USPS Information Technology Committee Bulletin # 04 - 08 June 2004

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Announcing a new tool for use by squadron, district and 

national committee webmasters.  For more details follow the

"Documentation for Contact Mailer" at 

www.usps.org/national/tools



Address any questions to Dan Bartell dtb@usps.org



Contact Mailer



 



This tool was originally used to send email to National ITC 

Contacts and to Head Quarters Customer Support Contacts.  It 

has been modified to send email to any squadron, district or 

national committee contact designated on the USPS server’s 

websites/squadron data base.  The tool was originally set up 

for three reasons and it’s modifications make these benefits 

available to all webmasters.



 



The first was to solve the problem of not wanting to have to 

change the mailto address on a large number of  pages when 

either the ITC or HQ contact’s email address was changed.  At 

one point we were changing the mailto on upwards of 50 pages 

and that proved to be extremely time consuming.  Putting the 

email addresses in one place greatly simplified the process by 

allowing one simple update when the contacts change.



 



The second was to standardize the type of message being 

received.  You would like to know a couple of things when you 

receive a message.  For instance, name and a reply address.  

You would be amazed at how often these two items are left out.  

By presenting the sender with a form which has simple 

validation built in the message receiver at least has a 

fighting chance.



 



The final reason was to avoid having the contacts email address 

available to anyone looking at the pages.  Given the amount of 

spoofing and such which is happening and the amount of email 

address mining going on, I certainly don’t want my email 

address all over the place (not that it isn’t already!).