Mass Messaging

This module allows you to send mass messages to users. To compose and select recipients the Views module is used. This allows complex selection queries setup by a administrator. The mapping of the view fields and the subject, recipient, message body and the attachments is done in the view. To send a message the view plus the arguments of the view are put into a queue. The cron does then send the messages in the background.

By default there is only a Rules action, but other modules can use the API to add Views to the queue. The implementation of the module ensures that the messages are delivered exactly once. It is reliable. We work with transactions. The message can be send by default only trough e-mail. The implementation allows to extend this and add other deliverable methods.

Because we are using views to generate the recipient list, we can also generate for each recipient his own message. Theoretically there is no limit in the number of message that can be send by this module. The limitation is in most cases the mail server.

The filters of the view can be used to change the recipient list dynamically on user fields. So this approach is also very efficient if you need to implement a notification service. For example you could define a Field in the user profile which allows the user to subscribe or subscribe to certain content. If the content gets stored or created a rule can be fired which then sends the messages. As shown the module can be used as a simple but powerful notification service.

Views Send

The differences between this module and the Views Send module are:

1. This is only an API module, this means there is no user interaction needed to send such an e-mail. (This module provides Rules action to send mails.)
2. This module is fully reliable. This means there is no chance of loosing a messages.
3. In theory this module can handler much more messages, because you do not need to copy over all messages first, before you can start sending them. In Views Send the messages get copied to the spooler table. This is really inefficient.
4. With this module you could use different send methods. (not only e-mail)

In general the Views Send module is used if you like to send some messages manually. If you need some mechanism to send mass messaging by some automatic reaction you get struggled with the Views Send module.

Build the View

Sometimes it is a bit tricky to build the view. In these cases the following modules for Views can help:

• Views Cross Join - Allows to join any kind of entity into the view.
• Views PDF - One of the sub module of the project allows you to include a view as a field.

Mail Field - No Link

There is a bug in the Views module with the User Mail field. The mail address is always rendered as a link. You could apply the changes mentioned in #1216288: Mailto / Link User / No Link does not work with Mail Field to resolve this issue.

Development

The module will only be available for Drupal 7.