Feature

Version 7.8 Description

Bounce Handling

Hard and soft bounces are now renamed Permanent and Transient failures. A Permanent failure is an SMTP 500 error, and a Transient one is an SMTP 400 error. The term "bounces" refers to failures received outside of active SMTP communication, and are a subset of permanent failures.

Bounce handling has been simplified; only a bounce limit needs to be set, rather than a retry number within a given number of days, in order to hold a member. One bounce per day is counted. That is, two bounces on the same day (midnight to midnight) are counted as one bounce. For instance, if the bounce limit is set to 3, then a member has to bounce at least 3 messages within 3 days in order to become held. This bounce limit is set in Utilities: List Settings: Automatic Maintenance: Error Mail.

In addition, "expiration dates" can be assigned to mailings, so they are not attempted after the set date. This is useful for time-sensitive mailings such as coupons or holiday related mailings. This is set in Mailings: New Mailing: Schedule.

Sending Mailings Concurrently/Job Limits

The previous job limit of 17 concurrent jobs has been removed. The number of concurrent jobs which can occur is now constrained by your hardware (the speed of your CPU), not ListManager. Potentially, hundreds of jobs could be running concurrently, because new mailings can be sent before old mailings complete all their retries.

This also changes the concept of "attempted" and "completed" mailings. For example, a job could be running and be 99% completed within minutes, but still be running a day later due to a few recipients who are in retry. You can now compare job completion and attempts, rather than having to wait for the job to be "done".

Recipient Storage

Recipient information is now stored individually in the database. This means that the activity of each recipient of each mailing can be accessed. The level of detail depends on the logging level set for each recipient (see Recipient Logging Levels section below).

This is beneficial because it uses less memory on the ListManager server; the recipient information is stored in the database rather than on the server. Memory use on the server only goes up by message size and memory queue size, rather than the number of recipients in the mailings. The database server should be robust however, and be able to handle a large database, in order to allow this recipient storage.

This also allows increased disaster-resistance, in the event of a server crash, since the information will already be stored in the database. Because the number of recipients is much lower in 7.8, this reduced number will greatly lessen the impact of a server crash. In the event of a crash, only the small number of recipients in the server memory whose status has not been updated to the database would be lost.

Recipient Logging Levels

Individual recipient attempts and completion times can now be recorded. Error messages from remote mail servers are now connected to recipients and mailings.

There are four recipient logging levels available: "No logs", "Non-SMTP errors", "All errors", and "Errors and successes". These allow you to select the level of detail to be logged for all recipients of each mailing. This is set in Utilities: List Settings: Basic Information: Enable Features.

Tracking Mailings (Reports)

Reports can be viewed while a mailing is running, to track the real-time progress and any notable changes in mailing performance.

For example, to track a mailing, see the "Attempted and completed count" report and the "Success and failure count/%" reports in Reports: Mailings: Delivery Statistics: Delivery Results: By Mailing section. The Mailings in queue statistics table displays all the mailings in the current outgoing mail queue, and their current (real time) statuses.

Stopping/Pausing Mailings

Mailings can be paused while sending, and then resumed or stopped completely. Once a mailing is stopped, it cannot be resent. A mailing can only be deleted once it is stopped and no recipients remain to be delivered.

Reports (Analyzing Errors)

You can now view all rejection messages for errors resulting from a mailing. This allows you to find common errors, including domains that may be blocking your mail.

You can view domains that are failing, (i.e. not accepting messages), and those that may be potentially blocking your mail. See the "Domains failing" and "Domains potentially blocking" tables in the Reports: Members: Domain reports section.