Customer Notification System.
We are a smaller ISP in Indiana. We are growing quite rapidly (yeah for us). We have a need for a customer notification system. We have simply out grown the ability to send emails to our customers manually. We need to have a better way of notifying our customers of maintenance etc. We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF. It would be great if this system were SQL based etc. Does anyone know of a system that is out there that does this? We have looked at a few applications (windows based) but integration with billing etc seems to be a caveat. I have thought of possibly using a mailing list type approach, but that gets us back to (almost) where we are today. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. -- Jim Wininger jwininger@ifncom.net
PHPList? On 02/21/2012 02:58 PM, James Wininger wrote:
We are a smaller ISP in Indiana. We are growing quite rapidly (yeah for us). We have a need for a customer notification system. We have simply out grown the ability to send emails to our customers manually. We need to have a better way of notifying our customers of maintenance etc.
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF. It would be great if this system were SQL based etc.
Does anyone know of a system that is out there that does this? We have looked at a few applications (windows based) but integration with billing etc seems to be a caveat. I have thought of possibly using a mailing list type approach, but that gets us back to (almost) where we are today. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
--
Jim Wininger
jwininger@ifncom.net
-- David Follow me @davidandgoliath
http://www.varolii.com/ On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 5:58 PM, James Wininger <jwininger@ifncom.net>wrote:
We are a smaller ISP in Indiana. We are growing quite rapidly (yeah for us). We have a need for a customer notification system. We have simply out grown the ability to send emails to our customers manually. We need to have a better way of notifying our customers of maintenance etc.
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF. It would be great if this system were SQL based etc.
Does anyone know of a system that is out there that does this? We have looked at a few applications (windows based) but integration with billing etc seems to be a caveat. I have thought of possibly using a mailing list type approach, but that gets us back to (almost) where we are today. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
--
Jim Wininger
jwininger@ifncom.net
-- Brian Stengel KINBER Director of Operations bstengel@kinber.org 412.254.3481 Skype: brian_stengel KINBER - Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research - www.kinber.org PennREN - Pennsylvania's Research and Education Network
We use Mailchimp to relay emails to our customers. They have the ability to maintain lists of customer addresses, and I believe they have an API for maintaining the list. On 02/21/12 17:58 -0500, James Wininger wrote:
We are a smaller ISP in Indiana. We are growing quite rapidly (yeah for us). We have a need for a customer notification system. We have simply out grown the ability to send emails to our customers manually. We need to have a better way of notifying our customers of maintenance etc.
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF. It would be great if this system were SQL based etc.
Does anyone know of a system that is out there that does this? We have looked at a few applications (windows based) but integration with billing etc seems to be a caveat. I have thought of possibly using a mailing list type approach, but that gets us back to (almost) where we are today. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
--
Jim Wininger
jwininger@ifncom.net
-- Dan White
Billing software that caters to smaller web hosts and ISPs like WHMCS can send out mass mailings, and you can drill down which customers should receive the email based on the services they have with you. On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 4:58 PM, James Wininger <jwininger@ifncom.net> wrote:
We are a smaller ISP in Indiana. We are growing quite rapidly (yeah for us). We have a need for a customer notification system. We have simply out grown the ability to send emails to our customers manually. We need to have a better way of notifying our customers of maintenance etc.
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF. It would be great if this system were SQL based etc.
Does anyone know of a system that is out there that does this? We have looked at a few applications (windows based) but integration with billing etc seems to be a caveat. I have thought of possibly using a mailing list type approach, but that gets us back to (almost) where we are today. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
--
Jim Wininger
jwininger@ifncom.net
On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 5:58 PM, James Wininger <jwininger@ifncom.net> wrote:
We are a smaller ISP in Indiana. We are growing quite rapidly (yeah for us). We have a need for a customer notification system. We have simply out grown the ability to send emails to our customers manually. We need to have a better way of notifying our customers of maintenance etc.
Seconding the earlier recommendation, mailchimp is a great tool. Good interface aside, there is strong operational benefit to being able to issue notices completely "out of band".
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF [...]
If you're going to do this, please be sure to send a copy of the notice inline as plain text too. Your customers on smartphones, using assistive technology, or automatically piping vendor notices into calendaring/ticketing systems will thank you. :-) HTH, -a
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Wininger" <jwininger@ifncom.net>
We are a smaller ISP in Indiana. We are growing quite rapidly (yeah for us). We have a need for a customer notification system. We have simply out grown the ability to send emails to our customers manually. We need to have a better way of notifying our customers of maintenance etc.
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF. It would be great if this system were SQL based etc.
I will reply much more strongly than the other poster did: *USE ASCII*. If you sent me a scheduled maintenance window notice as a PDF attached to an empty email, I'd drop you for a competitor. But then, I'm a $CUSSWORD about such things. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 05:58:19PM -0500, James Wininger wrote:
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF. It would be great if this system were SQL based etc.
(a) Use ASCII. Using PDF for this is insane. (b) You're dealing with only 400 customers, yet you want the overhead and complexity of a SQL-capable database? Do you also engage a fleet of bulldozers when you want to plant a flower in the back yard?
I have thought of possibly using a mailing list type approach, but that gets us back to (almost) where we are today.
Precisely what is wrong with a "mailing list type approach", using Mailman (which is the best available and what runs this list)? It handles COI (mandatory for responsible and ethical operation of all mailing lists), it runs on all varieties of 'nix, it plays nice with MTAs, it deals with most bounces in a sane fashion, etc. ---rsk
-----Original Message----- From: Rich Kulawiec [mailto:rsk@gsp.org] Sent: 22 February 2012 11:04 To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Customer Notification System.
On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 05:58:19PM -0500, James Wininger wrote:
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF. It would be great if this system were SQL based etc.
(a) Use ASCII. Using PDF for this is insane.
(b) You're dealing with only 400 customers, yet you want the overhead and complexity of a SQL-capable database? Do you also engage a fleet of bulldozers when you want to plant a flower in the back yard?
I have thought of possibly using a mailing list type approach, but that gets us back to (almost) where we are today.
Precisely what is wrong with a "mailing list type approach", using Mailman (which is the best available and what runs this list)? It handles COI (mandatory for responsible and ethical operation of all mailing lists), it runs on all varieties of 'nix, it plays nice with MTAs, it deals with most bounces in a sane fashion, etc.
Yeah please don't use PDF. There is nothing more annoying than getting an email about something important that had a PDF attachment to tell you about the important things. Lowest common denominator! I used to use mailman for this, but we had a CRM system as well which was database driven. So I write a script to grab the right email addresses from the database every night and populate mailman. -- Leigh ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com ______________________________________________________________________
Well there isn't anything wrong with the mail list approach, but it is more complicated than sending email to a list of customers. We have several types of services (transport, ss7, managed Noc svc etc). Having the db backend would give us flexibility for future notifications based on type of service etc. -- Jim Wininger On Feb 22, 2012, at 6:02 AM, "Rich Kulawiec" <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 05:58:19PM -0500, James Wininger wrote:
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF. It would be great if this system were SQL based etc.
(a) Use ASCII. Using PDF for this is insane.
(b) You're dealing with only 400 customers, yet you want the overhead and complexity of a SQL-capable database? Do you also engage a fleet of bulldozers when you want to plant a flower in the back yard?
I have thought of possibly using a mailing list type approach, but that gets us back to (almost) where we are today.
Precisely what is wrong with a "mailing list type approach", using Mailman (which is the best available and what runs this list)? It handles COI (mandatory for responsible and ethical operation of all mailing lists), it runs on all varieties of 'nix, it plays nice with MTAs, it deals with most bounces in a sane fashion, etc.
---rsk
What, no programmers in your NOC to roll your own? --- #!/usr/bin/perl use DBI; # define variables ($sendmail, $from, $database... etc) $dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:$database:$server", $user, $pass); $mysearch = $dbh->prepare("SELECT customer,cid,email FROM $table WHERE $find); $mysearch->execute; while (($customer,$cid,$email) = $mysearch->fetchrow_array) { open(MAIL, "| $sendmail -t"); print MAIL "From: $from\n"; print MAIL "To: $email\n"; print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n"; print MAIL "$customer,\nYour circuit $cid is going down bla bla bla."; close(MAIL); } $dbh->disconnect; --- ** NOTE - this is off the top of my head, ie.. not tested. That said, it's more or less a simplified version of what we do. -Scott On Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:58:19 -0500, "James Wininger" <jwininger@ifncom.net> wrote:
We are a smaller ISP in Indiana. We are growing quite rapidly (yeah for us). We have a need for a customer notification system. We have simply out grown the ability to send emails to our customers manually. We need to have a better way of notifying our customers of maintenance etc.
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF. It would be great if this system were SQL based etc.
Does anyone know of a system that is out there that does this? We have looked at a few applications (windows based) but integration with billing etc seems to be a caveat. I have thought of possibly using a mailing list type approach, but that gets us back to (almost) where we are today. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
-- Jim Wininger jwininger@ifncom.net
On Feb 22, 2012 6:35 PM, "R. Scott Evans" <nanog@rsle.net> wrote:
** NOTE - this is off the top of my head, ie.. not tested. That said, it's more or less a simplified version of what we do.
whoa. best humble brag I've seen in a few weeks, Scott. And that's saying a lot considering this is NANOG. On Feb 22, 2012 6:35 PM, "R. Scott Evans" <nanog@rsle.net> wrote:
What, no programmers in your NOC to roll your own?
--- #!/usr/bin/perl
use DBI;
# define variables ($sendmail, $from, $database... etc)
$dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:$database:$server", $user, $pass); $mysearch = $dbh->prepare("SELECT customer,cid,email FROM $table WHERE $find); $mysearch->execute;
while (($customer,$cid,$email) = $mysearch->fetchrow_array) { open(MAIL, "| $sendmail -t"); print MAIL "From: $from\n"; print MAIL "To: $email\n"; print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n"; print MAIL "$customer,\nYour circuit $cid is going down bla bla bla."; close(MAIL); } $dbh->disconnect; ---
** NOTE - this is off the top of my head, ie.. not tested. That said, it's more or less a simplified version of what we do.
-Scott
On Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:58:19 -0500, "James Wininger" <jwininger@ifncom.net> wrote:
We are a smaller ISP in Indiana. We are growing quite rapidly (yeah for us). We have a need for a customer notification system. We have simply out grown the ability to send emails to our customers manually. We need to have a better way of notifying our customers of maintenance etc.
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF. It would be great if this system were SQL based etc.
Does anyone know of a system that is out there that does this? We have looked at a few applications (windows based) but integration with billing etc seems to be a caveat. I have thought of possibly using a mailing list type approach, but that gets us back to (almost) where we are today. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
-- Jim Wininger jwininger@ifncom.net
On 21/02/12 2:58 PM, James Wininger wrote:
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF.
Why are you sending an attachment? I hate it when businesses think that they will somehow improve my reading experience by bloating up the email, sending attachments, etc. What about if I'm reading email on my phone? In what way does providing the information in a PDF benefit ME? 99.999% of the time there is absolutely no benefit in the attachment. But by pushing customers to open attachments to get the content we are encouraging them to be complacent about opening all attachments, and that's a great way to end up getting infected with malware. Make sure you have a Very Good Reason for sending content in an attachment. If your plan is to always send the info as a PDF odds are high that you don't have a good reason for doing it this way. jc
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 08:34:49AM -0800, JC Dill wrote:
99.999% of the time there is absolutely no benefit in the attachment. But by pushing customers to open attachments to get the content we are encouraging them to be complacent about opening all attachments, and that's a great way to end up getting infected with malware.
I agree whole heartedly. If the Marketing/Sales folks are stuck up on branding, I'd explore sending a MIME multipart/alternative with branded HTML and a plain text version with no degradation of actual content. And keep the whole thing under 25-30KB total. Creating them is pretty easy with perl MIME::Lite. Alex
Well we would not be sending the notification in an attachment, but there are times when it would be nice to send a list of circuit ids (exported from billing system as PDF) or some other exported doc to the notification. -- Jim Wininger Indiana Fiber Network Desk - 317-777-7114 Cell - 317-432-7609 Office - 317-280-4636 CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: The information contained in this electronic mail transmission (including any attachment) is intended for the exclusive use of the named recipient and may contain information that is privileged or otherwise confidential. It is not intended for transmission to, or receipt by, anyone other than the named recipient (or person authorized to deliver it to the named recipient). It should not be copied or forwarded to any unauthorized person. If you have received this electronic mail transmission in error, please delete it from your system including any attachment without copying or forwarding it, and notify the sender of the error by return e-mail. On Feb 22, 2012, at 11:34 AM, "JC Dill" <jcdill.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
On 21/02/12 2:58 PM, James Wininger wrote:
We would need to send notifications out to say about 400 customers. Ideally the system would send an attached PDF.
Why are you sending an attachment?
I hate it when businesses think that they will somehow improve my reading experience by bloating up the email, sending attachments, etc. What about if I'm reading email on my phone? In what way does providing the information in a PDF benefit ME?
99.999% of the time there is absolutely no benefit in the attachment. But by pushing customers to open attachments to get the content we are encouraging them to be complacent about opening all attachments, and that's a great way to end up getting infected with malware.
Make sure you have a Very Good Reason for sending content in an attachment. If your plan is to always send the info as a PDF odds are high that you don't have a good reason for doing it this way.
jc
On 22/02/12 6:46 PM, James Wininger wrote:
Well we would not be sending the notification in an attachment, but there are times when it would be nice to send a list of circuit ids (exported from billing system as PDF) or some other exported doc to the notification.
Nice for WHO? There is absolutely no need to export something as simple as a list of circuit IDs as a pdf. Use plain text. Ditto for the rest of your exported DOCs. When there are exceptions, when you need to include an image (sparingly, not because marketing thought it was a good idea to bling up all your emails), or a table, send in HTML with plain text. Don't make the recipient start up another program to open an attachment. jc
Paraphrasing someone else........ I would encourage my competitors to send notifications to their customers in PDF format. :) -Vinny -----Original Message----- From: JC Dill [mailto:jcdill.lists@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 1:44 PM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: Customer Notification System. On 22/02/12 6:46 PM, James Wininger wrote:
Well we would not be sending the notification in an attachment, but there are times when it would be nice to send a list of circuit ids (exported from billing system as PDF) or some other exported doc to the notification.
Nice for WHO? There is absolutely no need to export something as simple as a list of circuit IDs as a pdf. Use plain text. Ditto for the rest of your exported DOCs. When there are exceptions, when you need to include an image (sparingly, not because marketing thought it was a good idea to bling up all your emails), or a table, send in HTML with plain text. Don't make the recipient start up another program to open an attachment. jc
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 08:34:49AM -0800, JC Dill wrote:
99.999% of the time there is absolutely no benefit in the attachment. But by pushing customers to open attachments to get the content we are encouraging them to be complacent about opening all attachments, and that's a great way to end up getting infected with malware.
Spurious attachments also (like HTML markup, another email worst practice used only by (a) people who don't know any better and (b) spammers) chew up bandwidth, which is sadly becoming an increasingly expensive commodity for everyone using mobile devices. They eat space in mail spools. They require more resources to be scanned (whether for malware, dubious URLs, exploits, or anything else). ---rsk
participants (15)
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acv -
Adam Rothschild -
Alex Leach -
Brian Stengel -
Dan White -
Daniel Rohan -
David -
Graham Beneke -
James Wininger -
Jay Ashworth -
JC Dill -
Leigh Porter -
R. Scott Evans -
Rich Kulawiec -
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