Author Topic: How To Allow Duplicates On Imports (Read 1858 times)

eric1 · « **on:** May 07, 2007, 04:20:12 pm »

ListMail,

First off cheers on a great product. I have read your forums and know about the input type=hidden name=allowdupes value=1> option on the signup form.

However, we need to allow for duplicates on the import as well or in general in the database because we have people who may have more than one account with us but the same email address for both accounts.

How do we allow for duplicates on the import from a CSV file as well as in the database in general?

Thank You!
Eric

DW · « **Reply #1 on:** May 08, 2007, 12:18:40 am »

Eric,

Duplicates are not well supported throughout the program and are not currently able to be imported... To do so would be a little involved and I would need to charge a small fee, such as the cost of a "Server Analysis" from http://listmailpro.com/support. I cannot, unfortunately, offer allowance of duplicates when modifying users, etc. at this time... Any changes made would eventually be overwritten by updates, because there are no plans for updating this functionality right away.

Is there any possibility that you could somehow allow two accounts to use the -same- ListMail database row? If you are using ListMail to store passwords for login, etc. perhaps you could store multiple passwords in a single custom field, or use another workaround.

I wish I could be of more assistance but this is a complex issue that really needs some hard work when implementing to ensure ListMail's data stays stable and predictable...

Regards

eric1 · « **Reply #2 on:** May 08, 2007, 01:37:08 pm »

DW,

Thanks for the response. I actually do not need to store the duplicate email address but rather I would like to still put in the entry perhaps with a blank email address or store the email address and mark it as "not to be emailed as your program does for people that unsubscribe. I ofcourse dont want to send out 8 emails to the same person during a mailing since they would have 8 accounts with us.

We intend to use this as a customer mailing list for announcements etc. Some of our customers use your script and that is why we purchased it.

It is a great program..

I simply have 4 fields.

Username,
Contact Person,
Email Address,
Type of Account.

I have made the 3 fields custom and the email address is the only default field I am using.

Thanks!
Eric

DW · « **Reply #3 on:** May 08, 2007, 01:54:20 pm »

Eric,

Duplicates can be excluded using the "User Selection" feature with the "Filter duplicate emails" option, however I'm still not sure I understand the reason for your requirement of duplicate entries. Is the person purchasing multiple products? Could we not simply ignore future additions? Do you plan to follow-up differently for sub-groups of your list based on custom field data, etc.? Could you use more than one list so that duplicates on the same list are not required?

Regards

eric1 · « **Reply #4 on:** May 08, 2007, 02:15:26 pm »

David,

Thanks again for the quick responses. I saw that feature but that does not work for me because the import is not allowing the duplicate entries to come in.

We provide web hosting so a customer may have domain.com and domain.net for example as 2 accounts and we need to have 2 entries in there as that is how we list our accounts but both domain.com and domain.net would have the same contact email address so in the database it would be nice to have both entries.

I hope this helps I don't mind paying the server analysis that is fine just want to make sure you see our requirements.

Thanks!!
Eric

DW · « **Reply #5 on:** May 08, 2007, 02:25:55 pm »

Eric,

It seems silly for me to charge you for something and then only be able to provide half of the functionality... as mentioned I do not foresee completing ListMail-wide support of duplicates just yet (ie. user editing pages, etc) because I'm in the process of a major interface overhaul as part of 2.0.

Quote

We need to have 2 entries in there as that is how we list our accounts

Are you saying you use a script that shows your customers and their domains directly from the ListMail database?

Filtering duplicates on mailing (ie. User Selection) would, I think, eliminate the benefit of being able to use a "message code" to output the users' domain in a message. Therefore, perhaps it is not absolutely essential for the domain to be stored in ListMail.

Custom code can be added to ListMail to run after signup with the included xtra/signup-xtra.php file.

Have you considered an additional table to store domain information linked via ListMail user ID? Any script that reads the users from ListMail could then simply do a second lookup or an SQL join to retrieve the client's domains.

Such a script would take less time (and $) and I can guarantee it will work with future updates.

Regards