As you can see, as a Tell-a-Friend system owner, you can see how many friends have been sent e-mails by the system (in the Friends column), how many sub- scribed (in the Subscribed column), how many rejected subscription request by unsubscribing (in the Rejected columns), and so on. You can also see the top users who’ve given you new leads or possibly cus- tomers. If you use promotions such as giveaways for the top ten originators, you can simply review this report from time to time and see who your top customers are who referred you to their friends. Security Considerations Here we decided to allow anyone to add Tell-a-Friend forms using the taf_form_mngr.php application and restricted modify and delete privileges. However, you might want to restrict add form privilege to a certain list of IP addresses, in such case you have to modify the authorize () method in the taf_form_mngr.php application. Summary In this chapter, you learned to develop a Tell-a-Friend system that you can use with your e-mail campaign system, whether it’s in-house or outsourced via Internet ser- vice providers. This tool can increase exposures and potentially increase customers for your organization; it’s widely used by both large and small companies around the world. Chapter 13: Tell-a-Friend System 471 17 549669 ch13.qxd 4/4/03 9:26 AM Page 471 17 549669 ch13.qxd 4/4/03 9:26 AM Page 472 Chapter 14 E-mail Survey System IN THIS CHAPTER ◆ Designing a survey system ◆ Implementing a survey system ◆ Testing a survey system BEING ABLE TO SURVEY your customers frequently is an important requirement for business today. Thanks to the pervasiveness of e-mail, you can now perform most of your surveys via e-mail. Customers provide valuable information when they participate, which benefits both the company and the customers. In this section, you’ll design a simple yet powerful survey system that can be managed by marketing personnel with a bit of HTML form knowledge. The system functionality is shown in Figure 14-1. Figure 14-1: Survey system functional diagram. Survey Message to Customer Survey System Store Survey Results Dear Joe, Please participate in the following survey. Are you happy with us [] Yes [] No Are you sure [] Yes [] No 1 2 3 4 Survey Administrator Manage Lists, Forms Manage Surveys Show Survey Reports Submit 473 18 549669 ch14.qxd 4/4/03 9:26 AM Page 473 A typical survey process can be described as follows: 1. The survey system sends an e-mail survey to the customer. 2. The customer fills out the survey from within the e-mail client program and submits the results by clicking on the Submit button. 3. The customer survey results are stored in the survey database. 4. The survey administrator views the compiled survey result as a report. In the following sections, you’ll develop a survey system that has the following features. Functionality Requirements ◆ Unlimited number of survey email (target) lists: Supports unlimited number of survey email (target) lists. The survey administrator can create many survey target lists. ◆ Comma-separated value (CSV) file support: Survey target lists can be created from CSV files. ◆ Duplicate entry protection per list: When a list is added to the system, the system should automatically detect duplicate entries within a list and should only add one instance of any e-mail address. This will ensure that when a survey is executed no user ever gets two or more survey forms. ◆ Unlimited number of questions: Supports an unlimited number of ques- tions. However, questions can be only multiple-choice or text data not exceeding the size limit used in the database. The survey must support: text data, checkboxes, radio buttons, and drop-down menu selections as answers for questions. ◆ Personalized survey form: Each survey form can be personalized using the survey target’s first and last name. ◆ Simple reporting: A simple tabular report to allow the survey administrator to collect valuable insight into the customer’s understanding and perception of the company. Now let’s look at the architecture of such a survey system. 474 Part III: Developing E-mail Solutions 18 549669 ch14.qxd 4/4/03 9:26 AM Page 474 Architecture of the Survey System Figure 14-2 shows the system diagram for the survey system you’re going to develop in this section. Figure 14-2: Survey system architecture diagram. There are two types of users in the system: the survey administrator and the cus- tomers who are the survey participants. The survey system administrator user is able to perform the following tasks: ◆ Add or delete survey target lists. The survey administrator can add a new survey target list using the list-management component of the survey- management application suite. ◆ Add or delete survey forms. The survey administrator can add a new survey form that can be used in a survey campaign. A survey form is an HTML document that has all the survey questions in it. This form is sent as an e-mail to the target list and the response is collected using the response-management application. ◆ Add or delete survey campaigns. The survey administrator can add or delete a survey campaign. Each survey campaign consists of an existing Survey Administrator Survey Management Application Suite List Manager Form Manager Campaign Manager Report Manager Execution Manager Response Manager List Form Survey Report Response Customer Objects Survey Database Chapter 14: E-mail Survey System 475 18 549669 ch14.qxd 4/4/03 9:26 AM Page 475 . Considerations Here we decided to allow anyone to add Tell-a-Friend forms using the taf_form_mngr .php application and restricted modify and delete privileges. However, you might want to restrict. list of IP addresses, in such case you have to modify the authorize () method in the taf_form_mngr .php application. Summary In this chapter, you learned to develop a Tell-a-Friend system that you