Delivering Notices By Email

You can send overdue, billing, fine, hold request, reminder, and routing notices by email.

Most email notices are sent automatically by the Polaris E-mail Manager, and posted by the SQL Server job Notice Processing, the job that processes all notices.

Note:
A separate SQL job, Hold Notice Processing, processes email and text message (SMS) first and second hold notices separately. Designed to run multiple times per day, the job runs every four hours from 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM by default. See Hold Notice Processing for Email and Text Message Notices.

The To field in an email notice is taken from the email address field in the patron record. You specify the From field, any Reply To address, and any footer with the Notification Options parameter. See Set up notification methods, email options, and export location. When you send email notices, the appropriate queue is cleared, the transaction is posted, and a summary report is sent to the email addresses specified when you set up notification. The summary report is also available from the Report Manager. Select Utilities, Reports and Notices on the Polaris Shortcut Bar to open the Report Manager. In the Report Manager, select Notices > Email > Email_SummaryReport.

Special announcements are free-text email messages, such as for a book sale, that are not part of the automated notification process. You can send special announcements by email manually, using the Polaris E-mail Manager utility. See Send email special announcements.

The default email format is HTML. However, certain email servers send HTML messages in odd format, or insert strange characters in the messages. You can specify plain-text format for specific patrons through an option in the Patron Registration workform - General view. See Add general data to a patron record. You can also set plain text as a default setting in new patron records. See Setting Patron Registration Required Fields and Defaults and Setting Express Registration Defaults and Requirements.

Email Failure Detection

Before email notices are sent to patrons, an internal test message is sent to the Reply-to email address if available; otherwise, the test message is sent to the From address specified in the Notification options parameter. This message verifies the SMTP connection and notifies the sender application that email processing will run. The reporting server connection is also checked. If the SMTP connection or reporting server connection cannot be verified, the email notices are not generated or sent. Failures are recorded in the PolEmailManager program log file: [server]\PolarisProgramData\[version]\Logs\POLEMAILMANAGER
The notices are not posted, and are re-sent the next time notices are processed.

If an email notice is sent but fails due to a poorly formatted email address, or the recipient server rejected it, the failure is recorded in the notification log and the notice set to print instead. It is then posted with the rest of the printed notices when they are run. These failures are listed in the Email delivery failure report available from the Polaris Shortcut bar. Select Utilities, Reports and Notices on the Polaris Shortcut Bar to open the Report Manager. In the Report Manager, select Notices, Email delivery failure to list any failed email notices. You can filter this report by date and reporting branch.

Note:
This process does not apply to reminder notices. When a reminder email notice fails due to an invalid email address, it is posted and not sent to print.

An email notice may be sent but fail due to reasons other than being poorly formatted or rejected by the recipient mail server. These failures can occur, for example, when a mailbox is busy or temporarily unavailable. In this case, the notice is not posted and is re-sent the next time notices are processed.

Note:
If no patrons receive scheduled email messages, the SMTP server may not be set up properly. For help with SMTP installation, see your Windows server help file.

Automatic Email Report

You can set Polaris to send a report to one or more email addresses after the notices are generated. The report includes the starting and completion date and time, the number of notices of each type that were generated, and the name, barcode, and email address (if any) of each recipient. See Set up notification methods, email options, and export location.