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Bulk email controls (SMTP)in LabKey

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Bulk email controls (SMTP)in LabKey Nat  2017-03-10 11:49
Status: Closed
 
Hi,
We have run into an issue around sending bulk emails this week where the outbound queue of our SMTP server is *very* slow. Currently at almost 36 hrs after the original announcement was made from LabKey, there are about 1k emails still in outbound queue. The list is slowly shrinking ...

So our user base of emails is now almost 9K in size, so not small anymore but not huge either. Our IT dept recommended we send out bulk emails in 1K batches (5 min apart), or put a 5 sec delay between individual emails ... oye, not getting into manual management of batch emails...

I've pushed on them regarding whether there are controls/adjustibility on the SMTP server to automatically do this and I'm waiting to hear back. They also suggested I contact LabKey as to whether there is any outbound email functionality that is built into this product.

I did search the support base prior to sending this but couldn't find anything related.

Thoughts??

Nat Brace
UW - Skyline
 
 
Jon (LabKey DevOps) responded:  2017-03-10 12:14
Hi Nat,

Unfortunately, we don't have any kind of controls or adjustability within the SMTP mailing portion of LabKey to throttle or control the number of messages that get passed to the designated SMTP server.

What kind of message are you sending out? Is it possible that you could use a separate bulk mailing service in lieu of using LabKey for this specific function?

Regards,

Jon
 
Nat responded:  2017-03-10 13:00
Hi Jon,
Maybe 2-3 times a month, we "spam" our user base with info about upcoming workshops, events, and so forth.

The latest actually was the announcement of our User Group Meeting at a industry convention in Indianapolis in June.

https://skyline.ms/announcements/home/software/Skyline/events/Announcements/thread.view?rowId=29108

This announcement is about the most complex we do all year but even still, I strip out links under our vendor's logos, etc. to make it as tolerable as possible for spam filters.

Yes, we realize there are separate bulk mailing options but that does add complexity to a task that we do fairly routinely.

I'm going down the route of seeing if our IT dept can put some throttles on our underlying SMTP server ... that would perhaps be the easiest and most automatic way, I think.

-- Nat
 
Will Holtz responded:  2017-03-16 17:27
The bulk mailing options might be easier than you think. I currently use sendgrid.com and have been quite happy with them. I just needed to change my SMTP server settings in Labkey to point to the sendgrid.com servers, and it was done. No changes to any workflows. Probably took me about 20 minutes and that was only because I read more documentation than necessary. You also end up getting lots of data on what % of your emails are read/bounce/etc.

-Will
 
Jon (LabKey DevOps) responded:  2017-03-16 18:17
Thanks for the recommendation Will!

Their pricing looks pretty reasonable and flexible too!

https://sendgrid.com/pricing/

Regards,

Jon