Changes to Mass Email from the ACS People Suite in Ondemand

ACS has updated the mass email tool in Ondemand ACS People due to a change in the way that a number of email hosting companies handle email authentication.  It boils down to if the from address is different than the server sending the email, the mail will not be delivered to many services (aol mail , yahoo mail , gmail, ect)

We are no longer using the smtp server of 10.99.1.41 in Ondemand, instead it will be shown as "OnDemand E-mail Server.  These changes have taken place for when you are sending a mass email, emailing a report or on an individual’s profile and sending from there (Use SMTP has to be checked on the Contact Information tab).

Look at the screenshot below, you will see a few new fields and an old field has been removed. Now when a someone receives an email sent from the ACS Technologies server, it show as being sent from notifications@ondemandmail.com (can be seen in the screen further down).

Reply To:

Since the emails are now getting delivered from notifications@ondemandmail.com, recipients wouldn’t be able to reply to that email address and actually get a response from anyone at the church. This Reply To field will allow the clients to choose where the reply emails go. This is a required field and must be filled in with an email address. If they try to use their name in this field, it will appear to send out successfully but no one will receive the email.

Name

This is the display name that will show on the email. Since, no one will know the email address of notifications@ondemandmail.com, this Name field will allow for the recipient to see who sent the email. In the church’s case for their newsletter, they could even use the Church’s Name here and it will appear as such.

 Senders are still able to enter their own SMTP settings by selecting Email Accounts and then Manage Email Accounts… You will not see the “OnDemand E-mail Server” in the list but you will see it in the dropdown after selecting E-mail Accounts for them to use.