Mail Merge through Email is a really cool technology. Using Mail Merge you can create the contents any number of different ways. You can do office automation, use third party controls, or even roll your own templates with whatever logic works for your application. The key is that you are using data from your systems to generate the contents of the Email Message and delivery; Perhaps even the subject.
Any number of different triggers to generate the Email are available as well. Perhaps you send Email on a scheduled basis including whatever data is current at the time the Email is generated. Perhaps there are triggers in the data (I’m not talking about SQL Server triggers here) that specify some condition in the data or an even that occurs as a trigger to send the Email.
A common trigger we use as DBAs would be when available disk space falls below a certain percentage or size. Another trigger might be the first day of each month, or any other number of triggers. The point is that the generation and sending of the email is not based on a period of time, or an user action.
Sending Email through your own Business email service may be a cause for concern, depending on how often and how many emails are sent. It is possible that your Email service can be labeled as the source of SPAM and mail routing be denied to your systems, even for emails that are not auto-generated.
What Email tools make sense today, regardless of what Operating System, to handle the different kinds of Email you need to send? Are you using Email distribution software or services? What are some of the big players in this area you like to use? Share your experience and/or preferences here online.
Cheers,
Ben