SubmissionSystem

Sending a mass email to speakers

The process to send out a mass email from the Submission System to the speakers involves editing the 'send_mass_email.php' file to send out the type of email you want and to the list of speakers to receive it. The only people who will be able to access the 'send_mass_email.php' page are those with the 'conference_chair' role.

The one function in the 'send_mass_email.php' file is 'send_email_to_speakers', this function takes the name of the email template you are wanting to send out and a list of the speaker IDs to send the emails to.

By default the list of speakers is a set of Eclipse Foundation speaker IDs for testing purposes. The function 'get_accepted_speakers_ids' will do just what is says, return an array of unique speaker IDs that have accepted talks.

To run the script simply log in with a user who has the 'conference_chair' role and access the conference specific URL like this:

https://www.eclipsecon.org/submissions/CONFERENCE-IDENTIFIER/send_mass_email.php

The page will show a list of the users who received the email and it will also report if it was unable to find an email address for a speaker.

Making the Schedule Live

Once the tentative schedule has been imported (will be covered in a future wiki update) with the 'import_schedule.php' script and it has been previewed on the conference web site. Log into the Submission System with a user who has the 'conference_chair' role and go to the conference chair page. The conference chair page has a set of buttons to trigger various parts of the conference chair workflow. Find the 'Little Button' button and press it, it will take you to the Little Button page that will show what talks will be getting scheduled.

Pushing the Little Button

The 'Little Button' page when run will take the tentative schedule and convert it into the final schedule (which will be viewable on the conference web site). When the 'Little Button' is pressed it will send the 'talk_updated.php' emails out to all speakers who have accepted talk that are being scheduled (or rescheduled). The "talk_updated" emails aren't displayed in the submission system on each submitter's "page" like the talk_proposed and talk_accepted emails; they are stored in a different database table -- the rolled-up email table.

Pushing the little button only sends the changes to a talks schedule, so pushing it multiple times will not send redundant emails.

Pushing the Big Button

TBD