Member Avatar for mmonclair

I've been looking around online for a while and haven't been able to find a solution available with the resources at my disposal. Here's the scenario:

I have an online training site I manage and do development for. We've been offering surveys to get feedback at the time that a learner takes an activity. It's been asked if we could offer a followup survey to them after a period of time, like 3 months. I've been looking to see if I could write an application that with trigger a script to send an email reminder to a learner three months after they came to our site and completed an activity. I could write a script whereby I monitor who has or who hasn't come back for their followup, when it is due, and have it send an email when it is time fairly easily, but if I could have this running in the background without my having to actively trigger these actions, it would make my job running this site a bit easier.

Thanks much!

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Member Avatar for arrgh

Sounds like a good job for a scheduled task. Just create a cfm page that queries your db for the desired records. Then send a cfmail to each one. Once the page is set up, create a scheduled task using the CF Administrator, or cfschedule. Schedule the task to run your cfm script daily (or however frequently you need).

Member Avatar for mmonclair

Sounds like a good job for a scheduled task. Just create a cfm page that queries your db for the desired records. Then send a cfmail to each one. Once the page is set up, create a scheduled task using the CF Administrator, or cfschedule. Schedule the task to run your cfm script daily (or however frequently you need).

Thanks much for your response. One challenge I have is that I do not have Administrator privileges on the ColdFusion server I'm using (I work for a university, and all units use the same server, which is managed by the university-wide IT group), but I found instructions on using cfschedule outside of the server Administrator (http://tutorial475.easycfm.com/). I'll report back and let you know if this works one way or the other.

Member Avatar for arrgh

It'll work. But cfschedule takes some getting used to. I'd start out slow. Just create a small task that writes something to a log file first. Once you know it's working you can plug in your real page (after testing it separately of course).

Member Avatar for mmonclair

It'll work. But cfschedule takes some getting used to. I'd start out slow. Just create a small task that writes something to a log file first. Once you know it's working you can plug in your real page (after testing it separately of course).

I tried it out and it works like a charm. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Edited by mmonclair because: n/a
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