Email Changes
Over the last few releases, and the next few also (article written Jan 2024), there have been a number of changes to email accounts for sending emails. This article outlines some of these changes. Some of these might affect the generated email sent.
UTF Sender
You can now set the "from" value to include any valid Unicode sequence. For example, a Chinese retailer can use a Chinese from name and this appears in the receivers email
Multi Lingual From
For multi lingual stores, you can now configure one email account to have a different profile, and some parts of Fieldpine will detect and change profile. Consider our Chinese store located in an english speaking country. The primary email account is likely set to english. However, you can set an additional profile in Mandarin, AND edit individual customer records to have "this customer speaks Mandarin"
This is an advanced option, and not generally visible. If you wish to use it, please contact Fieldpine support
HTML/Text Bodies
Internally email has a plain text version and also a HTML version. Most email programs only show one, so most people never release that each email often contains two versions. Previously if you sent an HTML email, but did not include a text version, Fieldpine would set the text version to "Please use HTML mode in your mail program to view this email", or similar. This has been changed, and we attempt to create a text version based on the html content.
Embedded Images
Embedding images into emails has several different options, and non are a silver bullet that works everywhere. We have decided to standardise around using IMG tables inside HTML emails, as this is the most common method used. Alternatives such as data-URI and CID are not our recommended methods.
Streams of accounts
Shortly, we will be allowing you to set an email account as
- Hi Quality
- Transactional
- Bulk
This is so that you can send different types of emails using different email accounts. Email servers are getting increasingly militant about rules around Spam and bulk emails, so this option will allow you to send using different email accounts automatically. The logic being that bulk emails will be sent using a different domain, so that they do not impact your primary domain reputation
Sent email recording
We are capturing and saving all sent emails to a greater depth in the future. Essentially the complete transactional details and message body will be saved and you can review/search this much like any other database content.
IMAP
You can now create an IMAP account rather than only POP3 accounts. You still need to configure SMTP for sending though.
Ingest email accounts
Fieldpine have been able to read inbound emails for a long time, however, most retailers do not enable this for various reaaons. Being able to get data into Fieldpine via email though is especially useful, so we will shortly be giving all retailers a Fieldpine email account that can be used to receive emails into your Fieldpine system. It is only receiving, you cannot send from this account.
- You will need to enable security options before these emails will get close to your Fieldpine System
- It is expected that you set up auto forwarding from your email account (or manual)
- These email addresses aren't really intended for giving to supplier and customers, but you can if you really want too
- Retailers that already have dedicated inbound email accounts ( thecomputer@retailer.com or receipts@retailer.com etc) will not impact these accounts. This is an additional inbound email account
Why? Being able to read and process inbound email is quicker and easier in some cases
- Forward invoices to Fieldpine, and they auto prepare for inwards goods
- Forward/cc/bcc emails to/from customers and we record them in the customer history logs
- Upload Excel documents by emailing them rather than using a web page