MMC Mailing List

A DETAILED FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATION OF THE MAILING LIST PROGRAM AS OF 12/16/2000

The program named 'mlist' is written in FoxPro for Unix and runs on an SCO Unix operating system at MMC. The program source can be found in this directory:

/v/mlist

While the source has not been changed substantially for several months/years there is no guarantee that it will stay constant as various needs may arise until it is redesigned, rewritten and can gladly retire.

The mailing list program keeps track of names and addresses for those people interested in the activities at MMC.

PEOPLE

Each person has these attributes:

FIELD NAME COMMENT

NAME_LAST Last Name

NAME_FIRST First Name

NAME_SANS Sanskrit Name

NAME_PREF Preferred method of displaying the name

ADDR_1 Address Line 1

ADDR_2 Address Line 2

CITY City

STATE State

ZIP Zip

TEL_HM Home Phone

TEL_WK Work Phone

FAX Fax

EMAIL Email Address

AFFIL Affiliations

DATE_ENTRD Date originally entered*

DATE_UPDAT Date last modified*

DATE_HF Date when Hanuman Fellowship membership expires

DATE_PATH Date when Pathways subscription expires

DATE_LM Date of Land Membership

COMMENT Comment containing name of the last program attended*

FIELD NAME	COMMENT
NAME_LAST	Last Name
NAME_FIRST	First Name
NAME_SANS	Sanskrit Name
NAME_PREF	Preferred method of displaying the name
ADDR_1	Address Line 1
ADDR_2	Address Line 2
CITY	City
STATE	State
ZIP	Zip
TEL_HM	Home Phone
TEL_WK	Work Phone
FAX	Fax
EMAIL	Email Address
AFFIL	Affiliations
DATE_ENTRD	Date originally entered*
DATE_UPDAT	Date last modified*
DATE_HF	Date when Hanuman Fellowship membership expires
DATE_PATH	Date when Pathways subscription expires
DATE_LM	Date of Land Membership
COMMENT	Comment containing name of the last program attended*

This metadata also kept:

ID Unique Id*

ID_SPS Id of Spouse (if partnered)*

AKEY Address Key*

Items above ending with a * are automatically maintained by the program. The user cannot modify them directly.

There are commands for Adding, Editing, and Deleting these records.

When adding a record, a check is made for a duplicate record (meaning identical First and Last names). The user is asked whether they do indeed want to add it. This is used to minimize duplicates and hence postage costs.

PREFERED NAME DISPLAY

Each person has choice of how they want their name displayed for purposes of mailing labels or other lists:

First Last (default)
Sanskrit Last
First Sanskrit Last
Sanskrit First Last
Sanskrit
Last First Sanskrit (without trimming trailing blanks)
This last one is used for long business names that do not fit into the normal "person name" format.

ADDRESS KEY

The address key is computed from the address and zip code and is used for helping with unduplication of the records - important for reducing postage costs. It is computed like so: All digits are extracted from the two address fields and then the zip code and the first alphabetic letter in the first address field are appended.

341 Main St.
Suite #405
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

This would give an address key of:

34140595060M

AFFILATIONS

Affiliations are single letter codes with associated descriptions. They are maintained in a separate table. The 'Affiliation' field in a People record consists of an unordered sequence of these single letter codes. Like so:

At53F

The letters could have these descriptive meanings:

A Sri Ram

t Phone Tree

5 Yoga

3 Art Displays

F Jewish

In addition to displaying the sequence of single letter codes, the affiliation descriptions are displayed on the screen much as it looks above.

Affiliations are used to make lists of selected groups.

There is a command to delete a given affiliation from all records. More generally, one can change all occurences of an affiliation to another single letter code.

STEP THROUGH, SEARCH AND SORT

The People records can be sorted in these manners:

Name (Last, First)
Sanskrit
Zip Code
Home Phone Number
Address (sorted on the Address Key)

Records can also be searched for by looking for a prefix of these fields. For example, when the records are sorted by Name you can find a person whose name begins with "STO". All such names are presented in a list from which you can choose one of them and be brought to the full record of that person.

There are commands for going to the Next and Previous records according to the current sort order.

PARTNERS

There is a command available to link two people together. The two people can be already present in the list. After partnering there is a way to jump quickly to the partner. There is also a way to separate partners.

You can also add a new person record as the partner of the current record. When doing this all fields default to those of the current record except the first name.

Each person in a partnership has their own preferred display name. When a label is generated for the couple it is composed of their individual display names separated by an '&'.

SPECIAL LISTS

Several listings are produced of the people in the database. The listings can be displayed on the screen, sent to a printer or redirected into a text file.

Phone List
A list is made of everyone satisfying these criteria:
- a non blank Sanskrit name
- 'f' in the Affiliation field
- either a home or a work phone number
The list is presented in tabular form in Sanskrit Name order. There are columns for Name, Home phone, Work phone, and Address (including City, State, Zip).
At the top of this list appear 3 columns of the names of the 'residents' of MMC. They satisfy these criteria:
- a non blank Sanskrit name
- 'f' AND 'r' in their Affiliation field.
- no Home or Work phones
Zip Check
All records are looked at in Zip Code order. The City fields are examined to see if there is more than one city in the same zip code area. If so, they are all displayed along with the zip code. This can be used to check for misspellings.
Unduplication List
All records are examined for possible duplicates and a list is generated of suspicious candidates. If two people have the same "Address Key" and they are not partners and they do not live at 445 Summit Rd Watsonville, CA 95076 (a key of 44595076S) then these two _may_ be the same person (or they could be roommates). If two people records have the same first _and_ last name this is reported in a separate part of the listing.
Phone Tree (this may no longer be needed)
A list of everyone with a 't' in their affiliation, separated into distinct area codes. Mostly used for local people (408, 831, 415, 510 etc).
Fellowship
Ask for a date and then give a list of everyone whose Hanuman Fellowship membership expiration date is before that date. Give "Last, First", Sanskrit and HF date in columns.
A list of affiliations and their descriptions.
A list of affiliations and how often they are used within all people's records.
A list of how many people fall into year 'bands'... Showing when their last contact with the center was. This is determined by examining DATE_ENTRD and DATE_UPDAT.
A way of Purging by giving a cut-off number of years. If a person has not had contact with the center for X number of years, they will be deleted. There is a way to first get a list of such people for perusal prior to the actual mass deletion. This way you can go to those people's records and mark them as 'current'.
A way of automatically sending an email to everyone with an email address asking them to confirm their address, phone, etc.

GENERAL LISTINGS

These are maintained in a Report Table. Reports have these attributes:

Description
Zip Ranges
like: 95060-95070, 91023-92034 one line with several ranges in it
Affiliations
a sequence of single letter codes from the Affiliation table. a record is chosen for the listing if any of the affiliations listed here appear in the affiliation record for the person.
Order
Zip Name or Sanskrit
Beginning At
Ending At
These two establish boundaries for the records depending on the Order column. It makes it unnecessary to go through the entire People table - hence quicker generation.
Format
- 2 up labels
  With preferred name, address, city, state, zip.
- Email to Complete Mailing Service
  One line with pipe separated fields with display name, address, city, state, zip
- Name, Address
- Name, Home, Work
- Name, Home, Work double spaced
- Name, Home
- Count
  Simply print a count of the total records selected.
- DBF format containing all columns
- 1 up labels
- 4 up labels
- Statistics
  Shows total number of records selected plus:
  A calculation is made for each record yielding how many years it has been since there was any activity on that record. The dates of last modification, original entry, hanuman fellowship membership, and land membership are considered.
  A table is printed of how many records are in categories of 1 through 20 years.
- Just the Preferred Name
Probability
If this field is not equal to 1 it is used to make a random selection of records. Essentially a die is thrown to determine if the record should be included or not. This can be used, for example, to select 500 random records in Santa Cruz County (a certain zip code range).
Extra Field
This text is placed at the top right of any generated labels. Can be used for knowing which mailing it was...

Report records can be added, deleted, and edited. You can search for a report by description. You can step through Next and Previous report records in description order.

Reports can be "run". This means that all records (unless there are beginning and ending fields) in the database are examined to see if:

the zip code occurs in the report's zip code ranges
if any affiliation in the report record occurs in the affiliation in the person record.

If so, the record is chosen and it is formatted for output.

Two notes:

If there is an affiliation of 'x' this record will not be included on any mailings (Formats of 1, 2, or 4-up labels or sending to Complete Mailing Service).
If a person has a partner and the partner's record also matches the criteria then include only ONE record in the output with both of their names. The order of the names is chosen randomly to make the treatment of the sexes more egalitarian.

CUSTOM LISTS

There is one other column in the Report record. It is called 'custom'. If this integral field is non-zero then the Zip Range and Affiliation fields are ignored. This integer (X) is used to create a file name:

customX.prg

This is a snippet of FoxPro code that returns true or false. As each People record is processed this bit of code is executed. If it returns true the record is chosen otherwise not.

Before the report is run a variable 'initialized' is set to .t. The custom snippet of code can utilize this to set things up:

if .not. initialized
	@10, 10 say "Date?" get end_date
	read
	initialized = .t.
endif
return hf_date <= end_date

MASS MAILING

There is a command (separate - not within mlist) that can send a letter to everyone on the list that has an email address. This is affectionately known as "spamming".

BUGS

Undoubtably.

NEEDED ENHANCEMENTS

Enlarge the Zip code field to accomodate Zip+4 and Canadian Postal Codes.
Add a Country field.
Add a "date last used" to the Report table so it is easier to know if they can be deleted.
Keep a history of programs that people have taken not just the last one. In the reg program there IS a way to see all the programs a person has taken.
Have a way to move forward/backward until you find a person with a given affiliation. Perhaps the listing of such people will suffice for this.
A way of giving several remote organizations read/write access to the data via:
- dial up access
  and/or
- periodic synchronization
Or perhaps a system where a single database is used locally and ALSO by a web server. This would give secure access locally and also globally via any web browser (with appropriate password protection, of course). This would require that the center be an ever present "node" on the net.

ID	Unique Id*
ID_SPS	Id of Spouse (if partnered)*
AKEY	Address Key*