Broadcasts

A broadcast is one email written once and sent to the people behind a list of records: the applicants on Applications > Applicants, the applicants of the applications on Applications > All applications, the assessors on Assess > Assessors, the grantees of the contracts on Contracts, or of the milestones on Award and pay > Milestones. Application, Applicant, Assessor, Contract and Milestone are your organisation's own terms if you've renamed them.

Before you start

You need the Can access Settings > Emails permission, and permission to see the list you start from. Backed only ever sends to records you are allowed to see: a record outside your data access rules is left out, even if it was ticked.

Start a broadcast from a list

Open one of the five lists and narrow it with its search and filters.
Either tick the records you want, or tick none to address every record the list matches. After ticking some, All N matching widens the selection to every matching record, on every page.
Select Broadcast. The composer opens with the selection.

Write it

Recipients shows the list, what is selected, and how many emails will be sent once duplicate addresses are removed. People who have turned broadcasts off are counted separately and do not get it.
Choose One email per person or One email per record. With one per person, someone behind several records gets one email about the first of them.
On Applications > All applications only, tick Include collaborators to email everyone collaborating on each selected application as well. The count updates. Someone who is both an applicant and a collaborator on the same application gets one email about it; with One email per record, each application they are behind still gets its own email.
Write the Subject and the Message. Choose Personalisations to add the recipient's name, your organisation's details or the record's details, such as an application's name.
Add attachments. They can be 10 MB in all, and each is checked for viruses before it can be sent.
Every broadcast ends with a link the recipient can use to unsubscribe from broadcasts.

A broadcast can reach at most 5,000 people. A larger selection says so before you send; narrow the filters or tick fewer records.

Check it before it goes

Preview shows the email as one recipient would get it. Choose Preview for to see it for a different record.
Send test to me sends the email to your own address, with [Test] at the start of the subject. A test is never counted.

Send, schedule or save

Send now sends it straight away, once you confirm the number of recipients.
Schedule sends it at a date and time you choose. A broadcast addressed to a list's filters runs them again when it starts, so records added before then are included.
Save draft keeps it to finish later. A draft can be deleted; it is never sent.

Service messages

Tick This is a service message for something people must know even if they have turned broadcasts off, such as a changed deadline. Say why in the reason box; the reason is kept with the broadcast. A service message still carries the unsubscribe link.

The register and a broadcast's page

Communicate > Broadcasts lists every broadcast with its status: Draft, Scheduled, Sending, Sent or Cancelled. A scheduled broadcast can be cancelled with Cancel until it starts.

A broadcast's page shows when it was scheduled, started and sent, and what happened: Recipients, Sent, Delivered, Bounced and Suppressed (people who had turned broadcasts off). Delivered and bounced follow the mail provider's reports, so they can move for a day after sending. Its recipients are listed with each one's outcome, and every email also appears in Communicate > Email log and on the record's Communications tab.

If Backed cancels a scheduled broadcast when it is due to start, the page says why: its sender could no longer send to that list, the list matched nobody, or it matched more than 5,000 people.