Plugin Directory Administration: Mass Email Tool

[Ipstenu]

We need an admin-only tool that will allow us to mass-email plugins.

One exists but currently can only be run by a server admin, which limits usability.

1) Provide a list of plugins

2) Provide an email subject and body with basic substitutions

3) The tool would then email everyone with commit access and listed owner the message

Substitutions needed:

%USER_EMAIL%
%USER_DISPLAY_NAME%
%PLUGIN_URL%

With Helpscout you can pre-fill everything BUT the body: ​https://docs.helpscout.com/article/119-pre-fill

So it doesn't look like we can use that for our bulk-mail tool.

If it's secure and has the capability to be given a usable UX, whatever tool is used on the back-end should be fine.

Limiting the number of plugins mailed at a time is also fine. Handling more than 50 of those at a stretch is usually pretty annoying anyway :)

[dd32]

HelpScout does have an API to allow us to create an email in HelpScout, so we could easily push the emails through there.

Would it be helpful to have a record of the email being sent in HS? or should it just be sent directly by the WordPress.org servers, with the replies hitting HS?

[Ipstenu]

Having a record of the email sent via Help Scout would help since sometimes people don't reply from the email we have on record, but Help Scout keeps them properly threaded so if they remove the body of what they're replying to, we can still see it (and figure out what 'my plugin!!!!' means a little faster)

[dd32]

Replying to Ipstenu:

Having a record of the email sent via Help Scout would help since sometimes people don't reply from the email we have on record, but Help Scout keeps them properly threaded so if they remove the body of what they're replying to, we can still see it (and figure out what 'my plugin!!!!' means a little faster)

That sounds like a great reason to push the sent emails into HS then!

If we're limiting it to small batches of plugins then we shouldn't have any real scale problems here I don't think.

[Otto42]

Limiting it to "small batches" may not be the long term case here. Perhaps a wp-cron/cavalcade approach is needed, because it could be thousands of emails for some of the cases we've had to do this before.

[Otto42]

Note: one assumption we can make is that we're only ever going to want to email the people with commit access to the plugin. Should limit the lookups a bit.

[Ipstenu]

I was thinking of intentionally small batches of plugins. This would be for things like the mass trademark mails (thank you Facerange/Instabrand) or outdated libraries. It should be for everyone with commit access AND account listed as owner. But ... generally that's only 3-10 people per plugin.

The cron stuff though, that would be great for the major release emails, or things that have to go to everyone. It's more manageable to split up the other stuff into chunks of 50-100 plugins at a time. That lets us not get overloaded with some of the more ... special replies :) Basically emails we're pretty sure will need manual intervention on our end to sort shouldn't be done in batches of 1000.