The Send Admin Message button on the Users page lets the administrator send an email message to users

This option lets you send bulk messages to your users with the specified text.

The Target Group/List setting lets you choose who the message will go to. This is a Group or Distribution List defined in VPOP3. (You cannot send messages to individual users this way - unless they are the sole member of a list. You can use normal email for that.). The Everyone group usually contains all your users if you want to send a message to everyone.

The Save message for future use option tells VPOP3 to remember the message you send so that it will appear as the default message the next time you come to this page.

The Message Subject box lets you specify the subject of the email you want to send

The Message Text box lets you specify the text of the email you want to send. (Note that Admin Messages can only contain text, not HTML).

The Preview button lets you view a preview of the message as it would be delivered to yourself.

Text replacements

The Message Subject and Message Text can contain text replacements to customise the message for the user, These are indicated on the page in the VPOP3 settings

•{username} - is replaced by the VPOP3 user name of the recipient.

•{ldap_xxxx} - is replaced by the LDAP attribute represented by xxxx for the VPOP3 recipient. For instance {ldap_o} will be replaced by the Company name from their address book entry (the LDAP 'o' attribute for the inetOrgPerson LDAP class contains the 'organisation' for that object).

•{messagecount} - is replaced by the number of messages in that user's Inbox.

•{mailboxsize} - is replaced by the size of that user's whole mailbox.

•{mailboxquota} - is replaced by the mailbox size quota for that user.

•{lua}...{/lua} - executes a Lua script (see below) and is replaced by the 'print' output of that script.

Using Lua

One of the options of this facility lets you specify a Lua script in the message to send. This script lets you customise the message for each user.

See the Lua scripting topic for details on the VPOP3 Lua implementation.

When a Lua script in the administrator message is run, it has certain global variables set:

•Username - contains the username of the user currently being processed

•MessageCount - contains the number of messages in the user's inbox

•MailboxSize - contains the size of the user's whole mailbox (in bytes)

•MailboxQuota - contains the user's mailbox quota setting (in bytes - 0 means no limit)

•LDAP - this is a table containing the LDAP attributes for this user - the attribute names are in upper case - eg LDAP.CN is the user's 'display name'

(The variable names are case sensitive)

Anything that the script 'prints' gets sent to the user

An example Lua script used in the message sending facility might be

{lua}

if MailboxQuota ~= 0 then

  print ("You are currently using " .. MailboxSize .. " bytes of your allowed " .. MailboxQuota .. " bytes in your mailbox")

end

{/lua}

 

If the Lua script sets the global variable 'DontSend' (case sensitive) to '1' then VPOP3 won't send the message to this particular user.