Automatically Email Agent and Channel Results
You can configure the IDOL Community component to automatically email users the results that their agents and channels produce. You can schedule the emailing of agent and channel results and optionally store lists of sent results to prevent the duplication of email.
-
Open the IDOL Community component configuration file in a text editor.
- Find the
[UserCustom]
section. This section lists all the custom processes that Community runs. -
Check whether the
[UserCustom]
section lists a section for emailing. If it does not, add one. For example:[UserCustom] 0=Email
-
Create a configuration file section for the emailing process that you listed. For example:
[Email]
-
In your new section, set
Library
toInstallDir/community/modules/user_email
. SetRunMailer
toTrue
andDefaultSendEmail
toTrue
to enable the Community mailing operation. -
Specify a
TestUser
. While you are configuring mailing, Community sends all mail to theTestUser
email address. -
If you are using a proxy server, specify the
ProxyHost
,ProxyPort
, yourProxyUsername
, and yourProxyPassword
. -
Use
SMTPHost
andSMTPPort
to specify the details of your mail server. -
Use
Cycles
andInterval
to determine how many times the mailing operation must run, and the time span that you want to elapse between the sending of email. SetStartTime
tonow
, so that you can test the mailing operation immediately when you start Community. -
Set
Retries
to the number of times that Community attempts to connect to its agent index before it times out. SetTimeoutMS
to how long each of these attempts can take. -
Use
From
,FromHost
, andFromName
to set the details to display as the sender of email that the mailing operation sends. You can also useFromField
andFromNameField
to specify a user field that contains the sender details. -
Specify the
DefaultSubject
to display as the mail subject line. -
Use
EmailXSLTemplate
to specify the template to use for the email. TheDefaultEmailFormat
andDefaultEmailResultsType
settings allow you to specify the email format and whether to send results individually or in sets. -
Set
DefaultAddSetToReadDocuments
toTrue
to automatically add the documents in the email to the list of documents that the user has viewed. SetDefaultExcludeReadDocuments
toTrue
to exclude documents that the user has recently viewed from the email (so that they receive each result only once).NOTE: You must set
DRETemplateReferenceStart
andDRETemplateReferenceEnd
in the[Agent]
section to ensure that Community can extract document references and determine if they were viewed. -
To include channel results in the email that the mailing operation sends, configure the following parameters:
ClassificationServerHost
. The host name or IP address of the IDOL Category component to use.ClassificationServerPort
. The ACI port of the IDOL Category component.-
ClassificationServerXSLTemplate
. The template to use to display channel results. -
ClassificationServerNumResults
. The maximum number of channel results to include in the email. -
ClassificationServerThreshold
. The quality of channel results to include in the email. -
ClassificationServerParams
. Parameters that must be included in the channels query that the mailing operation sends to the category index. -
ClassificationServerValues
. The values of the specifiedClassificationServerParams
parameters. -
ClassificationServerRetries
. The number of times that the mailing operation attempts to connect to the category index. -
ClassificationServerTimeout
. Specifies how long each of theClassificationServerRetries
can take, before the mailing operation times out.
NOTE: Users receive channel results only for categories that they subscribe to. You can subscribe a user to one or more categories by sending a
UserEdit
action to Community. Use theCategorySubscribe
parameter to specify the categories whose results you want to mail to the user. (You can unsubscribe a user by using aUserEdit
action with theCategoryUnsubscribe
parameter set to the categories whose results must no longer be included in the email to the user.) -
To minimize the impact that the mailing operation has on your system resources, you can set
SleepBetweenRequests
andMaxEmailsPerUser
to values that are appropriate for your environment. -
Save the IDOL Community component configuration file and restart Community. The mailing operation starts immediately because you set
StartTime
tonow
. It sends mail to theTestUser
address that you specified. Ensure that the mail process works smoothly. -
Make any adjustments to your settings that you need, then save the configuration file again and restart the IDOL Community component. You can enable
VerboseLogging
if you experience problems with the mailing operation.
When you are satisfied with the mailing operation:
-
Open the IDOL Community component configuration file in a text editor.
-
Find the
[UserCustom]
section. -
Delete the email address that you specified for
TestUser
, and setStartTime
to the time when you want the mailing operation to start. -
Save and close the configuration file.
-
Restart the IDOL Community component for your changes to take effect.