Purpose

 

This example demonstrates how to send an email using the mail merge features in NetMailBot, specifically how to set the friendly name of the recipient. The database used is a text file in CSV format (comma delimited file) which contains some sample data.

 

NOTE: You should change the email addresses in the CSV text file to your own email address(es) before running a test. 

 

Additional Prerequisites

 

Windows 95 / 98 Users: Make sure you have the latest ODBC drivers installed on your machine.

 

Prepared Example Files

 

 

The -bodyfile parameter in NetMailBot uses full paths. We have assumed a particular path as shown in the batch file contents below. Therefore, download this file to C:\tmp on your hard drive or edit the parameters to reflect wherever you unzip the archive.

 

The archive contains three files:

 

• MailMergeCSVFriendly.bat - The batch file that will instruct NetMailBot to send the email message.
• data.txt - The CSV file that contains the mail merge data.
• body.txt - The text file that will be the email message body.

 

File Contents

 

This is the content of the batch file:

 

netmailbot -to test@exclamationsoft.com -from test@exclamationsoft.com -subject "Mail Merge Example" -server localhost -logfile c:\tmp\log.txt -dsn "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\tmp\;Extended properties=Text;" -dbquery "SELECT * FROM data.txt" -dbemailcolumn "email" -dbreplacementids "<<firstName>>=firstName,<<lastName>>=lastName,<<tracking>>=tracking" -bodyfile "body.txt" -personalize -tofriendly "<<firstName>> <<lastName>>" -test -debug

 

The data file contains:

 

email,firstName,lastName,tracking

test@exclamationsoft.com,John,Smith,Z9102009591871047220382

test@exclamationsoft.com,Mike,White,Z9823948208740987409832

test@exclamationsoft.com,Tom,Blue,Z2398409577583757873481

 

Here is the body.txt file:

 

Dear <<firstName>> <<lastName>>, 

 

Your tracking number is <<tracking>>

 

Steps

 

1. Unzip the MailMergeCSVFriendly.zip file. This will produce a directory called "MailMergeCSVFriendly". Open this directory.
2. Open the data.txt file.
3. Change all of the email addresses to your email address (for the purposes of this test run, they can all be the same).
4. Save and close the data.txt file.
5. Open Notepad and edit the batch file "MailMergeCSVFriendly.bat". Note these important parameters used in the batch file:

• Change the parameters: -to test@exclamationsoft.com -from test@exclamationsoft.com to your own email address.
• Change the parameter: -server localhost to your own mail server.
• Note the use of -dsn "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\tmp\;Extended properties=Text;". This is a normal connection string that instructs NetMailBot on how to connect to the data.txt file. If you have not unzipped the archive to C:\tmp, you will have to edit this accordingly.
• -dbquery "SELECT * FROM data.txt" instructs NetMailBot to select all of the data from the file data.txt. This file is considered to be a pseudo database table.
• -dbemailcolumn "email" instructs NetMailBot to use the data in the "column" named "email" to address the message to the data contained in that column for the current row.
• The parameter -bodyfile "body.txt" instructs NetMailBot to use body.txt as the email message body. This time we have used a relative path; that is, NetMailBot will look for a file "body.txt" in the same directory as the batch file. Previous examples used a full path as in "C:\tmp\body.txt".  In the body.txt file, you will see:

 

Dear <<firstName>> <<lastName>>, 

 

Your tracking number is <<tracking>>.

 

The items in double-angle brackets ("<<" and ">>") are "replacement IDs" which are explained next.

• -dbreplacementids "<<firstName>>=firstName,<<lastName>>=lastName,<<tracking>>=tracking" instructs NetMailBot to replace the strings in double-angle brackets with the data contained in the mapped column for the current row. For example, in the message body, NetMailBot will replace the string <<firstName>> with the data contained in the column named "firstName".
• -personalize instructs NetMailBot to make the replacements. Without this parameter specified, NetMailBot will not perform any replacements.
• -tofriendly "<<firstName>> <<lastName>>" instructs NetMailBot to append a friendly name to the "To:" addressing field using the replacement IDs listed.
• -test instructs NetMailBot to only perform a test of these operations; no actual emails will be sent.

6. Invoke the batch file by double-clicking the icon or straight from the command line.
7. NetMailbot should start up and, upon finishing, the email addresses specified with the -to parameter should each receive a personalized text message. The "To:" field should include a "friendly" name (e.g. "John Smith") as well as the usual "unfriendly" email address (e.g. "jsmith12@somecompany.com").