GiftWorks Email Setup

Send email using GiftWorks

GiftWorks allows you to send email in one of two ways. The first option uses Microsoft Outlook, which previous versions of GiftWorks already supported. The second option is new, and allows you to send email through GiftWorks by configuring standard email settings to use your outgoing email server. This is similar to what you experience when setting up most email clients (like Microsoft Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, Eudora, Pegasus Mail, etc).

Send email using Outlook

Using Outlook, GiftWorks creates an email and transmits that email to Outlook. Outlook is then responsible to send the email to your mail server, which will then deliver the email to your recipients. This option appears to be very fast in GiftWorks because the bulk of the work is done by Outlook. Let's say that it takes 45 seconds to send an email with a large attachment. The time it takes GiftWorks to create the email and transmit it to Outlook might be one second. The time it takes Outlook to send the email would be the remainder of the 45 seconds. Once GiftWorks creates the email and transmits it to Outlook, you can continue to use GiftWorks because its portion of the job has completed.

Figure 1: Sending emails using outlook

Send email using your outgoing email server

Using the outgoing email server option, GiftWorks creates the email as well as sends the email to your outgoing mail server. This eliminates the need for Outlook and allows you to send emails with whatever email server you would like to use. In most cases this option will be configured using the outgoing email server of your internet service provider (ISP). Your ISP can provide the settings necessary to configure GiftWorks, which include the following: email server address, server port, if the server requires Secure Socket Layers or SSL, and if the server requires authentication along with the username and password if necessary.

Figure 2: Sending email using an outside email server

You might also have an internal mail server that is responsible for sending your organization's emails. In the same way, GiftWorks can be configured to use this server. Your organizations technology person will be able to provide the settings necessary to configure GiftWorks, which include the following: email server address, server port, if the server requires Secure Socket Layers or SSL, and if the server requires authentication along with the username and password if necessary.

Figure 3: Sending email using an internal email server

As you can see, there is not much difference between Figure 2 and Figure 3. The main difference is that in Figure 2 GiftWorks is communicating with an email server that is outside of your organization's network and in Figure 3 the email server is inside your organization's network.

What does that mean to you? We can relate this to copying files to different locations. If you copy a large file from one folder on your computer to another folder on your computer it copies very fast since the file is copying from one location on your hard drive to another. This example is similar to the email configuration using Outlook. If you copy a large file from your computer to a different computer or server within your organization, it's still pretty fast, but not as fast as the previous example. This example is similar to the email configuration using your organizations internal email server. If you copy a large file to a website or to a server outside of your organization it will be much slower than the previous two examples. This is because the file is leaving your internal network and going to some external location. This example is similar to the email configuration using an outgoing email server that is not located within your organization (i.e. Internet Service Provider, etc).

Lets relate this to the example provided in the Outlook section using a large attachment. With an internal email server it will be almost as fast as using Outlook. Using an outside email server, it would still take GiftWorks one second to create the email, but it may take up to 45 seconds per recipient to send the email to the configured mail server. GiftWorks will remain on the mailing screen until the email is successfully sent to the mail server.

Other outgoing email server options

If your organization does not have an internal email server or you aren't allowed to or don't want to use the outgoing email server of your internet service provider, there are other options. Some sites allow free use of their email servers with certain restrictions. A few of those options are listed below in no particular order. This information was gathered on September 1^st, 2011 and may be different depending on when you are reading this.

There are also some other options for internal email servers. We would recommend having a technology professional setup and configure these applications.

MailEnable http://www.mailenable.com/standard_edition.asp

Can be used as a full SMTP server or to relay emails to another outgoing email server To configure MailEnable to relay emails through another outgoing email server: Open the MailEnable Administrator and go to Server -> LocalHost -> Connectors -> SMTP (right-click and select properties), click the SmartHost Tab. Set IP/Domain to the email server address, port, and authentication as provided by either the free email server table above or the administrator of the email server you are using. Make sure the Domain Smart Hosting takes priority is checked Mission Research will not be able to help setup MailEnable, so please consult MailEnable documentation/support for detailed configuration steps/questions

Microsoft IIS SMTP See Microsoft documentation for setting up and configuring this product.