OFBiz Blog

AntWebsystems now completed the email mailing list function in Apache OFBiz and integrated the function with the rest of the system. It allows users on your site to subscribe to a mailing list and you to send out messages to your subscribers. It will also allow you to create other specific mailing lists on a selection of the people and/or companies in the party component. An example is to select all customers from a specific country and write them an email for their specific needs. Also functions are provided to unsubscribe. A contact list is related to a website/productstore where all templates reside. The contactlist can also be used for calling lists and normal paper mailings.

System setup.
We assume you have a working OFBiz e-commerce system where the website and product store are defined. Then you have to specify email templates in the product store (in catalog) to enable the system to send a subscribe confirmation, an unsubscribe notification, an unsubscribe verification and an email template which can be used to send email to your subscribers which also contains a unsubscribe link.

The next thing you have to do is to create a 'contactlist' in the marketing component which relates to the website/productstore you have used before. This contact list id you have to use on your e-commerce site. In the standard OFBiz trunk download there is demo data which shows an example how to set up a contact list.

Creating contact list from existing parties.
If you would like to send an email to certain parties in the party component you can generate a contact list with specific parties you specify ion the selection which can be on role and postal address.

Send an email to the contact list.
You have now set up the system to be able to use it. You can create an email to be send to subscribers of a contact list by selecting an existing contactlist in the marketing component and press the “CommEvents' tab. Click then on 'new communication' and enter your message to be send.

The system will now start sending the communication email to all subscribers of the contact list. When an email does not exist and is bounced, the related email address will be automatically be unsubscribed.

Subscribe.
A user can subscribe on the e-commerce front-end by entering an email address. The system will send a confirmation email and when the user replied to it will try add this user to the contact list. The system will also look if the email already exists with a party and link the subscription to it.

Unsubscribe.
If a user wants to unsubscribe he can use the email link in the last message which was sent to him or go to the e-commerce site and enter the related email address and press the unsubscribe button, he will be sent a confirmation message to which he can reply to unsubscribe. To unsubscribe is also possible in the online profile where all subscribed contact lists are listed.

As usual if you need help in this area let us know at support@antwebsystems.com .