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A List Server is used to quickly enable communication between persons sharing a common interest or to whom a service is being delivered. The List Server provides a mass-mail facility to all the members of a group.
Using a standard subject line, any member of the List Server can send an email into a single e-mail address. That message will then be passed to all the other members.
A List Server can be implemented in MailRules by using Inbound Rules, Outbound Rules and the Address Book. MailRules has its own List Server which is used to share information between the members of the MailRules User Group (sign up on-line under Support - User Group).
There are three steps to creating a simple List Server. Those steps are: define the list members in the address book, create an Inbound Rule to read their postings, create an Outbound Rule to send their postings.
To demonstrate, here's how the MailRules User Group was initially implemented for testing purposes:
1. The Address Book
A Distribution List was created called "User Group". The e-mail addresses of the people who completed the sign-up form were created as members of the group.
2. The Inbound Rule
An Inbound Rule was created to allow the members of the group to post messages. The message has to have come from a member of the distribution group, User Group, and the Subject must be exactly set to "MAILRULES USER GROUP". This was specified under the From tab like this:
Although we are not expecting the member to send attachments, we must provide a storage location, so this was set to an Alias of USERGROUP. This was specified under the Storage tab like this:
The message body contains the message that the member wants to distribute to the list members. The message body is saved into the default location (that is, with any attachments saved in the USERGROUP alias). Because an Inbound Rule may be triggered many times during one session of reading e-mail, the Autoincrement Filename option must be set. Also, so that the other members of the list know who the message originally came from, the Save message 'header' details option is also set. This was specified under the Message tab like this:
In order for the message to now be transmitted to the members of the group, we set an Outbound Rule to be triggered. This was specified under the Run App. tab like this:
Obviously we needed to have this Outbound Rule defined before we could select it, but it is easier to explain the mechanics of the list server in this manner. If you've been following & mimicing the example in your installation of MailRules, we apologise - you'll have to come back to this bit after you've completed the Outbound Rule definition below!
3. Outbound Rule
An Outbound Rule was created to send the message that has been processed by the Inbound Rule to all the members of the group. The recipient was set to the User Group distribution list and we chose to use the Bcc: option, as this protects all the members of the group by not making their e-mail addresses public (however, it should be noted that the Save message 'header' details option of the Inbound Rule will save the e-mail address of the message poster).
The Subject was set to "MailRules User Group Message". The message was set to retrieve the message body from file., notice that we selected the file NewMessage.txt but we added the wildcard character, "*". This is because we are using the Autoincrement Filename option on the Inbound Rule and therefore the filename may be suffixed with a numeric. Furthermore, when browsing to the file using the Body File option, we set the Outbound Rule to Delete file after sending (otherwise, everytime we ran this Outbound Rule, we'd be sending the same message!) Note that after the message body, we included a "tag line" to say how the message was transmitted.
All this was specified under the Who tab like this:
Since we are not sending any attached files and this is a Standard Outbound Rule, there is nothing else to set except that the message is not scheduled and can only be sent manually. Note that since we have specify Manual sending only, there is no need to check the Disable Scheduled Sending option. This was specified under the When tab like this:
And that concludes the creation of the simple List Server.
There are some enhancements to the procedure that could also be implemented (and in the case of the MailRules User group, were implemented), for example: