Advanced Use

This is about:

Campaigns
Import and export of subscribers
Batch processing at subscribers
Archive and Restore
Delete
Check in

Campaigns

Several newsletters, that are build on one another and/or correlate thematically are called campaigns in BwPostman. Campaigns are used e.g. to launch, relaunch or promote a product or a service and in this case have few to do with a common newsletter, that first of all serves for information. Nevertheless the newsletters belonging to campaigns also are displayed in the list of newsletters. Additionally, newsletters of campaigns you can see in the details of the campaign at the particular tabs.

Campaigns may be used, but it is no must. They only give you the ability to give a structure to your newsletters.

Have I to write how to create or edit a campaign? That happens like all other parts of Joomla!^® or BwPostman.

A campaign at tab Campaign details owns a title, which is mandatory, and a description, which is useful for orientation. A subscriber does not see this description.

Since version 1.2.0 the recipients of a campaign you set here. Therefore below title and description a section exists, at which you may select mailing lists and/or user groups. It is absolutely the same dialogue like at newsletters.

For information there are listed all newsletters of a campaign at the tabs Unsent newsletters and Sent newsletters.

At the tab Campaign permissions the permissions or exactly this campaign may be edited.

Import and Export

BwPostman offers the ability to import subscribers. The accepted formats are XML and CSV. You also are able to export your subscribers. The used formats are XML and CSV as well.

To see how the data looks like in the respective formats, demo data are supplied. You will find them in the admin-folder of the component (<path-to-your-Joomla-installation>/administrator/components/com_bwpostman). They are named import_demo.csv and import_demo.xml.

Import Subscribers

You call the import with the button Import at the toolbar in the sub-menu Subscribers of BwPostman. The button is not visible at test recipients.

First you have to select the format, XML or CSV. Only then the button Browse... will be enabled, with that you can select the file to import. When you import a CSV file, then you have to enter the CSV delimiter as field separator and the CSV text separator and whether the file contains the field names in the headline.

For field separator there are available comma, semicolon, tabulator and space. For text separation you can select no separation, apostrophe and double quote. Text separators are normally not used. For best practise at CSV files you will find a detailed guidance below.

XML files don't need this information naturally.

With the button Further you go to the next view. Here you allocate the data from the file to import (in the right list) to the fields of BwPostman (in the left list). Important here is to match the same order at the left and right. The order of the import fields will be adjusted in the right column. To do so highlight the the name of the data field and click to the button up or down under the select list.

Also data fields, that only exists at one of the select lists, have to be removed. This will be done by selecting the appropriate data field on the list of data fields, multiple selection is possible, and clicking the button Remove below the corresponding select list.

Then you select the mailing lists, to which the subscribers shall be added. Here, too, the mailing lists are divided into three: At the left the mailing lists that are public, in the middle the mailing lists that only can be subscribed by special user groups and in the right the mailing lists that only can be assigned in back-end by the webmaster or a person with appropriate permissions.

Below you set the default email format that will be allocated to the subscriber in case there is no entry in the committed data. Finally you set, whether the subscriber gets an email to confirm the registration (check box not marked) or to confirm the subscriber while importing.

This setting only takes effect, if the data to import contain nothing else. If you exported the subscribers of BwPostman with their state before and now you import these data, this setting takes no effect, the imported state is used.

Since version 3.0.0 of BwPostman there exists a possibility to verify the email addresses. More to find at Configuration → Registration → Verify email address.

The import will be processed by clicking the button Import data.

Hint:

In BwPostman (like Joomla!^®) it is not possible to create one or more subscribers with one and the same email address. But it is possible to create two equal test recipients – one per mail format – and one subscriber with the same mail address.

If the data to import contains one email address multiple times with the same settings (regular subscription, test recipient HTML, test recipient text), then it will be imported only the first set of data of this email address.

If an email address already exists in BwPostman, then all sets of data with this email address will be skipped while importing. In each case of skipping you get a message at end of importing.

Caution:
In countries with mandatory double-opt-in-procedure the handling with automatic confirmation while import possibly is improper! A proper usage may be the import of subscribers from another newsletter system.

Hint:

Mail clients often offers a lot of data fields in their address manager. You principally should restrict the export of the address data to that data fields BwPostman is able to import: last name, first name, mail address and mail format. The field status only concerns the internal state of a subscriber in BwPostman and normally only is of interest while importing data, that were exported form BwPostman prior. Status 1 means the subscriber has confirmed his subscription, 0 is an unconfirmed subscription and status 9 means test recipients.

If it is not possible to restrict the data to export from mail client or other program, then I suggest to export the data to CSV. This file can be cleared out by a program, that can handle CSV files. Well done is this by CALC from the OpenOffice-Series (Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice, …).

Surest strategy to import CSV files

Open your CSV file with OpenOffice. There is a portable version of this program, that only has to be unpacked and called. OpenOffice is a sure candidate for functional CSV files.

Apache OpenOffice (other versions of OpenOffice eventually have different labels) shows a dialogue while opening a CSV file, where you can select character set, with which the file is written, field separator and text separator and more. But OpenOffice recognizes really well, which conditions are set. If you take changes here, then you can examine these changes in the section below. A click to OK opens the file.

Because BwPostman only uses first name, last name, email address, email format and state, you should remove the columns BwPostman don't need. That eases following work. If email format is given, but as text – e.g. HTML/text – then you can enter the values 0 for text and 1 for HTML by Edit → Find & Replace.

Following save the file by Save As as CSV file with UTF-8, field separator (best is semicolon) and text separator double quote. These settings you reach by checking Edit filter settings. OpenOffice asks, whether you want to keep current format – that is CSV – or ODF format. It is imperative to click to Keep Current Format.

Next dialogue is preset with the selections while opening the file. But that settings not always are the best, take care. Ensure the checkbox Quote all text cells is selected.

Now the CSV data are treated in a manner, BwPostman may import.

So far the settings UTF-8, ; and “ did work properly, whilst the data did not come from Excel, because Excel makes a BOM, absolutely unusual, unwanted and hardly to exorcise.

A text separator particularly is important, if spaces and special characters occurs at first name or last name. These characters bring trouble upon import (empty or broken data sets).

It is indeed recommended to use double quote as text separator, because the chance to occur in a name is really little, while a single quote may occur in name affix. Think of names like D'Angelo…

Export Subscribers

Batch Processing at Subscribers

With batch processing at subscribers it is possible to subscribe a further mailing list, to move from one to another mailing list or to unsubscribe from a mailing list multiple subscribers at once. Especially with filter by mailing list this is a very strong tool! Moving only works, if you filter by mailing list. The filtered mailing list is that one, from which the subscribers are taken off.

Batch processing is very simple: Tick the checkbox in front of the subscribers, you want to edit. Then click to the button Batch at the toolbar. A pop-up appears, at which you select the desired mailing list and the action Subscribe, Unsubscribe or Move. A click to Process processes the selected action.

Archive and Restore

Archive is exactly that what the name says: To archive something.

In BwPostman you can archive newsletters as well as subscribers as well as mailing lists and even whole campaigns and templates. All, BwPostman has to deal with, you can archive. And all what is archived, can be restored from the archive. But in the archive you can't change anything except the state of a newsletter.

To archive e.g. a newsletter go to the overview of the newsletters (mostly is wanted to archive sent newsletters), mark the select box it front of the row of one or more newsletter(s) to archive and click in the toolbar at the button Archive. BwPostman shows a confirmation prompt to surely archive the selected newsletters, that you can answer with Ok or Cancel.

For archiving the permission archive is necessary.

For restoring you select the tab newsletter at the archive, select the desired newsletter(s) to restore, and click in toolbar at Restore.

Archiving mailing lists, subscribers, campaigns and templates works the same. At campaigns there is an additional question, whether the newsletters assigned to the campaign shall be archived or restored, too.

For restoring the permissions View archive and Restore are necessary.

Delete

The archive contains an additional function: It is not possible to delete something in the lists of newsletters, subscribers, campaigns, mailing lists and templates. Deleting only is possible in the archive. Here, too: Mark the desired to delete in the appropriate tab at the select box and click on Delete at right top. Here also you have to answer a confirmation prompt. And also an additional question appears at campaigns to delete the assigned newsletters or not, too.

For deletion the permissions View archive and Delete are necessary.

Before deleting You should reflect, if You possibly have obligation for verification or retention and the subscriber may not be deleted finally.

Check-In

The button Check-In you find in each list view of BwPostman. With this button you may check-in entries that are orphaned. You recognise these entries at the lock symbol at the beginning of a row.

Caution:
Not all entries, that show a lock symbol, are orphaned! Rather in the contrary. The lock symbol shows, that an entry is edited. The entry indeed becomes an orphan, if you don't leave editing of the entry by buttons but closing the browser or tab, the browser or pc crashes or something else.

To check-in tick the checkbox with the lock symbol and click to the button Check-In. To check-in you need administration rights.

Infos for BwPostman and Joomla! 4