Email action or promotion

View the prerequisites for creating an email action or promotion within the Personalization workspace.

An email promotion is an email message automatically sent to a defined list of recipients by a running rule. Email promotions can be sent once or repeatedly on regular intervals. The body of the email message is derived from a file on the server, such as a text file, an HTML file, or even a JSP containing content spots for rules. This file can be chosen from the authoring repository. The list of recipients can be derived dynamically from a rule. Email promotions are implemented by using a rule event to trigger an email rule on a schedule.

Before you can create an email action or promotion within the Personalization workspace, you need the following:

• A user resource: This resource contains information about potential email recipients, and can be created with the Personalization resource wizard in Rational Application Developer. The resource must include a string that represents the email address of the recipients (in the form "username@domain"). The string must be published to the workspace server and to the run time environment.

• An email body: The body of the email is a flat text, HTML or JSP file that must exist on a server accessible from the run time environment. Typically, this file is created in Rational Application Developer. The location of the file in the run time environment must be specified as a URI when you create the email rule. The email body HTML or JSP page must be on the server, which is sending the email.

• An email rule: The email rule specifies to whom the email must be sent, who is sending it, and identifies the email body as a URI.

• A rule to determine recipients (for emails that are triggered on a schedule or periodically, optional for email actions): This rule can be a select content action or a binding, but must return a collection of recipients from the user resource that was previously mentioned. The action or rule you create becomes an option of the To list. If your actions or rules are not properly defined, the To list displays "No Matching Rules".

  It is possible to create email actions or promotions that are sent to a predefined address or list of addresses. This task is done by typing them into the To field when you create the email action or promotion.

• A rule event (for emails that are triggered on a schedule or periodically): The rule event binds the email rule to the rule, which determines the recipients. The rule event says that at a given time or times in the future, a specific rule must be run once for each user in a list. That list is determined by the rule to determine recipients.

For more information about configuring email activities, see configuring email activity accounts.