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E-mail FAQs |
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Applies to: |
Summary: Frequently-asked
questions about sending automatic e-mail from Clients & Profits.
Clients & Profits has the ability to notify staff members automatically
via e-mail for many different production, accounting, and media events
(e.g., opening jobs, status changes, deadlines, missing time cards,
etc.). It can be programmed to keep people informed about traffic,
deadlines, budgets, and more automatically -- even if they aren't
running Clients & Profits.
Q. How exactly does the C&P e-mail work? The e-mail function in Clients & Profits
is very simple, and doesn't require any user interaction. It runs
in the background while you work, sending e-mail automatically whenever
it is needed. E-mail notifications are triggered by day-to-day events,
based on settings you'll set in Preferences, as well as for each staff
member. When triggered, Clients & Profits automatically composes
an e-mail for a certain event (e.g., closing a job), then forwards
the message to your SMTP-based mail server. Your mail server then
delivers the mail to the user's e-mail program. Q. Why would I want Clients & Profits to send automatic e-mail?
Q. What events trigger an e-mail from Clients & Profits? There are many different kinds of events that trigger automatically e-mails, including:
In addition, calendar entries can be scheduled to automatically remind staff members about upcoming events, including:
Q. Does Clients & Profits replace our existing mail server? No. Clients & Profits only sends outgoing e-mail. Your existing
mail server does the actual forwarding and delivery of mail messages
to the shop's employees. Q. Is any special hardware needed to make C&P e-mail work? No. The automatic e-mail capability in Clients & Profits are
entirely software-based. As long as your shop has a full-time connection
to an SMTP-based mail server, the staff will get e-mail notifications
from Clients & Profits throughout the day. Each workstation needs
direct access to the SMTP server, they can't go through a proxy server
to get to it. It doesn't matter if the server is in-house or located
at your ISP, you just need full-time direct access to it. "SMTP" is an established industry standard method for sending e-mail
over the Internet SMTP is widely used on Internet mail servers by
Eudora, Netscape, WebStar, AppleShare, QuickMail Office, and others.
The e-mail feature in Clients & Profits can only send mail to
mail servers that speak SMTP. Some systems, like ccMail and QuickMail,
don't support SMTP (they are called "proprietary") so can't receive
outgoing mail from C&P. To use the automatic e-mail function,
you'll need to have a full-time SMTP mail server. Q. How do I know if our mail server is compatible with Clients & Profits? Check its documentation (or web site) to see if it supports SMTP.
Also, a list of compatible mail servers is included at the end of
this FAQ. Q. We use America Online for e-mail. Can we still use Clients & Profits send automatic e-mail? No. Clients & Profits sends e-mail to a standard SMTP-based Internet
mail server, not a proprietary system like AOL. Of course, you can
send e-mail to anyone with an AOL account by entering the right e-mail
address (e.g., userID@aol.com). Q. We've used QuickMail for e-mail for many years. Can Clients & Profits send e-mail through it? Probably not. Versions of QuickMail sold before 1997 are not SMTP-based,
so don't work directly with the Internet There's a new version, called
QuickMail Office, that is a complete SMTP-based mail server. QuickMail
Office works well with Clients & Profits. Q. Will C&P e-mail work with our Microsoft Exchange server? Yes, if you're using Exchange 5.5 or later. Earlier versions don't
support SMTP so can't accept automatic e-mail from Clients & Profits.
Q. We don't have a full-time Internet connection. Can we still use the C&P mail feature? Yes, as long as you have an in-house mail server that supports SMTP
and you have a TCP/IP LAN in your office. Setup your in-house mail
server to include a POP3 mailbox for each staff member. Delivery of
C&P e-mail should be immediate. Your staff's e-mail clients need
to be setup to check their POP3 mailboxes on your in-house mail server
at regular intervals to avoid receiving outdated e-mails from C&P. Q. Will Clients & Profits notify me if I don't have access to an SMTP server? Partially. When C&P e-mail is started, it does a standard TCP
ping of the mail server at the address you entered into C&P E-mail
Preferences. If this computer isn't found (for example, if the mail
server's address is wrong), Clients & Profits will prompt you
with an error and temporarily turn off the C&P e-mail feature
on this workstation (not for everyone, since this check is performed
each time someone starts C&P). Theoretically, if you have a computer
at your mail server's address, but it does not have an SMTP server
running, you won't get an error. This is why it "partially"
checks, since it only looks for a computer at that address, not if
an SMTP server is running on it. You can turn off this startup check
(ping) in the C&P e-mail preferences. Sometime an ISP won't allow
their mail server to be pinged, which will turn off your C&P e-mail
since C&P thinks there is no computer at the server's location. Q. What other setup is necessary before C&P begins sending e-mail? Here are the steps to follow to set up automatic e-mail: (1) You'll
enter e-mail addresses for each staffer in the Staff window. Or, you
can enter e-mail addresses for all staff members at one time from
the Users window (choose Setup > Users, Access
& Passwords, then click on the e-mail toolbar button). (2) Next,
you'll enter the mail server's address in Preferences (choose Setup
> Preferences > C&P Mail), click on the Automatically
send e-mail checkbox, enter the system manager's e-mail address, then
click Save. (3) Finally, you'll configure the automatic e-mail messages
where you want them (e.g., status codes, over-budget, etc.), and enter
the body of the message that will be sent to staffers (for those messages
that give you an option to enter a message body). Q. How do I start the automatic C&P e-mail? The C&P mail system is started in Preferences: Choose
Setup > Preferences > C&P Mail. Click on the Automatically
send e-mail checkbox. (If the mail server's address isn't entered,
enter it first) Q. Does this turn on all of the areas that can generate e-mail? No, it just turns on the ability for C&P to send e-mail. Once
the C&P Mail function is started, the system is now able to send
e-mail for all situations. The actual events that generate e-mail,
as well as the content of the automatic messages, depend on how you've
configured the system. Each need to be setup individually. See the
list of e-mails features at the top of this FAQ. Q. Do I have to enter the system manager's e-mail address? No, but it's recommended. The "system manager" is the person who
receives problem e-mails and general questions about how C&P works
from users. As a shortcut, e-mail can be sent to the system manager
by any user while they're working in Clients & Profits by choosing
Lookup > Send Help E-mail. A default message can be entered into
Preferences that prompts the user to answer some standard questions.
Q. What is the "missing time message" for? Do I have to use it? The "missing time message" is from the C&P TimeCop, which sends
e-mail to those who didn't enter their planned hours the day before
into time cards or time sheets. Q. Can the TimeCop be set for some people and not for others? Yes. TimeCop can be selectively enabled for specific staff members.
The staffers that need missing time reminders should have the Send
Missing Time option checked in the Staff Availability window. This
option should be unchecked for people that shouldn't get TimeCop e-mails.
Q. Is a supervisor notified when the staff member forgets to enter their time? Yes. A copy of the missing time e-mail is forwarded to the staff
member's department manager. For this option to work, each staff member
needs to belong to a department (which is entered in the Staff window)
and the departments must be set up. Each department needs a manager's
(or supervisor's) initials, which must be a staff member with an e-mail
address. If a department has no manager or supervisor specified, the
copy of the missing time e-mail is forwarded to the system manager.
(Note: Since Clients & Profits Classic 3.x,
4.x is not department-oriented, only the staff member and the system
manager are notified.) Q. Can an e-mail be copied to a staff member's department manager? Can I customize a recipient group of staff members? Yes. Many e-mail events can be set up to also notify a department
manager, supervisor, or even the company president. The "CC:" field
contains the e-mail address of the person who gets a copy of the message.
In addition, a "blind" copy can be sent to a third person's e-mail
address. Enter the full e-mail address in the CC: and BCC: fields,
you can't enter their initials in these fields. As well, you can customize
a recipient group by selecting any combination of staff members. Hold
down the shift key, Apple (command) key, or control key and click
on whoever you want to get the e-mail. Each person will be highlighted
and the e-mail will be sent to these staff members. Q. Is there a way to send an e-mail to everyone in our office who uses Clients & Profits? Yes, but in most cases, you wouldn't send an email notification to
everyone. The automatic e-mail sent by C&P is generally sent to a
single person, such as an AE, a media buyer, the agency president;
or a group of people, such as team members or traffic assignments.
With job-based e-mail, the point is to keep the people who manage
the job instantly aware of day-to-day changes to a job's status, traffic,
budget, billings, etc. so there are fewer surprises. If everyone in
the office was notified by C&P, there would be a tremendous number
of trivial messages crowding the shop's in-boxes. This glut of information
would make it hard for someone to see the really important news of
the day. Q. Can C&P send automatic e-mail to everyone in a certain department? Not within C&P. E-mail can only be sent to individuals, team
members, the job's traffic assignments, and in rare cases, everyone.
Theoretically, you could assign everyone in a department to a team,
but often teams are cross-department, so this won't work. The only
other option is to setup a customized recipient group on your mail
server, then setup the e-mail address for that group as a staffer
and select that staffer as the recipient. Your mail sever will then
distribute the e-mail to the group when it recieves e-mails to that
address. Q. Can automatic e-mail be sent anyone who belongs to a certain account team? Yes. Man of the e-mails have the option to select the job's Team
Members as the recipients of the e-mail. Currently, these include
the job status e-mail, change order e-mail, job diary e-mail, and
the new job e-mail. Q. Can I send estimates, invoices, or purchase orders via e-mail directly from Clients & Profits? No, but you can use a third party program called Adobe Acrobat to
do it.. Any estimate, invoice, PO, statement, or report can be printed
to the Clipboard then pasted into the body of an e-mail - but you
lose all of its formatting, so normally this is not practicle. This
makes the report, form, etc. virtually impossible to read. The only
practical option is to save the report you're printing as an Adobe
Acrobat .pdf file, which can be opened, read, and printed by anyone
with an Acrobat Reader. But creating .pdf files can be technical and
time-consuming, so it's not for the average user. For more information
on Acrobat, see Adobe's web site at www.adobe.com.
As well, we have a detailed tech
note on how to create PDF files. No. The automatic e-mail function in Clients & Profits only sends
outgoing mail. All incoming messages, including replies to automatic
e-mail, are handled by your e-mail server and e-mail client. The mail
server receives new mail then routes it to your e-mail program without
involving Clients & Profits. Q. How do I know a C&P e-mail was actually sent? Why would an e-mail not send to my recipients? All e-mail areas of C&P, except for the startup e-mails (when first person signs into C&P each day), will notify you with a message that an e-mail did not send. This message will say "This e-mail mesage couldn't be sent. Do you want to try again?". If you click yes it will attempt to send it again until either it sends or you click no to this message. C&P will pop up this message for each e-mail, so if you send a job diary e-mail to three recipients, and the mail server is down, you will get this message three times, one for each e-mail. Normally, you should only have to click Yes to this message one time and it will send, but if you find it's not sending, then you should talk to your system administrator to see if there is a problem with the mail server. If so, you will need to click No to continue working in C&P and just note the e-mail(s) that did not send in case these are important messages that need to be conveyed to their recipients. C&P does not have an "outbox", so these messages will not be sent at a later time. Rather C&P does a one time try when sending an e-mail, if you have to click No to sending the message, you will need to keep track of the message that did not send. If your mail server computer has been shut down, you will receive a time clock that does not go away until the mail server computer is restarted. If your mail server computer is running, but the server software is down, this is the typical reason you will receive the "try again" error. It can also be caused by a temporary miscommunication with the mail server, in this case, selecting yes to the "try again" message will normally send it successfully the second time. There are two reasons e-mail won't be sent to your recipients: user
error and system error. User errors often are caused by selecting
the wrong recipients or not sending the e-mail at all (some areas
you need to select your recipients before saving an entry - they can
not be setup in advance). You won't receive an error message since
C&P can't know who you intended to choose as your recipient. As
well, user erros are often caused by setup errors, which may or may
not prompt you with an error message. Those that won't are in cases
where you select traffic names, a team, or a department as your recipients,
yet you didn't enter traffic name initials on a job, or assign a team
to a job or to each staff record, or assign a department to each staff
record or a department manager to each department (TimeCop in C&P
Pro requires this). Again, C&P can't know how you intended to
setup your traffic names, teams or departments, so it won't generate
an error message. The setup errors that will generate error messages
are those that focus on two areas of the e-mail: the recipient's and
the sender's e-mail address. That is, make sure you have entered an
e-mail address for each and every staffer under Setup > Staff.
If they don't have one, then enter the system manager's e-mail address
in their staff record (the same address entered in the C&P E-mail
Preferences window). System errors focus around communication with
the SMTP server itself. C&P will check if your SMTP server name
or IP address that you entered in the C&P E-mail Preferences window
is turned one (this can be disabled in the C&P e-mail prefs for
those servers that don't allow pinging). If C&P is not able to
communicate with the e-mail server computer, you will receive an error
message saying that C&P E-mail will be temporarily disabled (until
you sign in again and C&P is able to communicate with the SMTP
server computer). Only this one workstation is turned off to C&P
e-mail, it does not turn it off for everyone. After you have signed
in, and C&P was able to communicate with the SMTP server computer,
then if for some reason your SMTP server software hangs up or crashes,
or there is an inherent sporadic communication problem with the SMTP
e-mail server software on your network, then C&P e-mail will not
be delivered, prompting you with the "try again" message.
C&P does a one time try when sending e-mail. If delivery is not
successful, the e-mail will not be sent at a later time. C&P does
not have a universal "outbox" in the program that holds
all e-mail generated by C&P for delivery at a later time (say
when the SMTP e-mail server software comes back online). Temporary
communication problems with the SMTP server, after signing into the
program without an error message, is the normal reason why you may
find e-mail being delivered inconsistently. Of course, first rule
out user error. To minimize system related e-mail problems, try using
a C&P dedicated in-house e-mail server that is located on a stable
part of your network on the same hub or switch as most of your C&P
users. Then just enter the IP address of this mail server in the C&P
E-mail Preferences window. We recommend trying Eudora e-mail server.
It is a low cost and reliable mail server written for both a PC and
Mac environments. It includes a free 30 day demo. It can be found
at http://www.eudora.com. As well,
if you feel your current in-house mail server is not being over-taxed,
or there isn't any communication problems with it, then try turning
up the number of simultaneous SMTP sessions it can perform so that
a C&P user is not blocked from sending an e-mail because an SMTP
session is not available. Q. Can I get a return receipt from e-mail sent by Clients & Profits? No, there is no option for notifying you when someone reads your
automatically-sent messages. Q. When are overdue and overbudget task e-mails sent? These e-mail are sent when the first user signs into C&P on any
day. This user will receive a time clock for a brief period of time
while C&P is generating e-mails to all the staffers with tasks
due today or yesterday and to the AE/Team on a job for overbudget
tasks. Q. What is the "BCC:" address used for? It's used to send copies of a message privately to a supervisor or
management. If you enter a full e-mail address in the "BCC:" field,
a copy of an e-mail will be sent without the knowledge of the original
recipient. The staff member receiving the e-mail won't know that a
copy was also sent to their boss. Q. Are the messages sent by C&P secure and private? No. None of the e-mail sent by Clients & Profits is encrypted
or otherwise secured. Since C&P is not a mail server or a full
featured e-mail client, it depends on the security provided by the
mail server. Also, Clients & Profits has no way to know if a recipient's
e-mail address is correct or not. The System Manager needs to carefully
and regularly check the e-mail settings in Clients & Profits to
prevent automatic e-mail from going to an inappropriate address. Q. Does Clients & Profits keep a log of the automatic e-mail it sends? No. However, your mail server may keep an activity log of outgoing
mail. However, R&D at Clients & Profits is researching this
for a future upgrade. While Clients & Profits can send e-mail to a job's team or traffic
names, it can also send e-mail to a user-defined group of people.
As mentioned above, you can highlight any group of staff member recipients
by holding down the Shift, Apple (command), or Control keys. As well,
there is a way to send automatic C&P e-mail to groups using your mail
server. Groups can be created in your mail server for the people who
work on a particular client, everyone in a certain department, or
even the management team. Each group needs a descriptive name (e.g.,
"accounting", "creative", "account service", etc.) that identifies
it to the mail server. Normally, each group will have it's own e-mail
address, so any e-mail sent to this address will be forwarded by the
mail server to each person. You can then add this group name as a
staff member in C&P and enter the group e-mail address for this
staff record (or you could just enter the group e-mail address in
the CC: or BCC: fields). If C&P e-mail is addressed to the group,
the mail server will notify everyone in that group. Or, a copy of
an automatic e-mail can be sent to everyone belonging to a group by
entering the group's name in the "CC:" or "BCC:" fields
in Clients & Profits. Q. Why is Clients & Profits sending e-mails about overdue tasks from last year? Those jobs were closed long ago. Clients & Profits looks for ANY task that’s overdue, since
the idea is that no deadline should be missed. Those unfinished and
overdue job tasks need to be marked as "finished" to remove
them from the reminder list. This may be changed in a future update
where these e-mails are no longer sent for jobs that are closed. This
is already the case for overbudget e-mails. R&D is looking into
it.
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