for the Enabled column or to not put this column.

You can enable (if the Enabled column value is missing or has a 'false' value) all your imported lines using the action enabled all

Template

Interface

This interface is similar to known mail editors. It contains from the top part to the bottom part :

From field : This is the sender field received by the final person. This is used for replying to your mail
To field : This is the final target. This field cannot be edited and it contains only a parameter with the required email column
CC field : This is when you wish to send several mails and these others mails will be known to the final receiver. You can use parameters in this field
BCC field : This is similar to the CC field except the final user will not know you sent several other mails
Header : This is the header read by the final receiver. You can use parameters in this field.
Main message : This is the main message. You can edit it or import an existing one, this field can contain plain text or HTML content. You can have any parameters you wish from the data grid tab. A preview is possible with a default value for each parameter, the html preview works only with html 3.2 version.
Attachments : This is the files bound with the mail. These values are not required.

Parameters

A parameter is a way to personalize each mail. A parameter is available in a plain text or HTML document under the following format : ${parameter_name}. A parameter_name is provided by the Data grid (the first tab) and is bound to a data column. For sample if I have a data column called "title" then I can use a parameter ${title} anywhere in the final message. Note that you must check for lowercase/uppercase for matching exactly the parameter name.

When editing your mail message using your favorite HTML editor, you must insert yourself while editing the parameters. By editing a plain text, you can insert a parameter using the following action

. You can check your parameters (controlling they are valid ones) by clicking on the Check parameters

action.

While sending a mail, each parameter is replaced by the real value from the data grid (the first tab), if an error occurs (a wrong parameter name), the mailing process is stopped and you can correct your template.

Note also that you can control your parameter inside the preview part, this part will replace each parameter by a default value.

You can use parameters for any fields of the template (including the CC, BCC, header).

Editing

The template part contains also a minimal editor. This editor has the following actions :

template toolbar

This is only a plain text editor meaning you will see your HTML source but not in a wysiwyg way, you must use an external HTML editor for this purpose and import it inside the template (look at the parameters/import export sections for more information).

A preview is available for the plain text and HTML 3.2, this preview resolved each parameter with a default value.

When inserting a parameter in your mail message, the parameter is in a blue color :

Each parameter matches a column name from the data grid.

Import/Export

The template (including all the fields and the attachments) can be exported with the following action :

. And can be imported using this other action : Import a template

. The default file extension is "tpf" (TemPlate File). This file is a plain text so you can edit it from any editors although this is not recommanded.

Import/Export template is useful for your marketing to send different announces to differents user groups. You can also use a copy/paste action between several groups (switching using the left group buttons).

You may wish also to import/export only the main message part, and it is possible using this actions : Import a plain text/html

and

. This is what you must use when editing your main message with an external HTML editor. Your editor will produce an HTML document (.html or .htm) and you will have to import it inside the main message. Note that the main editor is only for full text view so you will not see your HTML document like in your favorite HTML editor, this is not a problem and it will not affect the final result. Don't hesitate to call the check

check action after importing if you use parameters. You may also use the full HTML view from your HTML editor and realize a copy/paste inside UniMailer.

Mailer

Interface

There're two parts for the mailing tab :

The reporting table containing the current sent mails and each reported problem
A preview for the current sent mail.

The top table contains all your data grid but only with one shared column which is the final email. Two columns has been added :

The sent status, this is an important way to avoid duplicate sending, each time you send a mail this flag is activated. You can disable it manually for retrying sending
The error message. Each time an error is detected the line is drawn with a red background and an error message is added.

Mailing

For mailing to your current group, you must activate the following action Run mailing

. This action is available in the mailing menu too. This action will navigate inside your data grid ignoring disabled items (in grey) AND already sent items (if this is called several times). Each time a row is processed the sent flag is set.

When calling the first time this action, a dialog box may appear asking you your SMTP server. This information is required once for sending a mail. You will find this data from your internet provider information, most of the time this server host will start with smtp.yourhost.... If you don't know how to find this information, look at the properties of your favorite mail manager (like outlook), this is bound to an account or mail account.

If you wish to set your SMTP server before sending or if you change the SMTP server or need to insert more parameters, then open the Preferences dialog from the options menu. Go to the "smtp" category and choose a value. Note that you must restart unimailer after changing a value.

After sending, you may interrupt the current mailing calling the Stop

action. This action cannot interrupt the current mail and it will interrupt the mailing processing for the next mail. Note that after stopping you can retry with the Start mailing

action which will restart from the first non sent mail.

If you meet errors, it can be a normal case so check the following cases :

All your mails have error : This is the wrong case, it may be due to a wrong SMTP host name, so look at your hosting information and update it from the Preferences. It can result too from an internet connection that has been closed or even your SMTP server may be unavailable.
You have a lot or errors after a period : This is mostly due to your internet provider wishing to limit spams. Retry several times after a delay.
You have somes errors : Look at each error message, if you have a syntax error in the email adress you can update it inside the data grid or using the action.

Note : Some SMTP servers/providers may limit the number of mails for a period (avoiding spams), so you may retry several times before sending
all your mails.