A/B-Split Job Delivery Settings
Information about when to deliver the variant jobs in the A/B-split job:
- For a standard A/B-split job with common delivery settings, this screen defines the delivery
settings for all variant jobs.
- For a standard A/B-split job with individual delivery settings, this screen defines the delivery
settings for an individual variant job.
- For an A/B-split job with sampling, with common delivery settings for the sampling variants,
this screen either defines the delivery settings for the sampling variants (all of them with
the same settings) or for the main variant.
- For an A/B-split job with sampling, with individual delivery settings for the sampling variants, this screen defines the deliver settings either for an individual variant job or for the main variant.
The note at the top of the page displays the variant (or variants) to which the settings will apply.
Select one of the following options:
- Immediately begin delivering the mail job:
With this option, the variant jobs will be delivered immediately after they are authorized.
- Wait until mail job delivery is triggered:
With this option, the authorized variant jobs will not be delivered until delivery is triggered
explicitly. This means that the authorized variant jobs remain in a waiting state (in the Ongoing Jobs list)
until this trigger happens. The delivery can be triggered manually from inside of LISTSERV Maestro
or through an external trigger of the type "Simple URL Access" (see
below). The security token that is required for the external
trigger can be obtained either from the A/B-split job's details page (for A/B-split jobs with a common
delivery schedule for the variants) or from the variant jobs' details pages (for A/B-split jobs
with individual delivery schedules for the variants), once the variant jobs have been authorized for
delivery.
- Schedule the mail job delivery to begin at the following time: With this option, you can specify the exact date and time to begin delivery of the variant jobs. Enter both the date and time in the format shown at the right of the edit boxes. Scheduled delivery dates and times must occur in the future of your present session for this to work correctly. If the delivery authorization occurs after the scheduled delivery time, then the variant jobs will be delivered immediately.
Additional settings:
- Time zone to be applied to the dates and times specified above:
This option lets you select the time zone to use when determining when a job is sent.
For example, if the server is located in London (GMT 00:00) and the user is based in New York (GMT
-05:00), when the user specifies 10:00 what time will the job be sent? Will it be 10:00 London time
or 10:00 New York time?
If Use my local time zone is chosen, then the time zone is set based on the local computer settings (GMT 00:00, in the example). Otherwise, any other world time zone can be used. In the example, the user chooses "GMT-05:00 - Eastern Time (US & Canada)", which means the job will be sent at 10:00 New York time (15:00 London time).
Note: This setting will not alter the time put into the date of the email. This value is inserted by the SMTP server at the time of delivery and is usually based on local settings. This is not incorrect as it accurately reflects the time the email was actually sent.
External Triggers
LISTSERV Maestro offers several actions that can be triggered remotely from an external source by simply accessing a special external trigger URL, via the HTTP protocol. This trigger URL can be accessed without the need to first login to LISTSERV Maestro.
With this, several scenarios are possible:
If there are actions that need to be triggered manually by a user who does not want to login to LISTSERV Maestro first; then, the user could create bookmarks in his browser, where each bookmark contains a trigger URL and stands for an action that can be triggered. Or, perhaps a custom-made HTML page could be created with links that point to the trigger URLs.
In a different scenario, these actions could be triggered by another process, such as a script or program. To trigger an action, all this other process has to do is to open a HTTP communication to the action's trigger URL. This type of external process could, for example, trigger an action according to a certain time schedule or each time a certain outside event happens.
To secure the external trigger URLs against unauthorized access, a security token needs to be included in each URL. Each action that can be triggered externally has a unique security token. Therefore, the security token in the URL serves two purposes: It identifies the action that is to be triggered, and it validates that the user or process that makes this request is indeed authorized to do so.
The security token for the action in question can be obtained from inside of the LISTSERV Maestro user interface. The exact location where the token can be obtained depends on the action that it stands for. Please see the description of the action in question for this information.
Important: You should make sure that this security token is not given out to unauthorized persons because anyone who knows the security token of a certain action is able to trigger this action, as long as he also has HTTP access to the LISTSERV Maestro server. If you suspect that an unauthorized person has gained access to the token, then you can create a new token (and invalidate the existing token) by clicking the appropriate link at the location where you obtained the token.
A trigger URL always has the following form:
http://SERVER_NAME/lui/externalAction.do?token=SECURITY_TOKEN
where SERVER_NAME is replaced with the name of your LISTSERV Maestro server. (If a non-standard HTTP port is used, also include the port, separated with a colon ":". If access to your LISTSERV Maestro is protected with HTTPS, you need to specify "https://" instead of "http://".)
where SECURITY_TOKEN is replaced with the security token for the action that the URL shall trigger.
External triggers come in two variants:
-
Simple URL Access: The action is triggered by accessing the external trigger URL with a HTTP GET request.
By accessing this URL, a HTTP GET request is made to LISTSERV Maestro. The server then first verifies the given security token and, if it is valid, triggers the corresponding action. The result of the action is returned in the form of a HTTP response.
If everything went well, a response with the status code "200 - OK" is returned. In this case, the response body contains the result of the action. Most actions return a simple "OK" text in the result, but some actions may also return more data in the result; for example, if the purpose of the action was to download certain data from LISTSERV Maestro.
If there was a problem executing the action, a response with a different status code is returned, such as "404 - Not Found" if an invalid security token was specified.
-
URL Access with Additional Data: The action is triggered by accessing the external trigger URL with a HTTP POST request.
In contrast to the "simple URL access" of above, the trigger URL must be accessed with a HTTP POST request, and the additional data that is necessary for the action must be included as part of the request body. The data that is required depends on the action in question. Please see the description of the action for this information.
The result of the action is returned in form of a HTTP response, just like for the "simple URL access". Please see above for details.