Monday, September 29, 2008

New Feature: Creating Multiple Logins for Your Account

JangoMail users now have the option to create alternate login credentials (username and password) for their accounts.

Creating additional logins will allow additional people access to the same account. Creating additional logins does NOT create new JangoMail accounts, and all logins have the same permissions as the main username/password on an account.

You may find this useful if you have multiple people accessing the same account. With different logins assigned to each employee,if one employee leaves, that one login can simply be deleted without affecting the others using the account.

There are a few limits to these logins. The additional logins do not have API access, the ability to initiate mass emails through an external email client, or the ability to FTP to the JangoMail server. Only the administrator's login can utilize these functions.

How do I get started?

Login with the current username and password, and go to the My Account section in the upper right of the interface.



Select the Other Logins tab.



Click Add New Item to add a new login. You may choose to restrict access to certain pages on the Access Restrictions tab.



The list of login credentials will then be available in your account for your ongoing maintenance (add, edit, delete).

 

Friday, September 26, 2008

Enhancement to Reporting: Filter by CampaignID

We have now expanded the General Job Statistics Report's filtering abilities, making it easier for you to locate a specific email campaign. Now, you can use the CampaignID filter to locate specific jobs quickly by searching for the campaign's unique numeric identifier.

Bug Fix: Foreign Characters and Personalization

We have now deployed fixes for two bugs related to handling foreign characters in personalization.

Using the API for "on the fly" personalization

Using our ability to do "on the fly" personalization with the API in the SendMassEmail method, we were not properly encoding personalization when it involved a non-English character set.

With this correction, you can now submit personalization field values that DO use the non-English character set, provided that it is specified in the CharacterSet option.

Now, your Options attribute can contain parameters like:

Options=
ToOtherRowDelimiter=¦,ToOtherColDelimiter=c,
ToOtherFieldNames=FirstName¦LastName¦EmailAddress¦
Headline,CharacterSet=UTF-8


This would allow you to then use the following to create a merged message with non-English characters:

ToOther=
John,Smith,john@smith.com,揭秘神舟七号飞船气闸舱¦David,Gary,david@gary.com,揭秘神舟七号飞船气闸舱¦Sheila,Panther,sheila@panther.com,揭秘神舟七号飞船气闸舱


Subject=
Hello %%FirstName%%Message=Hello %%FirstName%% %%LastName%% -- today's headline is %%Headline%%

Using foreign characters in stored Group data

When storing data in a JangoMail Group, foreign characters inserted into a group member's field previously had turned into neutral placeholders when saved. Now JangoMail can correctly store foreign characters in Groups too and use that for personalization.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Update to ASP script file for web servers

This notice applies to you if you use JangoMail's "Connect to Internet Web Site Database" feature to pull email address data in real-time from your web site's database.

We've updated the web server script file that is used to allow JangoMail to connect to your web / database platform. This update applies to those customers using one of these three platforms:

  • Active Server Page web site / Any ODBC compliant database
  • Active Server Page web site / Microsoft SQL Server Database
  • Active Server Page web site / Microsoft Access Database

This update does not apply to the PHP / MySQL platform, because the w_4.php file has never used the EnDeCrypt algorithm used in the w_x.asp files.

What is the update?

The update eliminates the EnDeCrypt encryption algorithm that was previously used in the w_x.asp files. The EnDeCrypt algorithm present in the w_x.asp files is an outdated encryption/decryption mechanism that we have deprecated in favor of using standard SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) security with the https protocol.

If you retrieve the appropriate w_x.asp file now from the Extract From My Database tab of JangoMail, the new w_x.asp file will no longer contain the lines of code that perform the decryption. If you have made your own custom modifications to the script file on your web server, you can update the file manually. Or, you can retrieve the updated file from JangoMail directly.

After the updated file is in place, you must click a button at the top of the Extract From My Database tab which will tell JangoMail to stop encrypting data using the EnDeCrypt algorithm when passing information to your web server.

To update your w_x.asp file manually:

  1. Comment out or delete the lines that perform the EnDeCrypt decryption.
  2. Deleting the RC4Initialize subroutine and EnDeCrypt function.
  3. Comment out or delete the two array declarations, "Dim sbox(255)" and "Dim key(255)"
  4. Click the button that appears at the top of the Extract From My Database page to update your JangoMail account so that data is no longer encrypted with EnDeCrypt before it's passed to your web server.

To retrieve the updated w_x.asp file from JangoMail:

  1. Login to your JangoMail account.
  2. Click the Extract From My Database tab.
  3. Click "retrieve the web server file" and follow the directions to download the appropriate file.
  4. Click the button that appears at the top of the Extract From My Database page to update your JangoMail account so that data is no longer encrypted with EnDeCrypt before it's passed to your web server.

Do I have to update my w_x.asp file?

We highly recommend that you do the update as soon as possible. The old versions of w_x.asp, with the EnDeCrypt mechanism, will continue to work through the end of the year. In early 2009, the option to use a w_x.asp file with the EnDeCrypt routines will no longer exist.

One final note:

There is a benefit to updating if you maintain multiple JangoMail accounts. The old w_x.asp files, with the EnDeCrypt mechanism, made use of a private key that was hard coded inside the routines, and a private key was unique to a single JangoMail account. Once you update to the new w_x.asp files, there will be no hard coded key, and this will allow the same version of the w_x.asp file to be used with multiple JangoMail accounts.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Feature Update: Link JangoMail to Multiple Salesforce Accounts

We have expanded our Salesforce integration so that you can now connect one JangoMail account to multiple Salesforce accounts.

Now, if you have multiple Sales Agents that use their own Salesforce accounts, they can all use the same JangoMail account for sending.

How do you set this up?
  1. From inside Salesforce, click the "JangoMail" tab. If you login to an existing JangoMail account, then the Salesforce account from which you logged in will be ADDED to that JangoMail account's list of linked Salesforce accounts.
  2. Go to My Options --> Salesforce --> Account Settings. Now instead of the previous single line text field that stored a single Salesforce User ID, there is a text box that can store multiple Salesforce User IDs. Type in any additional IDs here, each on a separate line.

This multiple connection only works one direction, however. You currently CANNOT have multiple JangoMail accounts linked to the same Salesforce account. A Salesforce account can only be linked to one JangoMail account, but a JangoMail account can be linked to multiple Salesforce accounts.


Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Image Library Now Accepts .MOV Files

JangoMail has expanded the Image Library so that you can now upload Quicktime .MOV files. Once stored, you may create links in your messages that reference the hosted files much as you would a PDF or other non-image file.

JPG and GIF files remain the only image file types that are recognized by the HTML Editor's Insert Image function because they are the file types that are viewable across most HTML-capable e-mail clients.

Other file types are accepted into the library for hosting. Our tutorial on linking to hosted files (PDFs and others) can be downloaded here.

Bug Fix: JangoMail for Salesforce Personalization Fields

JangoMail has corrected field misalignment that was occurring when sending to campaigns with members from both leads and contacts.

The error resulted in problems with personalization fields not properly matching during sending.

This is now fixed. As a result of the change we have made, some personalization syntax has changed slightly. Before, when you pulled from Contacts, Leads, or Campaigns, the fieldnames would have "Contact." or "Lead." prefixing the actual field's name. So "Contact.FirstName" and "Contact.LastName" for example were the field names. As a part of this fix, the field names are no longer prefixed by the table name. These would simply now be "FirstName" and "LastName" alone.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

New Feature: Pre-Process Campaigns Now

You can now choose to have your campaigns pre-process messages scheduled to be sent at a later date when you click on Send E-mail, allowing this task to process in advance and speed later sending.

Every JangoMail campaign starts with "pre-processing," the period where the system creates your final recipient list and assigning your campaign to our bank of senders. We start with building the list of all addresses to which you are attempting to send your message. Then, we cross-check that list for unsubscribes, bounces, duplicates, and invalid addresses.

If you will not be sending your campaign "Now," but at a later date, you can now elect to go ahead and let this pre-processing step take place now so that when the time comes to send out the campaign itself, there won't be any time spent waiting on pre-processing to complete.

How do you use this feature? When you schedule your campaign, just check the box to pre-process now.



Why would this benefit you? If you are sending to a large number of recipients (hundreds of thousands) and/or to a large number of Groups, this period can extend to several hours, based upon the amount of work the system must do to generate your final recipient list.

Friday, August 01, 2008

Security Update: Enhanced Action Logging

JangoMail's internal activity logs now record the paths taken by clients as they work within the JangoMail application. This record of page views both enhances security and aids your JangoMail Support team.

If you suspect that an unauthorized person (former employee, unauthorized employee, etc.) has been accessing your account, it will be easier to track.

From a support perspective, your support team can now review the logs to see what path you've taken as you've navigated through the site on your task -- so we can see where you've been and where you need to be!

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Group Scrub Tool Expanded

JangoMail's Scrub Group Members feature has been expanded to better "clean" lists of bounced addresses and to allow you to see what a Scrub will do before actually permitting the Scrub to change your data.

Previously, the Scrub to remove previously bounced addresses would remove those addresses that had bounced X times (per your My Options, Bounce Handling settings) prior, with the default being 3.

Now, you also have the option to remove "definitive" bounces that have occurred only once.


Why? Whitelisting requirements with many ISPs now dictate that definitive bounces are removed after a single bounce. As a result, JangoMail has been removing them "on the fly" during sending, as you see in Sending Complete email results, but this has not been reflected in the Scrub Group Members function until now.

A definitive bounce is one where the receiving server responds with a message indicating that the particular address does not exist on that server. Typically, these are the "user unknown," "mailbox not found," etc. types of addresses.


Concerned that a Scrub might not do what you expect? Now, get a Scrub report without actually changing any data. Use the new option at the top of the Scrub Group Members page to elect a View Only scrub.



Your Email Manager will get the Scrub Job Complete report, showing data as "VIEW ONLY." The total number of Group Members won't change, but the report's detail will show you what data would have been affected had you really run the Scrub.

Then, you can safely go back in and run the real scrub to clean your data, if you choose.

The email notification will have (VIEW-ONLY) in the Subject line, and the report will look like:







Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Enhancements to Reporting: Click Tracking All Positions

JangoMail has expanded Super Reporting's Click Tracking data.

Previously, Click Tracking reports sorted by URL would show Click Tracking data separately for each position of a URL within a message. If your URL appeared 3 times in a message, the Click Tracking data would be split among the positions, so you could see which position achieved the best results.

Now, in addition to the data split by position, we have included additional columns for Total Clicks All Positions and Unique Clicks All Positions so that you can quickly gauge interest in a particular link, regardless of its page position as well.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Bug Fix: Plain Text Preview

When using Preview/Save on a message under composition, users have the ability to check a box from the pop up to also have a plain text version of the HTML message sent separately so that it can be checked for appearance as well.

We have made two adjustments to the processing of the plain text message for Preview. These issues were NOT affecting campaigns that were actually sent ("Send E-mail" button), but only the Previews.
  1. The From Address will no longer show a 4 digit numeric extension. Ex: browniekitchen0042@jangomail.com will now show simply as browniekitchen@jangomail.com.
  2. When Click Tracking is enabled for the campaign, but disabled for the plain text version of the message, the additional tracking code will no longer show in the Preview version either. A link in plain text of http://www.browniekitchen.com will remain unchanged.

New Administrative Watch Feature

The JangoMail Support Team has added to its array of administrative tools with a new Alert feature. Your Support Team can now set a watch on your account to be alerted directly by email when a campaign of a given size is being launched.

This allows us to watch over your messages as you explore new features or as we may be assisting you with troubleshooting any concerns with message processing as the message is actually going out. When your Support representative sets the Alert, he/she will be notified by email when a campaign that meets the Alert's settings has been sent. The JangoMail user will not notice any change in how he/she sends, and the Support team can watch the campaign move through each step of the sending process closely.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Group Merge Available in Exported Reports

JangoMail has now updated our Super Reporting pages to again allow for merging Group data with reports during export. To use this feature, you must export by email (the envelope icon). The direct download to CSV will not perform the merge.

If you have sent a campaign to a JangoMail Group, you will be able to select that Group during export to see the list of data in the report, along with the data that was originally stored along with the email address in your Group.

Let's do an example:
  • A campaign is sent to a Group containing the following data:

    emailaddress, customerID, firstname
    jane@doe.com, 12345, Jane
    smith@yahoo.com, 12346, Bob

  • The Unsubscribes report shows that Jane unsubscribed, and we export that report.

  • With a standard export, the email address would be included in the report, along with the date and time the address unsubscribed (jane@doe.com, 06/13/2008 01:00:00 PM).

  • If the export is Merged with the original Group that received the message, the report would include the email address, the date and time of the unsubscribe, the customerID, and the firstname (jane@doe.com, 06/13/2008 01:00:00 PM, 12345, Jane).

This feature is most often used when exported data needs to be synchronized locally to other stored data. In the example above, we could then update Jane's information easily because we had her customerID -- and that is how our system tracks her.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

User-Agent Identification Added

JangoMail will now identify itself with a User-Agent when making HTTP/HTTPS connections to your web server.

The JangoMail User-Agent will report as: JNHTTP

Customers examining their web logs will now be able to identify JangoMail's connections to their servers.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Technical Notes: Using the JangoMail API with Java

Robert Fischer is the creator of OffstageArts, an open source integrated arts management system (http://offstagearts.org). OffstageArts is written in Java and deployed via Java WebStart. Mr. Fischer has graciously provided notes on his solution for us to post so others can follow in his footsteps. Many thanks to Robert for sharing his work with us!

Using JangoMail with Java

The most convenient way to use JangoMail with Java is to use Java-based SOAP tools. Apache Axis (http://ws.apache.org/axis/) is available as a commponly used Java SOAP system. Although these tools can be intimidating at first, they make life much easier over the long run. Moreover, using them does not require much effort, just follow the steps below.

Axis is able to download the JangoMail WSDL web service description file and generate a set of JangoMail Java stub classes from it. You can then compile those classes and use them in your application. The JangoMail SOAP stub classes (generated by Axis) insulate you from the complexities of SOAP XML. An example of using these classes:

-------------------------------------------

// Make a service

JangoMail service = new JangoMailLocator();


// Now use the service to get a stub which implements the SDI.

String usr = "JangoMailUserName";
String pwd = "JangoMailPassword";
JangoMailSoap soap = service.getJangoMailSoap(new URL(https://api.jangomail.com/api.asmx));

soap.addGroup(usr, pwd, "TestGroup");
-----------------------------------------------

Doing It -- Automated

The easiest way to go through this process is to use the enclosed Netbeans/Maven project. For this, you will need NetBeans with the Maven Plug-in. If you do not have that, it can be obtained at: http://netbeans.org/ and then by following directions at: http://mevenide.codehaus.org/m2-site/mevenide2-netbeans/installation.html

With NetBeans+Maven, you are now ready to go:

  1. Download and unzip the accompanying project from the following link, and open it in NetBeans: Download here.
  2. Edit the file RunWsdl.java and make sure the variable "mavenProjectRoot" is set correctly for your project home directory.
  3. Right-click on the project and select "Run." This should download the WSDL file and generate all the necessary Java classes in the project.
  4. Right-click on the project and select "Clean and Build." This will compile the Java classes you just produced. Look at Test.java for a simple example on how these classes can be used.

This procedure has now produced a file "jangomail-1.0-LATEST.jar" that you can use in other projects. If your other projects are Maven- based, you can use the dependency:

groupId = com.jangomail
artifactId = jangomail
version = 1.0-LATEST

When the JangoMail API changes, you must re-run this procedure to make the updates available to your application.

Doing It -- Manual

If you do not have NetBeans + Maven, then you will need to download Axis and run it manually:

  1. Download Apache Axis from http://ws.apache.org/axis/
  2. Put all the jar files in Apache Axis on your CLASSPATH.
  3. In a command shell, change directory to your source directory.
  4. Run the command:
    java org.apache.axis.wsdl.WSDL2Java https://api.jangomail.com/api.asmx?WSDL
  5. Compile the source code that results.
You can now use these classes in your own program, as given in the example above. You will have to include the Axis-supplied .jar files as well.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

JangoMail for Salesforce official release

JangoMail for Salesforce has been certified by salesforce.com and is now officially on the AppExchange.

A press release will be sent to media outlets this morning, and and we'll be sending an email announcement to all of our clients later this week.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Visual Metrics Now in Click Tracking

JangoMail's latest enhancement to Super Reporting adds greater visibility to your Click Tracking metrics. With our new Visual Overlay Option, you can see your tracking results visually superimposed on top of your sent message.

(click to see full size image )


At a glance, you can now see your message and exactly how each link is performing!



How do you turn on the feature? When reviewing your Click Tracking detail report for a campaign, click the Visual Overlay button to bring up the new layout option.



Want to see detail on a particular link? Hover over the percentage to pop up its full metrics too.

Open and Click Tracking Now Capture IP

JangoMail has enhanced the raw data captured along with both Open and Click Tracking features. Effective 5/19/2008, your raw data reports will show the IP address from which the recipient opened or clicked his/her message.

This is how Opens will look in Reporting:



This is how Clicks will appear in Reporting:

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Historical Tracking Now Available for Group Members

Want to know what you've sent to a particular recipient recently? Have they opened or clicked links in your messages?

With our new Historical Tracking feature, you can now see your activity history for an individual address stored in a JangoMail Group.

To pull up the history go to Groups and E-mail Addresses and select your Group. Within the Group, select the desired address to display that subscriber's details in the right hand panel. At the top of the details screen, click to View historical tracking information for this person.

The detailed report will display to show you the 30 day history. You can use the dropdown to go back 60 and even 90 days for the recipient.