Using a contact list to send a mailing

[VitorFF]

Hello guys!

I'm developing a custom feature where we want to let our users send mailing via our custom dashboard. They can use our custom search feature to create a contact list to send a mailing.

For what I could tell the mailing feature requires a group to send a mailing. Will I have to create a hidden group like it is done to send a mailing via the search on civi or is there a way of send a contact list (a bunch of civi IDs) and that process is done automatically?
Do the contacts I want to mail have to be present on the Unsubscribe group beforehand?

Also, if I choose to track replies where can I see the reply content (the message itself) on Civi? Does it actually save the message or just saves that a reply as been sent?

Thank for your time!
VitorFF

[petednz]

If there are any major obstacles to what you are doing i would flag that another option might be to use Drupal Views Bulk Operations (VBO) with civicrm entities modules so that users have a search interface and selector they can then use to set up a mail out. There will be some steps missing that need developing but it could be a good Plan B ;-)

[totten]

Yes, CiviMail does require a group -- so if you want to take an adhoc selection contacts then schedule+track the blast, it needs a hidden group.

The contacts do not need to be in the unsubscribe group beforehand. (Or if they do, it's magic, because I refactored that code and didn't see anything which put them into the subscribe group. )

[VitorFF]

Wow guys, thanks a lot for your help!

I think I will create a hidden group and use it. Also create a base group to use as an unsubscribe group for all the hidden groups the code will create.

Thanks guys!

VitorFF

[Erich Schulz]

I have pretty much the same need. It would be great to be able to skip the group stage.

[VitorFF]

I still haven't finished working on this but the way I did it for our custom needs is to create a hidden group and set a default unsubscription group.

Also you can see how the hidden group is created here CRM/Mailing/Form/Group.php postProcess() line 337 (version 4.4.11)

[Erich Schulz]

An example snippet would be great!