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Auto Trigger Email On Date

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    Auto Trigger Email On Date

    We have several service contracts of varying duration.
    I would like to trigger an email notification when the contract is, say, 6 months from expiry.

    Does anyone know how I could do this?

    Stephen
    Alpha Anywhere v12.4.6.5.2 Build 8867-5691 IIS v10.0 on Windows Server 2019 Std in Hyper-V

    #2
    Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

    Hi Stephen,

    I run a few hybrid apps. Web for the end-user, desktop for basic maintenance.

    This gives me the option of using system scheduler along with autoexec to perform tasks
    I usually forget about on my own.

    These tasks would include reports about the previous day's orders to reports letting
    end users know that their TSA credentials are going to expire.

    The reports are all sent by the app. Saves me a lot of hassle.

    Gregg
    Gregg
    https://paiza.io is a great site to test and share sql code

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

      Thanks Gregg,

      Would you mind elaborating a bit more on which apps you are using, specifically for the expiry notifications?

      Stephen
      Alpha Anywhere v12.4.6.5.2 Build 8867-5691 IIS v10.0 on Windows Server 2019 Std in Hyper-V

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

        I have an internal web-app that displays associates name/phone/tsa credentials.

        I use a desktop app, that fires once a day thanks to windows task scheduler (others like cron),
        to query the table looking for expiration dates that will occur within the next 45 days.
        The app then sends an email to the individual, or the individual's supervisor, letting them know they
        need to renew their training and/or update their TSA application.

        It works pretty nice. Eliminates the "but I didn't know" excuse, and lets me go on doing the
        less mundane things .

        I think there is a way to do this with a .a5w page loaded with xbasic commands, but it would be
        essentially the same thing.
        Gregg
        https://paiza.io is a great site to test and share sql code

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

          I just thought of something for if you are using web only. You can set up a scheduled task through windows on your alpha 5 webserver computer that runs a command line and tells the browser to hit an a5w page. You could have all the code you need to sort through your database based on that date and emailing them in that a5w page.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

            Thanks guys, appreciate the suggestions. I have a couple of ideas I can pursue

            Stephen
            Alpha Anywhere v12.4.6.5.2 Build 8867-5691 IIS v10.0 on Windows Server 2019 Std in Hyper-V

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

              Stephen, did you ever figure out a way to do this? Needing the same thing myself.

              -JR
              J.R.
              Epigate Software, LLC.

              [email protected]
              http://www.epigate.com
              sigpic

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

                JR,

                You can search the forum for more info on scheduled tasks, but I found that using the Windows Task Scheduler (a built-in application on Windows machines) and curl (a free, easily-downloaded utility) is a straightforward setup. Set up a task in the scheduler, and the Action is start a program. Then enter:

                Program:
                c:\mycurldirectory\curl.exe
                Arguments:
                -k localhost/MyAutomaticScript.a5w

                Then you can put whatever scripts on the a5w page you want and it will run automatically at the scheduled time.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

                  Thank you Chris. Got the basics and idea of what I need, I just need to put it all together. I will need it to search through a table(s) to look for triggers, such as an expired date and then notify the appropriate personnel which will be listed in another table containing personnel email addresses and an alert message. Sounds simple, lol.
                  I will look up curl. This is what will run on the server, correct? And I guess I will need to make sure it is not an issue with my host.
                  I see that REA has a utility called AutoEmailer that suppose to do all this and can be included in an Alpha application. Anyone use it, or know anything about it?

                  -JR
                  J.R.
                  Epigate Software, LLC.

                  [email protected]
                  http://www.epigate.com
                  sigpic

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

                    JR,

                    Yes, I ended up purchasing REA Automailer. It works just great!
                    Scott was incredibly helpful getting me setup with a couple of things to customize it to our needs. I can highly recommend it and REA Inc.

                    Stephen
                    Alpha Anywhere v12.4.6.5.2 Build 8867-5691 IIS v10.0 on Windows Server 2019 Std in Hyper-V

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

                      Thank you Stephen. I think that's what I will do.
                      J.R.
                      Epigate Software, LLC.

                      [email protected]
                      http://www.epigate.com
                      sigpic

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

                        I don't know anything about the Automailer, so maybe it'll do what you need.

                        Yes, curl runs on the server. It's just a one-file command line utility, so you can easily put it on your developer machine to test things.

                        I've found that as I've added various things to our system, it's been easy to add one more thing to the a5w page running nightly to clean up data and update data based on a schedule, send out email notifications, etc, etc. I've also got an a5w page running every minute to check certain folders for incoming files and process them (we deal with a lot of documents) and to process emails coming in.

                        You have to make sure your code isn't going to throw and error and hang up the system somehow, but that's true in anything we build...

                        Hope you figure it out.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

                          Thank you Chris.
                          J.R.
                          Epigate Software, LLC.

                          [email protected]
                          http://www.epigate.com
                          sigpic

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Auto Trigger Email On Date

                            Curious how you are killing the browser window that you are opening to stop the task from running multiple times? I was messing around with the tasks settings with things like "try again on fail" hoping to make sure I have all the bases covered incase issues occur, but it seems this caused the task to run again even if it didn't fail so clients were getting multiple copies of the same email. I was thinking if I killed the browser window this would stop the task scheduler from trying to re-run the task (but I could be wrong here). Any ideas on how to accomplish this set-up. I know in the future I will be running multiple scheduled tasks to open up several a5w pages (based on the emailing that needs to be done) and I know it will be a server issue if all those instances of chrome continue to run simultaneously. Thanks for the help!

                            Comment

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