Sending non-silent HTML emails

[foxhound6]

Hi folks,

I've combed through about 15 pages of google searches and can't seem to find what I'm looking for. There are plenty of plugins for sending HTML emails out there, but they all seem to send via SMTP "silently".

What I mean by this is, I'm looking to have the standard FM SendMail behavior where the outlook email pops up and must have "sent" clicked to go out with the ability to use HTML. Most email plugins seem to be built for bulk mailing purposes.

My goal with this is to use company standard HTML email templates for emails that will go out (all go out one at a time). Since 100% of the data in the emails can't be autopopulated, our employees need to be able to edit the email before it goes out. Hence, the need for the default FM/Outlook behavior of the email popping up on the screen. I know I could just have everyone write the email within FM, but our FM database is large and complex enough and we'd prefer not to do it that way.

Does anything like this exist?

[Fitch]

Perhaps the Outlook SendMail plugin? (Haven't used that one myself.)

[bcooney]

I don't understand. If you build an email client interface in FM, as you'll see in any of the plug-in's sample files, you'll have the ability to edit the "email" before it is Sent.

[foxhound6]

Thanks for the responses.

I was in touch with Productive Computing's support team (SendMail product) and they said there is no way to do what I am requesting with their product.

In regards to writing emails in filemaker, our FM database is already huge and we literally send hundreds (if not thousands) of emails a day, so we'd prefer to not have to store these in FM.

It looks like we might be stuck doing it that way if we're going to go this route, but I'm holding out hope that there might be a product out there that will meet our need.

[bcooney]

Well, you could delete the email records that are sent using a nightly FMS run script.

[foxhound6]

While this is true, we run into another issue of easily allowing the end user to modify the email with formatting.

For example, some emails contain instructions or notes that are not standardized and the user may need to underline or bold these sections. My understanding in this situation is that the end user would have to know and use HTML tags to make it appear correctly. My users aren't the most technical people in the world (nor should they be) so this would be a game breaker.

Is there a technical limitation that prevents a plugin from being written to provide the functionality we need? I can't imagine we're the first folks to run across this issue.

Again, thank you for all of the responses.