[drupal-devel] Chat about mailing solutions with CivicSpace/Drupal
Hi, we had a chat this morning about mailing solutions for Drupal. If anyone is interested in doing development for mail solutions for Drupal please let me know. To-do lists coming. Thanks, Kieran Ok, let's get started I'd like to start by going around the invitees talking about what your interest in mail for Drupal is.  drob____ joined the chat room. My main goal is to introduce everybody and hope that we can develop some solutions collaboratively drob___ we are just starting introductions I'll start My name is Kieran and I am the development manager for CivicSpace labs we release mass mailer in our distribution and we are integrating it with CiviCRM for our next major release next   hand dave-civicrm go ahead   my name is dave greenberg project manager for civicrm we have two main thrusts dave-civicrm  hand drob____  one is that we want to make sure the civicrm core can be used for folks who want to as the people/contacts datastore for various mass mailing solutions in drupal second is we are building a high capacity massmailer solution for release later this year based on the now open-souced EmailNow implementatoin which lobo, brian and others built at Groundsrpring.org done dave-civicrm drob   morning drob____ go ahead   dan robinson - civicactions we're a prof'l services firm using all this stuff for our customers we are working on civicgroups see my email for more info/background done drob____  hand georgeh go ahead   My name is George Hotelling and I'm working on porting http:// www.citizenspeak.org/ to a Drupal node module We're releasing the module under an OSI approved license (probably GPL) and want to make sure it's useful to as many people as possible georgeh chx joined the chat room.  hi all chx chx we are using hand system and doing introductions georgeh: more?   So whatever techniques for scaling that the mass mailer projects come up with, I want to integrate with them to avoid wheel duplication done georgeh next person?   hand killes go ahead   I am Gerhard Killesreiter, I am a Drupal IT consultant and working for CivicSpace on CivicRM integration for a few Drupal modules. Among them the massmailer module. I am also the maintainer of the listhandler module.l done killes luksedj left the chat room. next person   hand MegaGrunt go ahead   Robert Castelo [MegaGrunt] - I'm developing eNewsletter module, which packages nodes based on terms to create a personalised newsletter. which has now been split up into component modules to handle various email tasks for any other Drupal modules which want to use them done MegaGrunt next person   hand chx go ahead  drob____ is now known as drob.  I am Károly Négyesi (Charlie // chx) -- I am a core developer. for now, that's it chx brian? brian-civicrm   brian mcfee (civicrm).. dave pretty much said it all, but i'm working on the update/reimplementation of emailnow (done) brian-civicrm great ok, so I hope those introductions will lead to partnerships Michael Haggerty won't be here today but will be reading transcripts he has a professional mailing service that is bonded get's 93% success rate it's a service that many folks in the CS community would like to see integrated Jo Lee from Citizen Speak isn't here yet georgeh: do you want to describe what Citizen Speak does   Sure Citizen Speak is a non-profit that allows organizations to create email forms with pre-selected recipients and pre-filled content Basically a small, free version of CapWiz georgeh ok thanks   The goal is to allow organizations to create advocacy campaigns on specific subjects to people who can make change done georgeh thanks So killes is doing development on mass mailer which uses php list php list is a php based mailing solution that should give better performanance than the php mail function   hand killes we have had problems getting it installed on hosts killes go ahead   I just want to suggest that everybody who has it reads the mail from Michael Haggerty from yesterday. killes  hand drob  it isnot onyl about sending x mails /hour it is also about how many of those actually get through to the recipient. done killes drob go ahead   not sure which email - i just saw one about the "agenda" i have two issues i would like to deal with in the nearterm a) can we use phplist to do "listserve" i can explain later b) why don't we just let "phplist: be phplist" i can explain this as well if you want to go there done drob  hand killes georgeh and MegaGrunt: how can we make mass mailer useful for you killes: go ahead   to drob: a) I am not sure phplist can do that. We need to check this. I was under the impression it is just a announcemnet type mailign list thing. b) people apparently want the integration. done killes georgeh or MegaGrunt?   georgeh is gathering his thoughts georgeh  what functionality does MassMailer have that is not tied into PHPList? MegaGrunt  hand killes killes   i.e. take PHPLIst away and what is left? MegaGrunt go ahead   massmailer itself does do much. doesn't killes  hand MegaGrunt  it is just the Drupal glue that you need to get list management screens and so on. the advantage of massmailer is that you can have also other backends than phplist. killes  hand georgeh MegaGrunt go ahead   everybody can have an account on my testsite and check massmailer out. done killes sorry georgeh your in queue   the functionality of PHPList is locked into PHPList MegaGrunt  (http://civicrm.civicspacelabs.com /home/ <== testsite) killes  can't be leveraged by other modules done MegaGrunt  hand drob  hand killes georgeh go ahead drob then killes   me? drob georgeh go ahea   What I would need from MassMailer is an API doc saying "this function will send mail" and some thing saying how to plan for scaling That may exist, but I haven't seen it done georgeh drob go ahead   my understanding is that the phplist team is currently working to separate their front-end from their back-end also it looks like if you look at the phplist engine that the api's are pretty straight forward but my question is why we expose a management interface to phplist at all i think i would be happy as a clam if if could just populate the db from cs and then use phplist to manage my mails they have a nice welll worked out mgmt interface done drob  ok, now me again. killes killes, brian-civicrm comments   MegaGrunt: you are wrong, massmailer is the tool to leverage phplist. georgeh: those apis are there. killes  hand MegaGrunt MegaGrunt: go ahead   drob: we shoudl get into touch with the phplist maintainers. I know that Aaron was. killes  but no other module can leverage tasks like bounce handling MegaGrunt  I think that the future massmailer version will use civicrm much more than massmailer used contact manager and so some stuff might go away. killes  ? MegaGrunt  hand drob  there is currently no bounce handling implemented in massmailer. killes  hand brian-civicrm  but phplist has this feature,. done killes MegaGrunt you want to respond, killes, then brian   but I mean for instance, ecommerce module can't react to bounce back after sending sale confirmation via PHLIst bounce handling? done MegaGrunt killes   no, because massmailer does not yet provide the interface. done killes brian-civicrm   i'm not too familiar with phplist (maybe dave can chime in?), but we have a pretty extensive set of bounce handling tools leftover from the old emailnow. much of it is currently in perl, but i'd be interested in working with other people to open it up and abstract it done brian-civicrm chx: could Drupal have mail interface in core? long term   hm depends chx  I think it could, there have been discussions about it. killes  currently it has an SMTP interface as core itself does not mass mail, this seems to be enough chx  hand MegaGrunt MegaGrunt   hand killes  not just bounce handling, but all other email related tasks they are all locked away in the third party application unless we expose them, or write our own component modules to handle specific tasks done MegaGrunt geilhufe joined the chat room. killes: go ahea d   chx: I think there will be this subscription module by your SoC student. if Dries will use it on drupal.org, how long do you think it will take that it is in drupal cor?e ;) done killes  hand drob  hand chx drob   i have to go pretty soon i would like to know if we can move forward on anything in short term as i said i think it would make sense to contact the phplist folks and clean up the use of the "engine" also would like to talk about using the phplist management interface instead of using drupal parrallel interface also the issue regarding Listserve capability done drob chx and then let's make some plans going forward   ok so, that SoC applicant will not focus much on mailing itself he concentrates on "subscription" like you can subscribe on watchdog and such chx chx?   done, sorry chx Ok list of tasks 1) get mass mailer API to MegaGrunt and georgeh 2)talk to phplist, drob or killes? 3)Look at a larger API drob and brian-civicrm and killes that's all suggestions   hand drob drob   what do people think about simply using phplist to do management? is that what you mean in 3) done drob brian-civicrm: is there an interest is integrating your mailing solution into Drupal or just CiviCRM   hand dave-civicrm go ahead   our mailing solution will be tied to CiviCRM but CIviCRM should be open to be used for contact and group storage for 'any' mailer solution for our solution - there will be lots of linkages between the mailer actions and the contact datastore so we don't think it will be separable dave-civicrm  hand brian-civicrm hand go ahead   hand georgeh georgeh in queue brian-civicrm go ahead ok georgeh go ahead   If someone could point me to CiviCRM API docs that would be nice too, I'd like to look at any ways to integrate CitizenSpeak with CiviCRM where it makes sense My email is george@hotelling.net I'd looked for API docs but didn't see them georgeh  irc needs one of those aim "person is typing" icons.. brian-civicrm  done georgeh sorry brian-civicrm go ahead   in addition to what dave said about our solution being integrated to civicrm, we're also trying to not rely on much other code for mail delivery. much of what we do happens at the mta level done brian-civicrm  hand drob Ok, another meeting in the future? or follow up on email? I have to get going in 5 minutes drob go ahead   yes is there an email list? i can set one up if you want done drob I'd like to see the traffic on Drupal-dev if possible see who else might show up   hand drob go ahead   ok so could you set up the discussion on drupal-dev with an email drob Yes, but not until tonight is that okay?   k done drob Anyone else?   hand MegaGrunt MegaGrunt go ahead   I'd like to chat about coding in future or via email stratergies for scalability and such like done MegaGrunt Anyone else?   hand dave-civicrm go ahead   we'll be posting spec, progress etc. on our confluence site and will include info about architecture, scaling methods etc so we can post periodic updates to drupal-dev if that would be useful dave-civicrm Yes   also would like to f/up w/ drob on his idea for just pushing DB stuff from CS to phplist and understand that better so - i can start that conversation after you announce start stuff on drupal-dev done dave-civicrm Anyone else? Ok thanks everybody, please feel free to contact each other about common interested I'll post this transcript and some follow ups to drupal dev please feel free to send me parts that you want me to conclude, to make sure I cover everything thanks everyone bye
participants (1)
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Kieran Lal