EC

Cloud Computing & Thin Applications -Mail Merge

This assignment demonstrates the use of cloud computing and thin applications.

You can use the G-Suite from Google to create documents, spreadsheets, presentations and a lot more.

This example shows how to save emails in a google sheet and use those emails to send bulk mails to a large number of recipients.

You need a google account for this assignment. You can use your personal google account OR create a new account for this assignment.

It is easy, effective, and free. It involves these 3 steps:

1. Create your message draft (you can include images and attachments).

2. Create a spreadsheet of the email addresses (if you don’t already have one).

3. Add Yet Another Mail Merge option into your google spreadsheet.

Create your message draft

1. In your gmail account, click compose:

2. In the new message box, leave the “To” line blank and in the “Subject” line, type Balance due, this will become the name of the message draft

3. Type your message as follows:

Notice that anything you want to import (populate) from another document must be placed between {{ }}

Here, we will import the customer name and balance from another spreadsheet that we will create in Google Docs.

Also notice that you don’t need to save anything, Google will automatically save your message in the Drafts folder.

Close the message box

Create a spreadsheet of the email addresses

4. Now click on Google Apps icon to go to Google Docs

5. From the Apps that appear, Click Drive

6. After clicking Drive, Click New

7. Click Google Sheets (if you don’t see it in the list click More and select it from the list that will appear)

9. Change the name of the sheet from Untitled Spreadsheet to Customers

10. Enter names of yourself and friends as customers: make sure to have column titles as you typed them in the gmail message and one column titled email

Note: the last 2 emails given here are not valid and will not be sent when we do the merge. You need to enter valid emails.

Add Yet Another Mail Merge option

11. Click Add-ons and click Get add-ons

12. In the Add-ons search box type: Yet Another Mail Merge and hit Enter

13. When YAMM appears in the Add-Ons list, click the Free button

14. Then select your email that you want to use the YAMM with

15. Click Allow on the next dialog box

Now you are ready to use YAMM with your spreadsheet

16. Click Add-ons Yet Another Mail merger Start Mail Merge

17. Google will work for a few seconds and shows this message

18. Google shows the different prices for this service. Google allows 50 bulk mailings per day for free. Click Continue

20. This box will appear

Here type the Sender Name (your name) and click the arrow to select the Email Template (here I will select Balance due the message draft that I created above in gmail) and then Click send 3 emails (that is the number of emails in this document). You can send up to 50 emails for free in 24 hours.

15. Google will send the emails and will show the results of the mail merger and sending of the emails

In the right-hand box, Google says that 2 emails have bounced (those were the invalid emails in the document). My email was valid and was sent

16. The emails appears in my valid email account

19. When I open the email, it will show my name and balance substituted in the fields created in the gamil message and the name and balance are retrieved the Customer spreadsheet that was created