Sending future mails from your HCL Notes Client
Have you ever wanted to schedule future emails from your Notes Client? Well, now HCL Domino supports scheduling email messages, which allows you to do just that. So, draft your email, assign it a send date, and sit back and relax. The email will be delivered by the router at the time you specify. This feature is very useful for scheduling announcements, newsletters, or any mail which you want to be delivered at a future specified time. You need to be on Domino v10 or v11 (using the Mail10.ntf or Mail11.ntf template) to be able to schedule messages to be sent in the future. Here’s how it works. The configuration document setting “Allow users to schedule a delivery time for messages” is enabled by default, so you don’t have to change anything in that document.
You would make sure that the mail policy setting has the checkbox selected to enable the delivery option, as illustrated here.
If you don’t have a mail policy, then you can create a new one. If you already have a mail policy, you merely update it. After creating or updating the mail setting, you need to give the following command to update the mail policy in the user’s mail file.
Tell adminp process mail policy
The next step is to restart the Notes Client, so that it will pull the new policy settings from the server. Advanced users can use this command from the command prompt of their client machine to update the policy on the client’s side without restarting: C:\notes\ndyncfg -2
Once the settings are pulled by the Notes Client, you will see the following option in delivery options while sending mail: “Delivery Options at the user side.”
Simply select the date and time for delivery and the router will deliver it at that time.
Using agents for sending scheduled messages
- You can also use agents for sending scheduled messages. Just use the field $SentAt to schedule the messages from agents
- The Domino v10 router will obey this field and will not deliver the email until the date and time you have specified
Checking the status of scheduled messages
- Router commands have been updated to show the status of scheduled messages.
- The Tell router list and Tell Router Show commands will now show the status as “Scheduled” and “Waiting for scheduled send time”
Bulk mailing
- You can send bulk mail in smaller batches at a scheduled time so you don’t overload the server. Simply select scheduled times with a gap of 10-15 minutes, and the router will initiate the deliveries smoothly.
