Overview
FileMaker comes with inbuilt capability to send email. Music Monitor builds on that to provide options for generating blank emails as well as mail merged emails to individuals or batches of contacts.
How Email Works in Music Monitor
There are three options for how email can be handled in Music Monitor. The default behaviour does not require any additional setup. The other two need your IT department to supply some information and enable them.
Option 1: Default Email Behaviour
If you have not set up any other options, when you trigger an email from Music Monitor it will simply send an instruction to your computer to create a draft email with some given inputs in the To: field, the Subject: field, and the Body: field.
Your computer will open the application that is set up as the default application for handling email and will create the draft email with the given inputs. You can then edit as needed and send.
Option 2: OAuth 2.0
With this enabled, the email that is generated bypasses your local computer altogether, and goes directly to the mail server. Music Monitor can connect to Outlook or Gmail in this way.
Option 3: SMTP
This is an outdated option, which is still enabled for people already using it but is not recommended to anyone considering what system to set up for future use.
Pros and Cons
Note first that FileMaker is not capable of sending html or most kinds of text formatting to email. The text that comes into the email will arrive as plain text.
With this in mind, if you want to add formatting to your emails (e.g. bold, underline, varied text sizes and fontfaces, etc.) your only option is to use the default behaviour and add the formatting in your email client before sending.
However, OAuth is preferable in every other way:
It is faster at the user end, as it does not require the local computer to process the emails.
It saves you from having to click "Send" on every email in a batch of mail merged emails.
It allows you to ensure that all emails are coming from the account you specify (preventing music teachers from accidentally emailing students from their personal accounts).
It allows you to use HTML signatures, as these are managed in the account and not added by FileMaker.
The one additional note is that Outlook users who have Classic Outlook installed and use OAuth will never see the sent messages in your Sent folder. They are on the server, they are visible in the webmail, and they are visible in the New Outlook, but Classic Outlook does not retrieve sent mail from the server onto the local client.
(Gmail is solely webmail so this issue doesn't come up for Gmail users.)
Generate an Email to One or More People
When you have a person's file open, for example a student, a staff member or other contact, or a debtor, you will see a Mail icon in the top bar.
If you select the icon, you will see a number of email options.
Email selected student - This will generate one email, to the student email address, and will BCC the primary contact email.
Email found set - This will email all of the people in the list you are currently viewing. You will be asked whether to email the parent, the student, or both, and then an email will open with all the selected email addresses in the BCC field.
Copy/paste email - This will not generate an email, but will just display all the email addresses for you to copy for use elsewhere.
You will also see this icon in the Student Activity files, such as Ensemble Enrolments, Tuition, Workshops, etc., so you can email an individual or found set of students from those screens.
Teacher Guide
On your home screen, select Students.
Select the Email All button to email all your students.
To email an individual student from the list of your students, select the student to see their contact details.
Select the Mail icon to email this one student on the address shown.
Alternatively, tag selected students and select the Email All Tagged button to email those students.
See also Access Student Details.
Template Letters and Mail Merge
Music Monitor has several scripts that generate batches of emails with merged information from fields in your data, and/or custom attachments. Examples include:
Enrolment Letters - emails students and merges in student name, subject, teacher and teacher contact details.
Absentee Letters - emails parents and merges in the details of missed lessons.
Re-enrolment Letters - emails parents and merges in details of student's current enrolments and instrument hire.
Exam Approval Emails - emails parents and merges in details of exams for which the student will be entered if approved.
Email Student Schedules - emails the parents, CCs the students, and attaches the week's schedule as a PDF.
Email Weekly Schedule to Teachers - emails the teachers and attaches their weekly schedule as a PDF.
Produce and Send Customer Invoices - emails the debtors and attaches the selected invoice as a PDF.
Note that due to limitations in the capability of FileMaker, the body of the email will be carried across as plain text, and most formatting you do in the Music Monitor window will not be reflected in the email.
Send SMS
To send SMS via Music Monitor, you need to have an SMS system that will generate outgoing messages in response to emails.
Setup
SMS by Email generally works by sending an email to an address in the format
[phone-number][@SMS-Gateway].
For example, [email protected]
You need to enter the SMS Gateway, which is the part from the "@" onwards, in Settings > General Settings > Organisation > SMS Gateway.
Send SMS
When you select the Mail icon and Send SMS to found set, Music Monitor will use the mobile numbers in your files to generate an email in the required format to trigger your SMS system to send those messages.
Export Numbers for Use Elsewhere
You can see above that there is an option to Copy/paste SMS from that Mail menu as well.
That allows you to use the numbers in another system in a more customised way, if directly generating the messages out of Music Monitor isn't right for what you're trying to achieve.