Introduction to ListManager

Lyris ListManager is a powerful, fast, and easily extensible tool to help manage your email distribution. For programmers, ListManager has a number of methods to customize and manipulate the behavior of the product.

ListManager uses powerful relational databases, such as Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle to store its data. The table layout used by ListManager is provided in this document, so users should feel free to write whatever extensions or custom reports that meet their needs. With this information programmers can directly insert data, such as new members, in whatever programming language or environment that best meets the company's needs.

Beyond the exposed database design, the ListManager environment can be altered programmatically in a number of ways. There are pre-defined "hooks" in the program to run scripts at certain key times, and certain functionality is designed to be flexible, such as the automatic phrases content checks.

Lyris ListManager is the only product on the market that allows a programmer to create scripts that can be run to customize a message for each recipient, "on the fly". With this ability a programmer can create a script using the Tcl scripting language that customizes the contents of a message, one time, if desired, or to make it unique for each recipient. Ad banners can be rotated, flight schedules inserted, nearly anything that can be imagined.

The source code for key portions of the included web interface are provided with the product at http://yourlistmanagerserver/docs/api/index.html. This allows a programmer to customize the interface to make it fit within company look-and-feel standards or to augment the behavior for a custom subscribe form, for example.

ListManager has an exposed Application Programming Interface (API) called TclPort for web programmers and others who are interested in augmenting or changing the behavior of ListManager. Using TclPort, a programmer can create powerful Tcl scripts that can be run on the ListManager server, manipulating data in the SQL database or in program variables.