Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Access Control up to Field-Level, now possible in iFreeTools CRM & Creator

Until now, iFreeTools CRM and iFreeTools Creator had role based access control alone.

In this mode, users can be associated to a role which can be admin / user / guest and access control can be specified (in Creator, for custom entities) to restrict read / write operations based on these roles. It was not possible to segment records based on departments (Sales / Marketing / Support / etc.,.) or based on territories (typically useful for geographically distributed offices). It was also not possible to have field-level permissions.

Not anymore.. we have now added support for adding authorization profiles to enable defining access control permissions and associating them with user accounts.

Using authorization profiles, you can..
  • allow / block access to specific modules (record types) as a whole,
  • allow / restrict access to specific operations alone, like controlling permission to View, Add, Edit, Delete, Export records or to Send Emails,
  • define scoping criteria to segment the records at operation-level. This scoping criteria can be based on any attribute which contains choice values (which include departments and territories, if you have enabled them) and based on user-reference attributes. One can define criteria to enforce access conditions like “Allow editing of records only if the user is the record owner”,
  • define permissions for access to fields at the operation-level, to enable conditions like “Allow viewing X, Y and Z fields, but restrict editing to X and Y fields alone”.

Sample Walk-through on using the Auth Profiles in iFreeTools

Let us take a sample application and walk-through the steps to enforce authorization rules for that application using this new feature. Our sample app will be a simple help desk application to hold the records for Customers, Solutions & Cases and will have the following authorization requirements..
  • Customer login :
    • Allowed to view available solutions
    • Raise new cases and edit them as required.
    • Edit their own customer record to update contact details (address, phone, etc.,)

  • Support staff login :
    • Allowed to view all solutions, add new solutions and edit the ones for which they are the owner.
    • Allowed to view all cases and edit to update the records to associate relevant solutions.
    • Full access to Customer records.
For our walk-through, we will define 3 record types : Customers, Solutions and Cases.

Note : While there is more to a full-fledged help-desk application than just maintaining the records - like say, notifying the Customer-owner (support staff) when the Customer adds a new Case, notifying the Customer when the support staff responds to cases and escalating to notify the manager when a case has not been closed for long - we will deal with the records part alone for now. We will come back to this walk-through to cover other use-cases when we add support for work-flows and triggers.


Concise representation of the data-model :

Customer (name*, company, $< phoneEmailEtc >, $< contactAddress >, owner, userAccount< User >*)
Solution (question*, answer*~~, owner*, status&)
Case (subject*, type&*, status&*, origin&, priority&, reason&,
reportedBy< Customer >*, reportedByUser< User >*, description~~*, owner, solution< Solution >)
* means the attribute is required
~~ refers to a Text attribute,
& means the attribute has choiceValues
$< phoneEmailEtc > and $ < contactAddress > add multiple attributes
attributeName< ReferenceClass > refers to a reference attribute, owner defaults to < User > reference


Pseudo-code representation of the data-model :

(useful if you want to add Entities and Attributes)

Customer (plural : Customers ) :
String name as Name required
String company as Company
String emailId as "Email Id" {isEmail:True}
String phone as Phone
String mobilePhone as "Mobile Phone"
String homePhone as "Home Phone"
String skypeId as "Skype Id"
String website as Website
String addressLine1 as "Address Line1"
String addressLine2 as "Address Line2"
String city as City
String zipCode as "Zip Code"
String state as State
String country as Country
GeoPoint addressOnMap as "Address on Map"
Reference owner as Owner {refersTo:User}
Reference userAccount as "User Account" required {refersTo:User}

Solution (plural : Solutions ) :
String question as Question required
Text answer as Answer required
Reference owner as Owner required {refersTo:User}
String status as Status {choiceValues:[Draft, Reviewed, Duplicate]}

Case (plural : Cases ) :
String subject as Subject required
String type as Type required {choiceValues: [Problem, Feature Request, Question] }
String status as Status required {choiceValues:[New, On Hold, Escalated, Closed]}
String origin as Origin {choiceValues:[Web, Email, Phone]}
String priority as Priority {choiceValues:[High, Medium, Low]}
String reason as Reason {choiceValues:[User did not attend any training,
Complex functionality, Existing problem,
Instructions not clear, New problem]}
Reference reportedBy as "Reported by" required {refersTo:Customer}
Reference reportedByUser as "Reported by User" required {refersTo:User}
Text description as Description required
Reference owner as Owner {refersTo:User}
Reference solution as Solution {refersTo:Solution}


You need not have to create these entities and attributes manually. Just use the following CSV files to import this data-model directly into iFreeTools Creator..
Once you have imported the Entities and Attributes to iFreeTools Creator, we can now proceed to defining the authorization profiles for the use in this help-desk application.

Note on additional segmentation : When adding/editing entities, you can configure the entities to use additional segmentation based on department and/or territory. You can choose not to segment the records (default option for empty value), or make it optional / required. Making it optional/required will result in a new attribute getting added to the entity, with selection values to choose from for department/territory. You can customize the values for this selection from under Admin > Enum.



This walk-through does not use additional segmentation. But feel free to add/edit entities, to include them if required.


First we will create an authorization profile for customer login. Proceed to Admin > Auth Profiles > Add Auth Profile.

The initial screen for adding the authorization profile will be like given below..


Customers need not have access to the User records, so we will not enable access for those records.

When customers access the Customer records, they should be able to view their own record and can have the facility to update their contact details themselves. The following image shows the authorization configuration for Customer records..



For Solutions, customers can be allowed to view all Solutions which are in Reviewed status. The fields to be made visible can be restricted to Question, Answer and Created On.




With respect to Case records, customers can be allowed to view only the cases reported by them. They can add new Case records and can edit Cases they had reported earlier. They will not have permission to delete or to export them. The following image shows the required auth-profile configuration to achieve the same..



Proceeding to save the Auth Profile, we get to see the following details page..




Similarly we can add an Auth Profile for support-staff, as per the authorization requirements we listed earlier. The details page of the Auth Profile for support-staff is shown below..



That is it, we have completed the Auth Profile configurations. Now you can add or edit users, from under Admin > Users, and associate the Auth Profiles to the User records.

Note: Auth Profiles take effect only for non-admin users, that is users having role as user or guest.


When the user logs-in into the application, the authorization profile we configured and associated with their user-account will take effect automatically.

Hope you like the our new feature. Such fine-grained access control features are part of the “premium” plans in almost all other online CRM apps / online-database-app builders, if at-all available. We at iFreeTools are glad to offer it as part of our free version at iFreeTools CRM and iFreeTools Creator.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Building a Store Locator type Google Maps app over GAE, using iFreeTools

Our free CRM app over Google App Engine and our online database application builder now support geo-location features and integrate well with Google Maps.

For iFreeTools CRM, we have added the geo-location features to all records which have address values. So, you could now store and search for Leads, Contacts, Accounts and Vendors based on geo-location criteria and view them in a map view based on Google Maps.

iFreeTools Creator, which is our online app builder, also supports the geo-location features.

In this blog post, we will walk-through the steps in creating a simple store locator type application using iFreeTools Creator, to showcase the geo-location and Google Maps integration features.

We will also upload a sample CSV file, reusing a CSV file from Google's tutorial on building a similar store locator type app (that tutorial, by the way, details about building such an app using PHP and MySQL).

The overall steps involved are as given below..
  1. Login into iFreeTools Creator.
  2. Edit App Settings to change the time-zone and branding. (optional)
  3. Create Entity (or "table") to represent Stores.
  4. Create Attributes (or "fields"/"columns") for the Entity.
  5. Start using the app.
    1. Uploading data from sample CSV file. (optional)
    2. Create custom views to filter based on geo-location . (optional)

Step 1 : Login into iFreeTools Creator

This is simple. No sign-up forms. Just login using your Google user account or your Google Apps user account into iFreeTools Creator.

Step 2 : Edit App Settings to change the time-zone and branding. (optional)

You can re-brand & customize your app from under Admin > App Settings, providing your time-zone and also change the app names from their defaults. The below image shows the changes I have made : choosing PST8PDT as the time-zone and changing the app name to Store Locator.


Step 3 : Create Entity (or "table") to represent Stores

Proceed to Admin > Entities > Add Entity and provide details of the entity which will hold our data. Let us call the entity Restaurant..


Step 4 : Create Attributes (or "fields"/"columns") for the Entity

Once you add the entity, you can then add the attributes for that entity - either from the Entity details page, which you get after completing step 3 or from Admin > Attributes > More Actions > Add multiple Attributes to add them in one shot. For our demo we will use 3 attributes Name, Address and Address on Map, the first 2 being string (or text input fields) while the 3rd is a GeoPoint, which enables us to refer to a specific location on a map and store that value in the database..
The Property Index helps in specifying the order of the attributes. Name comes first, followed by Address and 3rd is Address on Map.

Step 5 : Start using the app

That is it !!
You could just start using the app, adding restaurant entries using the automatically generated form, as shown below..


Step 5.1 : Uploading data from sample CSV file. (optional)

We will now try to upload a sample CSV file. Save this sample CSV file to your disk and edit it to add the column headers, which for this CSV file are..
Name,Address,Latitude,Longitude


Now proceed to import this CSV file from Restaurants > More Actions > Import from CSV and provide the CSV file and proceed to mapping of fields. The initial mapping will be something like given below..


Now provide the mapping for the latitude and longitude, with both being mapped to Address on Map attribute..


The reverse mapping shows that both the latitude and longitude fields will be combined together for the geo-location value to be stored in Address on Map attribute..


Proceed to import all data into the database. The resulting list view after upload will be like given below..


And the map view (when you click on the View Map link below the table list) will be like given below..


Step 5.2 : Create custom views to filter based on geo-location . (optional)

You can also create multiple custom views to filter data based on nearness criteria.

For example, following are the entries to create a custom view to find stores near Miami Beach, Florida..
One can provide an approximate address and automatically have the marker placed in that location. Also notice that I have modified the columns that are to be displayed in the list view.

After saving the view, the resultant list view will be something like given below, with the records sorted based on the nearness to the location we specified when creating the custom view (that is, near Miami Beach, Florida)..


And the corresponding map view will be like the one given below..


You can also do a quick search without having to create a custom views, by following the links from the details page, to find other records near a particular location.

Hope you like the new geo-location and Google Maps integration features. Do let us know your feedback.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Custom Views now support Template Criteria for User References and Date/DateTime fields

There are some pre-created views in iFreeTools CRM like My Open Leads, My Open Cases and My Pending Tasks which lists the records, based on the user who is currently logged-in and accessing the application, showing only the records owned by them in that view.

While one can created Custom Views providing specific user references, there was no way to create a view with such dynamic values referring to the currently logged-in user.

Similarly, while there are pre-created views like Due Today, Due Tomorrow (in Tasks module), which lists the records based on the when the view is getting accessed. Until now, it was not possible to create such views using the Custom Views in iFreeTools.

But now, we have now added support for using dynamic filtering criteria values in Custom Views, for User reference attributes and date, date-time attributes.

Dynamic User-reference values in Custom Views

While you still have options to choose specific user references, when adding Custom Views, you are now provided with an option to choose dynamic values, as shown in the image below..


Choosing the option adds the criteria as a template value - ${user}, referring to the currently logged in user..


This template criteria value will be replaced dynamically, when users access the Custom View.

Dynamic filtering for Date, DateTime fields using Custom Views

Until now we did not support date and date-time fields in Custom Views. This was due to certain limitations in the querying capabilities of Google App Engine. While the limitations remain, we have overcome them to enable you to create Custom Views providing dynamic criteria values for date, date-time fields.

You can now filter out records using on the following dynamic criteria values..
${today}, ${tomorrow},
${this_week}, ${last_week}, ${next_week},
${this_month}, ${last_month}, ${next_month},
${this_year}, ${last_year}, ${next_year}

as shown in the image below..

Here again, the template criteria value will be replaced dynamically, when users access the Custom View.

This date/date-time filtering feature in Custom Views internally uses indexes for querying the data. These indexes for database records are something like an index in books, helping you find the required records.

While new data will be automatically indexed, existing data has to be updated at least once, so that the records can be indexed automatically.

One can trigger indexing from the list views by selecting one or more records and then clicking on More Actions > Re-Index.

Hope you like the new template-criteria based Custom Views.

There are no upper limits on the number of Custom Views one can add to our GAE(Google App Engine)-hosted Free CRM for Google Apps and to our GAE-hosted Online Database App Builder. So, feel free to add as many views as you would like and do send in your suggestions on how you think the apps can be enhanced to make it even more useful.

Would you like to have iFreeTools deployed onto your Google App Engine account? Yes, we offer custom deployment options, starting at $99/year for upto 25 users, enabling you to use the free quota (1 GB of storage and 2000 emails/day) offered by Google and to buy more resources as per requirements, directly from Google. Contact raj@sahasvat.com for more details.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Easy bulk addition of database records in iFreeTools CRM & Creator

Apart from the existing support for importing data in bulk using CSV files, we have now enabled support for bulk-addition of database records directly within our online apps.

From the list views (under More Actions) and from the details views (for adding Related Records), you will now find an option to add multiple entries of the records. Using this you can easily enter details for multiple database records in a single page and then save them all at once.

The form for adding multiple entries will be like the one given below..



In the above screen capture, multiple tasks are being added for a lead. By default the attributes which are marked as requiring a value along with a few other attributes are made visible in the form. One can change the attributes listed in the form by clicking on the Show/Hide Attributes link on the top-right.

When adding new rows, the values from the first row will be copied. So you can set the defaults in the first row and then have them copied to the new entries. You may also remove entries from the form, before you save them to database.

Once the details are added to the database, you can return back to the page from where you came to this form and see the records you had just added.

This feature is available in both the Free CRM for Google Apps and the Free Online Database Builder for Google Apps.

Hope you like our new feature. Feel free to send in your suggestions.

Private deployment of iFreeTools into your own Google App Engine account starts at $99/year for upto 25 users. For unlimited users it is just $299/year. Additional customizations are optional and are billed at Indian rates. If you are interested in such a private deployment, contact raj@sahasvat.com.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Image fields now supported in the Free Online Database builder for Google Apps

We have now added support for defining and using Image fields in iFreeTools. This has been enabled for the Products database in iFreeTools CRM and can also be used for your custom online databases, using iFreeTools Creator.

A sample view of such a database listing is given below in a snapshot of a Travel Desk application built using iFreeTools Creator. The thumbnails of the images are listed in this table view..


When you proceed to the individual record's details page, you can see a bigger image..


When adding/editing records, you have options to either upload a new image or using an already uploaded image from the database of uploaded files. The options available for editing the image fields are show in this below image..


All uploaded files can be managed easily from Back-end Data > Uploaded Files, where CSV files used in importing data are also listed..


You could rename the files and change the descriptions or even, download the file from the details page..


When adding/editing the attribute you could specify the maximum file size for the image. For free versions the options available are 10, 25, 50 and 75 (all sizes in KB). If the uploaded image is of bigger size, the app will try to resize and reduce the file size to confirm to your settings..


You can go in for bigger image sizes when we open up our paid plans or if you go in for our custom deployment options, which enables you to use the 1 GB free quota from Google and to purchase additional resources directly from Google at $0.15/GB/month.

The rates for custom deployments start at $99/year (works out to $8.25/month) for upto 25 users (or $0.33/user/month). For unlimited users, it is just $299/year.

Hope you like our new feature. Do feel free to send in your suggestions using the feedback form in our apps or directly via mail to raj@sahasvat.com

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Importing Google Contacts into CRM database is now supported

We have now added support in the CRM for Google Apps - iFreeTools CRM, to directly importing Contact entries from your Google Contacts into your CRM database.

In all contacts list views, you will now have an option to "Import from Google Contacts". Clicking on this, Google will prompt you to ask if iFreeTools CRM can be allowed access to your Google Contacts. Once you provide access, you will be redirected to your list of contacts from Google Contacts, from which you could selectively mark and import into your CRM database.

You will have options to list contacts based on Contacts Groups you had assigned in Google Contacts, change the sort order (by default the latest updated entries are listed on top) and the page-size (default : 50).

If a contact is already found in the CRM database, it will be skipped during add. But you could change this behavior to either add a duplicate record or to over-write the existing record with values from Google Contacts.

The following snapshot shows the options available during import. Here "random" is one of my Google Contacts groups.


You can also preview the details of the contact, before you mark it for import. The following snapshot shows such a preview of one of the contacts..


After marking the entries you want to be added to the CRM database, you could then click on "Add Contacts". This will add the marked entries in batches, displaying you the status of the progress.

Once added, you could view these contacts in the CRM database. Apart from the standard details, additional details will be added to the Contact record's Notes attribute. Snapshot of a sample record imported from Google Contacts is given below..


By default, the user who imports the entries will be set as owner for those records. You could use the bulk-edit feature to change values as required.

Hope you find our new feature useful. Keep sending in your suggestions on how you think we can make things better & easier for you.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Import Field Mapping now available in iFreeTools CRM / Creator

iFreeTools CRM - the free CRM built over Google App Engine, for use with Google Apps - now supports import field mapping.

Now you can map fields from CSV files imported from other sources by providing the field mapping in an easy to use interface, instead of having to manually mapping them in the CSV file. The source can be address book from Outlook or from Google Contacts exported as CSV, or even from your old CRM/database system.

Such field mapping can be saved and reused multiple times.

To enable this mapping, the import process will now contain 2 steps. First one will be similar to the one which we had earlier, where you could provide the CSV file to be imported..


The next step will be to provide the mapping. By default, the app will try to match the fields in the CSV with the property in iFreeTools record. The unmapped fields will be highlighted as shown below..



You may now provide the mapping for all fields which you want to import into iFreeTools. You could even map multiple fields from CSV to a single field in iFreeTools. The multiple values will be joined together and stored in the property.


You can view the reverse mapping to see if you have covered all important mapping.


In CRM, if the records require an "owner" property, it will be set to the user who performs the import operation. You could later use the Bulk Edit feature to reassign owners as required.

You could also provide a name for the import field mapping, so that you could just select it from the selection box the next time you need to import a similar CSV file.

This feature is also available for custom database apps created using iFreeTools Creator.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Support for Time Zone, Customizable Home Page and List View Settings, Printable Reports and more..

At iFreeTools, we prioritize our features by listening to our users. Over the past couple of weeks, we have been adding the following features to iFreeTools, based on suggestions from our users..
  • Support for Time Zones
  • Customizable Home Page
  • Support for viewing additional attributes from referenced parent records, in child record's list views.
  • Customizable View Settings (Columns to View, Page Size, etc.,)
  • Printable Reports (List & Chart Views)
  • Pop-up selection for reference values.
  • Option to hide Created On, Updated On and Notes in custom Entities.

Details of the new features are given below :

Support for Time Zones

Until now, we had been displaying date-time values in UTC. Now, users can choose to display the date-time values in their time-zone. Just select the required time-zone value in Admin > App Settings and have it reflected in all views.


Customizable Home Page

You can now configure the home page contents (apart from just the About page, until now), from Admin > App Settings. This will be used as the content of your home page when accessing from your domain.

Within the home page contents, you may use BBCode for safe-rendering of HTML content. The supported BBCode tags you may use are : b, i, u, s, link, img, list with *, size, color and center.

Such a sample content provided in the App Settings is shown below.


The resulting page when accessed via the configured domain is shown below.

Live link of that sample home page : http://acme.sahasvat.com

Support for viewing additional attributes from referenced parent records, in child record's list views

It is typical requirement to view a parent record's attributes along with the child record's attributes in list views - for example, attributes from Account records (parent) shown along with Contact records (child).

Earlier we only had a link to the Account record details; but now, you can view values from the Account record right in the list of Contact records.

When creating or editing Custom Views, you can select the attributes you want to be displayed and it will get shown in the client.

[Screen-shot of this feature, shown along with next feature]

Customizable View Settings (Columns to View, Page Size, etc.,)

Apart from including the parent attributes in the list views of client (previous item), you can also specify the columns you want to make visible from the client's attributes. Other attributes will still be loaded in the client, but will not be visible. They can be toggled for visibility from Instant Details, as was possible earlier.

You can also specify the page-size and optionally disable the Instant Details and search-while-typing features. This can be configured at a Custom View level or at the app level from Admin > App Settings.

The following image shows the new features of selecting additional attributes from referenced parent records and customizable view settings..


Printable Reports (List & Chart Views)

Now all list views and chart views have an option to have a printable view. This view will be without the header, side-bars, footers and advertisements.

This feature is accessible from under Options in the list views and as a top-level button in chart views.

Pop-up selection for reference values.

Until now the reference value selection was possible only from select boxes. While this is fine if the number of values is less, this can be difficult to use in case there are more options from which to choose from.

From now on, if the options are more than 20, iFreeTools will automatically provide a pop-up option to choose the reference value. This option will enable selection from a list view, where you can sort and search the records and then select the required record instance for reference.

Option to hide Created On, Updated On and Notes in custom Entities.

This feature is applicable for iFreeTools Creator - which allows creating custom entities. You may now opt to *hide* the default attributes added to an custom entity, which are date-time stamps for Created On and Updated On and the text attribute Notes.

This only hides the attributes and can be re-enabled back again at any time.

--

By choosing to use our products, you show your commitment to us. Our way of thanking you for this, is to listen to your feedback and acting on it, so as to help you use our tools better.

Keep sending in your suggestions.

Monday, May 31, 2010

iFreeTools now opens up for all Google Apps User Accounts

iFreeTools CRM - our free CRM built over Google App Engine and iFreeTools Creator - our free online database application builder, which were - until now - open only to users with Google Accounts, have now been opened up to allow all Google Apps users directly.

Thanks to adopting new features enabled recently by Google, for its Google App Engine platform, Google Apps users need not look for work-arounds and request separate deployments to use iFreeTools.

Users can also continue to login with Google Accounts, as before.

Once user has logged in using either Google Accounts or Google Apps User Accounts, our app will check for the email-id of the logged-in user to identify the user and to authorize operations. We also plan to enable full OpenID support, very soon.

What was until now just "CRM for Google App Engine" is now happy to call itself the "CRM for Google Apps, built over Google App Engine".

Hope you find our new feature useful. Feel free to check out our apps and send in your feedback.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Feature Preview : Email Templates and Bulk Emails

We are now working on have rolled in a new feature for iFreeTools, which is Email Templates and Bulk Emails.

Email Templates enable you to automate mailing work by allowing you to define templates, which can include fields from the records and then to send out mails with their values replaced (mail-merge).

This new feature will now be supported for records which have an Email attribute.

For iFreeTools CRM, this will include Lead, Contact, Vendor and Case records.

And, for iFreeTools Creator - where one can create their own custom database application online - String attributes can now be marked as email and will automatically get this feature enabled for those Entities.

The following screen-shot image shows Owner's Email ID property, from the sample app used in our walk-through for using iFreeTools Creator, being marked as an Email Property. The transform function is also used to trim the values to remove spaces and convert it to lower-case.

Similarly, we can also mark the Tenant's Email ID property.

Once this is marked, a new action button will become available in the list views. For the CRM app, as mentioned earlier, this has been pre-configured for Leads, Contacts, Vendors and Cases.

In the above view, the option is disabled, because no records have been selected.

Let us select a few records to proceed to check out how this feature would work. Shown below are 3 record selected before triggering Send Email


The default view will be as given below. Since this is a preview release of the feature, the message on the top informs you that Notification Tasks will alone be added in Preview status - which means actual emails will not be sent, for now.

You will have an option to just send an email once or to save the template providing the name, description, type of email and sharing options. Admin users can create templates for themselves or for all users, like it is possible with our Custom Views and Custom Actions.

We will now proceed to create a Welcome Email template, and make it available for all users. One can include fields from the records, which are listed on the left on the content box and can be clicked to be inserted into the contents. You can also use BBCode. The supported BBCode tags are : b, i, u, s (strike), url, quote, img, list with *, size, color, center, code and p.

Fields are supported within mail subject too, as shown in the screen-shot below..


Proceeding to send email, you will see a page as shown below. Notice the message on the top, that the email template has been added. The notification tasks will be added sequentially for each of the record instances.


Let us now check for the results.

Clicking on the Notification Templates, we find the template listed..


Proceeding to the Notification Tasks view, we find 3 records present with status as Preview. Also notice how the values have been replaced with actual values from Owner records.


And, this is one of the Notification Task's details view..


Notice that I had done a mistake in my template code by providing HTML instead of BBCode for the content "Personal Executive" - happens when switching between writing a blog post and the app, taking screen shots :-). Anyway, we can edit the template to correct this, which we will be doing now while explaining another important feature, which is Automatic Dupe Detection for Bulk-Emails.

To explain how Automatic Dupe Detection for Bulk-Emails works, we will again trigger the Send Email from the Owners list view with all the records selected and proceed to the email-template view as given below. Now, select the template from the selection box and click on Modify and Save options next to that box. Edit the content as required and then proceed.


In the subsequent page, we will see the results for the notification tasks being added, as shown below. The engine will detect dupe emails based on the notification identifier, which for now is taken to be the subject of the email. So, notification tasks will be added only for those records which have not already been mailed with the same subject.


This is a preview release of the Email Templates and Bulk Emails feature. When this is fully enabled, the tasks would have triggered emails and end up with status as Executed.

(Update : Bulk emails feature has been fully enabled for all paid, single-tenant deployments.)

For each of the notified users, a record will be added in Notified Users, under Admin. This will be used to enable users to opt-out of notifications, if they prefer to do so - confirming to CAN-SPAM regulations for Promotional emails.

We plan to integrate with SMS gateways too, which will follow the similar flow, except that the Subject will be ignored and the Content will have to be short.

(Update : Bulk SMS from your online database has also been enabled, by integrating iFreeTools with Twilio.)

Play around with our iFreeTools and let us know your feedback on how we can make things better.