Scheduled Reminders question on recipients

[Spry_Julia]

I am confused by the "recipients" options in the Scheduled Reminders interface, and have a couple of questions.

1. It looks like I can either choose "limit to" or "also include". "Limit to" means that I need to add an additional criteria to the criteria set above. "Also include" means that I need to configure an additional list of people to send it to. How can I configure the reminder to be sent to members based on the initial set of criteria, without either further limiting the list or arbitrarily adding to the list? 

Alternately, what if I wanted to limit the distribution list AND also add additional contacts to the list?

Basically, this field seems like it should be optional, and also they don't seem like they should be mutually exclusive. However, if I'm interpreting this incorrectly, let me know. I couldn't find anyone else asking about this on the forum, so it makes me think I'm not understanding this correctly.

2. It seems that if I select "Also include" and select "Choose Recipients", but don't add any recipients, a scheduled reminder is sent to ALL contacts. This seems like a bug to me -- if this condition is met, perhaps the recipient list should have a required value.

I can submit a bug report, but again, it seems weird to me that no one else has mentioned this. So, just wanted to check and see if perhaps I'm doing something wrong.


Thanks!

Julia

[petednz]

Hi Julia

I have also found it confusing when I have been looking at this while trying to work out if i can use any of the options to include a BCC.

Hopefully someone who has done as you require will chime in.

Otherwise the only way I know to really confirm the outcome is to set it up on a copy of your system, and in civicrm.settings.php set the code to write all emails to file so you don't get any real ones going out (sorry code not to hand but expect a search to quickly find it for you)

[Dan C]

Hello Julia, I can confirm the bug if you select "also include" and don't enter any criteria.  It is one of the problems I have run into with scheduled reminders.  If you don't want to enter criteria, you need to leave it on the default of "Limit To".  I don't believe there is an official bug report, this is another of the ones on my list to try and troubleshoot in my free time and I haven't had a chance (and all of my clients that have hit it have decided to just live with it).

I'm not sure about being able to limit and add additional contacts.  I have never had that instance come up.

[Spry_Julia]

Thanks for the replies! @petednz, I hadn't yet thought about being able to BCC, but it definitely seems like a useful feature. I also didn't know I could log emails to file. Very helpful! For reference, I found information about that here: http://book.civicrm.org/developer/current/development-environment/basic-set-up/

@Dan C, thanks for letting me know I'm not crazy   I'll submit a bug report for it today. It can be unfortunate if you happen upon this the hard way.

[Dave Greenberg]

Julia - this is definitely a bug that needs to be fixed. I've updated your issue to reflect this:
https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-15500

I agree that neither option should be required, and I'll also post an issue for 4.6 to make that change.

[petednz]

Just to close the loop on the BCC issue - the reason i have been getting confused is that most times when i create a Scheduled Reminder and set
Recipients > Limit to > Choose recipients (which I think is effectively a BCC isn't it)

the Manual Recipients Field does not end up showing till after I save and re-edit. or if i select 'choose recipients' then click away then click back on 'choose recipients'

this is on our 4.4.7

I can replicate this on demo (sometimes)

go to http://rivers.org.nz/civicrm/admin/scheduleReminders?action=add&reset=1

switch Activity Assignees to 'choose recipients' - nothing changes - then click away and click back on 'choose recipients' - yay then Manual Recipients box shows

[joanne]

Pete, you need to use Recipients > Addition to > Choose recipients for a BCC. ( Ie you send to these people as well as all the contacts who meet the criteria you specify in the Enitity line.)

If you select Recipients > Limit to > Choose recipients then only contacts in your "choose recipients" list can get the email and they will only get it if they also meet the criteria you specify in the Enitity line. ( ie you are limiting who gets the email.)

(Rather confusing I think, which is why in 4.5 "addition to" has been changed to "Also included").

[petednz]

Thanks JoAnne for clarifying that for everyone especially myself (memo to pete: go to bed earlier)

(EDIT - on earlier versions 'Recipient' was labelled as "Limit Recipients" which made 'limit recipients' + "addition to" more confusing)

This morning I am also struggling to replicate the issue of Manual Recipients not loading after selecting 'choose recipient'

So as an example to add an Admin as a BCC for a Membership reminder: set Recipients to
- Also Include
- Choose recipients
- find names via 'Manual Recipient' autocomplete

But, such a BCC is not possible if you need to 'Limit' Recipients eg to a Group is it?

[joanne]

That is right, you can't do both.

Being able to do both would be a great improvement as there are definitely time you want both.  For example, at the moment the only way to respect "do not email" or "NO BULK EMAIL" for scheduled reminders is to create a smart group that excludes those people and limit recipients to that smart group.  We need to do that for many of our scheduled reminders and so cannot BCC those emails to someone else. 

[mudnik]

I got hit by this bug as well. Reminders got sent out to all contacts. It was a nightmare scenario.

[joanne]

You should upgrade to the latest LTS version 4.4.11.   It includes a bug fix for this issue.

It is always best to upgrade if you can. 

[mudnik]

You should upgrade to the latest LTS version 4.4.11.   It includes a bug fix for this issue.

It is always best to upgrade if you can.

Joanne,

I'm using 4.5.5. There still seems to be some bug.

[joanne]

I suggested the upgrade to 4.4.11 as your profile says you are using 4.4.3. Does that need to be updated?

The issue for the bug that was topic of this post is https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-15500.  It says it was fixed in 4.5.3 and in 4.4.11.

In 4.5.5, if everyone on your database was sent an email when you set Recipients to Also include and didn't nominate a group or add a recipient manually then you should re-open the issue. 

[mudnik]

I'm not very sure why it happened. Even when I set it to "limit to", it was still sent to everyone.

[diegov]

I'm using 4.5.5 and the same problem happened to me, even with the culprit Scheduled reminder disabled, the system gone crazy and start sending a thousand of reminders to myself. So, I gone rechecking each reminder and found that the disabled one was still set to "Also include". After setting it to "Limit to", re-run the job and everything seams to gone right. So, bug should still there.