Using 'rules' to send mailings automatically

[mathieu]

I'm new to the "rules" modules and recently used it create Drupal accounts automatically, following petednz's great blog post. Now I want to use 'rules' everywhere ;-)

I was wondering if there is a way to send a CiviMail mailing automatically when a new node is published in Drupal?

For example:

- A new (drupal) event/node is posted in the calendar, and we want all users to be notified immediately (as well as track clicks, bounces, etc).
- Automate the mailing of a newsletter: publish the node in Drupal, and it automatically triggers the mailing (well, ideally, in 'planned' status, waiting for review).

Is it already possible? If not, I would be interested to implement it.

- new civicrm_rules_civimail module?
- in the rules config, let the user select a mailing title, include group(s), subject, body, header/footer, send now (or not).

For what it's worth, I also evaluated the following alternatives:

- The 'notification' module in Drupal is abandoned, and 'subscription' only allows to subscribe to a specific node(?). In any case, the UI is kind of terrible, and I want to manage subscriptions in CiviCRM.
- There are ways to send notifications using rules and views_rule (to fetch the list of recipients, which can be fetched from CiviCRM). It's interesting, but being able to use CiviCRM for sending mails and tracking stats seems way more interesting.

If I'm missing anything obvious, please let me know :-)

Mathieu

[Erik Hommel]

would be interesting, check our aim with the CiviRules extension that we will begin (and hopefully finish if we get enough funding) to develop this year:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviRules+extension

[mathieu]

Very cool initiative! By "this year", do you mean by the end of 2015? or CiviCRM 4.6/4.7? :-)

[Erik Hommel]

We mean the end of 2015....we have enough funding to make a start.

[linkx]

Hey @mathieu I want to do exactly what you explain in your OP. Did you get this working? Have you looked at the "CiviCRM Mailing: Send Email" action provided by CiviCRM Rules Integration?

[mathieu]

Haven't looked into it yet. It was not a big priority for my client.

I had forgotten about the rules integration specific to civimail (probably for the civimail workflow features), it should help indeed (and worst case, the CiviMail API is pretty good). If you have any questions implementing it, feel free to ask here, and I can review/test if it can help.

[Erik Hommel]

The development of the basic CiviRules extension has continued. We are testing and implementing in the coming months. The extension code can be found at https://github.com/CiviCooP/org.civicoop.civirules. Documentation at http://redmine.civicoop.org/projects/civirules/wiki and there is a demo possibility at https://civirules.edeveloper.nl/

[mathieu]

The civirules demo looks very promising. Cool to see a demo already online. This will be a great improvement for CiviCRM.

Since the forum has been set read-only (topics of this specific sub-forum have been moved to civicrm.stackexchanged.com), lynx sent me a link to his module that was published here: https://github.com/LunkRat/civimail_tools

At the moment, this addresses a Drupal-specific gap currently not covered by civirules, so its worth checking it out.

Mathieu