time-delayed email reminders

[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!

[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).

[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.

[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).

[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.