Sending email reminder

[EllenG]

I have an application that includes a calendar/scheduling function. The user can save "alert" reminder messages from anywhere in my applicationa and it integrates with the calendar function so that the reminder is a) entered in the calendar and triggers a script to do a "Show Custom Message" (of the reminder)as soon as the user opens the program.

Is there any way to script a Send Mail so that an email is sent on the date of the reminder, without opening my FM program? For instance: Today I set a reminder to pay my Visa bill on Aug 10. On Aug 10, a pop-up message will be displayed as soon as the program starts up. Can I script a "delayed" send mail that will create an email message to the user's email today, but not send it until Aug 10? Can a plug-in do this??

My application runs cross-platform, so I would need a solution that works for PC and MAC (Os9 & Osx)

Thanks.

[Matt Haughton]

The answer is yes, but its not terribly easy. I take it you are using FM Server (I assume v5.5), to server your databases. The trouble with this is that the server doesn't ever actually "Open" the databases as such, just serves them to any clients that request them. As such Server can't run scripts or access any DBs meta-data.

I have been looking into a similar email sending problem/solution myself, and the only real way to do it is to have FM database running (on a separate machine to the server) that runs relevant scripts at the right time. I am writing an autonomous batch scripting database, that will sit on some computer and call scripts in the correct files at appropriate times.

To do this I'd strongly advise you to look into the TROI Activator plugin as it will do this fairly effortlessly, and you 'll be able to design a neat user interface to amend the scheduling information, have a look at their example files.

This "Batch" DB can be designed to call a script at a certain time so a simple, "Send all emails for today" script, to find all emails that need sending and send them.

You'll only need 1 licence for the Activator plugin per machine running the Batch DB, this will also convert to FM7 too, if you're thinking of taking that road. I think the DB can be hosted too, I haven't tested it but it would be highly recommended, and the plugin should still work.