OutreachSystems

WebCATS features a mass e-mail generation capability, which lets you send an e-mail to an unlimited number of recipients. Most university and government e-mail systems, on the other hand, limit the number of recipients that can be included in an e-mail message in order to prevent spammers from abusing their mail servers. Since WebCATS doesn't place such limits on its e-mail feature, it is highly desireable to use for marketing purposes.

However, while WebCATS doesn't limit the number of recipients, it cannot allow unlimited size messages to be sent. Rather than limiting the number of recipients, WebCATS instead prevents the user from including attachments in an effort to keep the message size reasonable. If you need to send an attachment to a grouping of client or contact e-mail addressess, there are two easy workarounds:

1. You can use the WebCATS' e-mail feature to generate a listing of all recipient e-mail addresses (as discussed in detail in the FAQ titled How do I e-mail many clients or contacts at once (i.e. send a mass e-mail)?) and then copy and paste those addresses from the Bcc field into an external e-mail application such as Microsoft Outlook.
2. Altnatively, and generally speaking preferred, you can post the attachment to eCenter and then include a link to the attachment in your e-mail message. Not only does this allow you to use the WebCATS mail server to e-mail to an unlimited number of recipients, it also doesn't bog down the recipients' mail servers. Clients generally do not appreciate getting 10MB attachments in their e-mail applications and much prefer to download these attachments from a web site.

How do I post an attachment to eCenter?

In order to post general attachments to eCenter you will need to have permissions to edit the center record. Assuming you can edit your center record then follow these steps:

1. Click View/Centers
2. Click on your center name (not the ID)
3. Click on the Attachments tab
4. Click Add and choose the file you want to upload
5. Enter an optional description and then choose "Available to public users of eCenter" from the "eCenter Availability" drop down choice.

Once you have attached your document using the above instructions, go to your eCenter Direct site and you will notice the ?Library of Documents? menu option in the left hand margin. To view the document that you just posted, click on the menu item. From the list of documents right click on the blue document TITLE and select the copy link address option. You can then paste that URL into your email template in WebCATS.

Want more? Browse our extensive list of WebCATS FAQs.