Emailing Overview
Related Items
Within CloudBilling we provide a messaging framework that allows you to send invoices directly to your customers. Invoices can be sent to your customers via email, with a variety of options to tailor this communication to your specific needs. To simplify management of your resources, CloudBilling makes use of your existing mail server infrastructure.
Messaging is configured via the Management Portal, and involves the following key concepts:
Templates
The content of your emails are important, and CloudBilling allows complete flexibility in defining this content through the use of templates (which make use of the Razor template engine, much like Invoice Transformations). You are able to specify both HTML and plain-text formats for your emails. It is also possible to add your own logo/image to the email.
Message Definitions
Definitions are what are used to specify the “kind” of messaging. Definitions are reusable/repeatable (for instance, each month), and generally include information such as which message templates to use, and which invoice transformation type or types (identified by a key) to include as attachments.
It is possible to email specific groups, which is done based on Customer Clusters, Template types, and “email keys”. Within CloudBilling we define two different keys: the recipient key, and the from key. The recipient key is used to identify the correct customers, by combining the recipient key with a Customer Cluster you can select very specific groups of customers that you want to email their invoices.
How finely tuned the selection is depends on the number of different recipient keys and the number of Customer Clusters you have defined in CloudBilling. The sender is determined by the from key, it is possible to define multiple sender addresses that are identified with a from key. How specific the grouping depends on your customer clusters, number of different templates used and how many unique email keys you have added into the system.
It is also possible to specify certain options such as whether to ZIP attachments, and whether to protect the zipped file with a password.
Message Runs
These are the actual instances of messages that will be sent or have been sent to your customers, and are based on Message Definitions. It allows you to see what you emailed, who you emailed and when you emailed. If anything went wrong with the sending of one or more emails you can also see that in the Message Run.
Learn more…
- Click here for more on how to set up emailing within the Management Portal