--------------1123B647A3FE1B0B9FFDF4E8 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Victor Odhner wrote: > Summary: > The best way to handle attachments in e-mail to > a list of recipients is to Just Say No. > not an option! > The next best way is to build and save profiles > of all subscribed users, based on what kind of > mail client or Internet service they are using. > too cumbersome > Rambling Discussion: > > Attachments in general are a bad idea for a list > of recipients, where you don't know what kinds > of e-mail clients they use nor what kinds of > operating system or other tools they have > available. > A little background: There's this company that can't/won't expend the funds needed to do this "right", and they make do with the efforts of "volunteers", of which I am one. IF it were done right, there would be no reports to send out because everything would be accessible on-line. Three years ago they had no reports because they didn't bother to collect data very often. They began to see the value in collecting some data regularly, and now there is a team of folks around the country that collects the data, summarizes it, and distributes reports every week. The recipient list isn't terribly big (~50), but because everybody is basically a volunteer, the organization cannot impose that anybody use specific tools, nor are they willing to pay for everybody to get a copy of something. Somebody is, however, (and unfortunately IMHO) working on putting together a database using MS Access that can be used at the local level for data reporting. Data collection (and roll-ups) is pretty much an after-thought in this design, and the primary design effort has gone into making sure that virtually "anybody" can maintain and update the database's design. (Ignore the fact that the design is under control of the Corporate MIS Dept...) This means no VBScript. Just a really plain, vanilla database app and report. In the mean time, most of the rest of us rely on Excel to do our thing. So I get these spreadsheets in by email every weekend, copy data from them into my file, make sure everything is clean, then send mine out to the world, as it were. Some recipients can NOT receive binary attachments, so they get FAXes. The biggest reason this company is moving so slowly is because they are under the common misconception that the internet is somehow more vulnerable than less sophisticated technology like, gawd, the FAX machine. So while they feel fine FAXing stuff like their corporate P&L sheets between offices on different continents (and don't seem to worry about the occasional mis-dialed number), they prohibit sending the same through email or posting it on a secure web site. They even go so far as to put locks in the floppy drives of all their office computers to prevent people from getting access to private records. Get the picture? I mention all of this not to encourage ridicule, but to underscore the fact that there are lots of companies that are just like this in their approach to technology and security. The good news is ... none of their computers got hit with any of the major viruses and worms that nailed most folks last year. (Many of the volunteers weren't as lucky, tho :-p ) Now, why they seem to think that it's somehow "safer" to keep some of their company secrets entrusted to a bunch of volunteers rather than keep them securely locked inside a server somewhere is another question entirely. I guess the fact that they trust FAX technology more than email and web servers pretty much says it all. (And the fact that they took two years to decide to get off the dime ... and are now slowly rolling out IIS and Outlook across the company is even sillier!!!) Anyway, while procmail might just do the trick, I don't think the mail hosting service is going to be very willing to plug it into their Apache configuration, if you get my drift. Most don't even seem to know what procmail is! Hey, they might be running something that doesn't know what procmail is. The few auto-responders I've seen appear to be designed to support the needs of spammers -- send a reply to a box and get a canned response back that isn't changed for weeks or months. IOW, a very static design. Doesn't somebody make a mail server with a hook in it that says, "when mail that matches this pattern arrives, hand it off to this script"? I realize that's what procmail enables, but I'm talking about a server/service, not some microsurgical techniques that work on a specific class of MTAs. -David --------------1123B647A3FE1B0B9FFDF4E8 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Victor Odhner <vodhner@cox.net> wrote: 
Summary:
 The best way to handle attachments in e-mail to
 a list of recipients is to Just Say No.
not an option! 
 The next best way is to build and save profiles
 of all subscribed users, based on what kind of
 mail client or Internet service they are using.
too cumbersome 
Rambling Discussion:

Attachments in general are a bad idea for a list
of recipients, where you don't know what kinds
of e-mail clients they use nor what kinds of
operating system or other tools they have
available.


A little background: There's this company that can't/won't expend the funds needed to do this "right", and they make do with the efforts of "volunteers", of which I am one.  IF it were done right, there would be no reports to send out because everything would be accessible on-line.  Three years ago they had no reports because they didn't bother to collect data very often.  They began to see the value in collecting some data regularly, and now there is a team of folks around the country that collects the data, summarizes it, and distributes reports every week.

The recipient list isn't terribly big (~50), but because everybody is basically a volunteer, the organization cannot impose that anybody use specific tools, nor are they willing to pay for everybody to get a copy of something.

Somebody is, however, (and unfortunately IMHO) working on putting together a database using MS Access that can be used at the local level for data reporting.  Data collection (and roll-ups) is pretty much an after-thought in this design, and the primary design effort has gone into making sure that virtually "anybody" can maintain and update the database's design.  (Ignore the fact that the design is under control of the Corporate MIS Dept...)  This means no VBScript.  Just a really plain, vanilla database app and report.

In the mean time, most of the rest of us rely on Excel to do our thing.  So I get these spreadsheets in by email every weekend, copy data from them into my file, make sure everything is clean, then send mine out to the world, as it were.  Some recipients can NOT receive binary attachments, so they get FAXes.

The biggest reason this company is moving so slowly is because they are under the common misconception that the internet is somehow more vulnerable than less sophisticated technology like, gawd, the FAX machine.  So while they feel fine FAXing stuff like their corporate P&L sheets between offices on different continents (and don't seem to worry about the occasional mis-dialed number), they prohibit sending the same through email or posting it on a secure web site.  They even go so far as to put locks in the floppy drives of all their office computers to prevent people from getting access to private records.  Get the picture?

I mention all of this not to encourage ridicule, but to underscore the fact that there are lots of companies that are just like this in their approach to technology and security.  The good news is ... none of their computers got hit with any of the major viruses and worms that nailed most folks last year.  (Many of the volunteers weren't as lucky, tho :-p )

Now, why they seem to think that it's somehow "safer" to keep some of their company secrets entrusted to a bunch of volunteers rather than keep them securely locked inside a server somewhere is another question entirely. I guess the fact that they trust FAX technology more than email and web servers pretty much says it all.  (And the fact that they took two years to decide to get off the dime ... and are now slowly rolling out IIS and Outlook across the company is even sillier!!!)

Anyway, while procmail might just do the trick, I don't think the mail hosting service is going to be very willing to plug it into their Apache configuration, if you get my drift.  Most don't even seem to know what procmail is!  Hey, they might be running something that doesn't know what procmail is.

The few auto-responders I've seen appear to be designed to support the needs of spammers -- send a reply to a box and get a canned response back that isn't changed for weeks or months.  IOW, a very static design.

Doesn't somebody make a mail server with a hook in it that says, "when mail that matches this pattern arrives, hand it off to this script"?  I realize that's what procmail enables, but I'm talking about a server/service, not some microsurgical techniques that work on a specific class of MTAs.

-David --------------1123B647A3FE1B0B9FFDF4E8--