6.1.1 Sending Emails

The video below gives guidance on sending emails.

Note: the video was created in 2022, so does not include any of the enhancements made since then.

To send an email
From any list of members, select the names that you wish to send an email to.

Choose Send E-mail from the drop-down list below the table and press the Do with selected button.

'From' and 'To' addresses
The From address is taken from your Member Record.

If you are also assigned to an Office (see 9.3), the Office email address will also be displayed in the From drop-down list and you can choose the address that you want to use.

The list of recipients is for information only, they cannot be changed here. If you wish to remove or add recipients, you will need to cancel the email by clicking your internet browser’s back arrow to return to the previous page.

There is a tick box where you can select to receive a copy of the email, although this is not necessary if you are one of the names selected in the list of members. A copy sent to self by ticking the box will not have the personalised details created from the Tokens described below.

Composing the email
Enter a Subject for your message and then type your message in the blank area below. 

Spell Check
Potential spelling mistakes are underlined in red. Right clicking such a word will bring up a sub-menu from which suggested alternative spellings can be selected or the word can be added to the dictionary:

Line Spacing
You can vary the line spacing in the message by using hard or soft returns:

• A Hard Return (using Enter) gives a full line space before the next line of text.
  
  
• A Soft Return (using Shift+Enter) will put the following words on a separate line immediately below the preceding text.

Text Formatting
Basic text formatting can be done by highlighting the text and clicking the buttons above the main body of the email:

Additional formatting is available via the Edit, Insert, Format and Table sub-menus. These are similar to the options available in word processor apps such as Microsoft Word.

Edit menu
Here you can Undo the previous action or Redo the previous Undo.

Cutting, Copying and Pasting may not be available depending on the type of browser that you are using – if not, you can use the highlighted keyboard short cuts, such as pressing the Ctrl and C keys at the same time to copy.

Insert menu

Here you can insert Images, Hyperlinks, Emojis and Tables:

Format menu

Here you can change highlighted text to:

• Bold, Italic, Underline
• Strikethrough, Superscript, Subscript
• Change Font type and size
• Change Text and Background Colour
• Change Text Alignment
• Clear Formatting

Table menu

Here you can:

• Insert a new Table
• Edit the Properties of an existing Table
• Edit Cells, Rows and Columns in an existing Table

Tokens
Clicking the blue links on the right side of the browser will insert a Token that can be used to personalise your email. For example, #FAM customises every email with the member’s Familiar Name. Some Tokens have Partner versions that are shown as #P to the right of the main Token.

Tokens can be typed directly in the text and are not case sensitive, i.e. #FAM, #fam, #Fam, #fAM, etc. will all work.

Tips:-

• On most occasions you will use the Tokens on the right side of the lists not the #P ones.
• Tokens also work in the subject line
• Be aware some Tokens disclose personal data such as #TELEPHONE
• #FORENAME will only use the first name in the field. If you use #FAM and there is no Familiar Name for the member it will include all the names in the Forename field.
• Be aware that where there is no partner the partner versions of tokens will be replaced with blank text. For example, avoid 'Dear #FAM and #PFAM,'. Consider something like 'Dear #FAM, #PFAM' instead.
• There is a list of all available Tokens with an explanation of what they do at the end of this article.

Attachments
If you wish to send one or more attachments with the message, press the Choose Files button (the format may vary between browsers) and select each file in turn:

To remove a file from the message, click on the small X before the filename:

• The ‘Choose Files’ button may be replaced by a box to click in when using Apple computers and some types of tablet or smart phone.
  
  
• It is recommended that attached files don’t have long names or names that contain special characters such as brackets because these can sometimes cause delivery problems.
  
  
• There is no practical limit to the number of attachments you can send with Beacon, but many email servers impose limits on the number or size of attachments that recipients can receive. It is wise, therefore, not to send more than a few attachments with any one message and to minimise attachment size. Also, to reduce the likelihood of emails being flagged as spam, it is recommended that attachments are not used when sending to a large number of recipients (over 50).
  
  
• There is an absolute total limit of 20MB that can be uploaded. If this is exceeded the error message is “413 Request Entity Too Large”.
  
  

External Links
To include a link to a website in your message, put the cursor at the position where the link is required and click the Chain icon in the top menu or in the Insert sub-menu:

In the resulting dialog box, enter the full website URL (including the http or https prefix) and the Text to Display in the email (this should be a meaningful description of the webpage you are linking to, rather than a copy of the URL).

By selecting from the Link list, you can insert the following links if they are configured for your u3a (see 9.4 Public Links).

• Renewals for a link to the Members Portal sign in page from where the member will be able to sign in to the Portal and renew their membership if it is during the membership renewal period and your u3a has enabled online renewals (see 10.2.1 Online Renewals).
  
  
• New Memberships for a link to the New Membership application page (see 10.1 Online Joining). This can be useful for forwarding on to prospective new members.
  
  
• Groups for a link to the public version of your u3a's Groups List
  
  
• Calendar for a link to the public version of your u3a's Calendar

Sending the Email
When the email is ready to go, click the Send button.

Sometimes you may be presented with a CAPTCHA screen (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) which will ask you to tick a box to demonstrate that you are not a robot.

For additional recommendations about sending emails see 6.1.5 Tips for Sending Emails from Beacon.

As a result of changes to Cloudflare who front some of the Beacon operations have just introduced new more stringent rules around attachments. This means that when sending an email you may see a Cloudflare message and sometime a Captcha verification test.

Note: a user can exceed their Beacon timeout period (which defaults to 20 minutes) while composing a long email. If the user clicks to send after their timeout is exceeded, Beacon still sends the email but as soon as the user navigate to the Home page they timeout.

Sending email with a secondary email address

When Beacon is used to send an email then the "From" address will be the email address held in the sender's Member Record. If a receiver of the email replies it will automatically be dispatched to this address.

Some u3a's will have registered a domain (e.g. demotonu3a.org.uk) and operate email addresses such as [e-mail]. Others create secondary addresses like [e-mail]. These addresses can be set up in Beacon by adding u3a Officers.

In this example, when the Chair sends an email from Beacon they will see a drop-down list for the From entry enabling them to select either their personal email or the Chair's email [e-mail]

While this section is called u3a Officers it has no formal status. There is no reason why Group Leaders/Conveners can't be put in the u3a Officers section with an Office E-mail of their choice.

Email Delivery
You can check upon the progress of emails sent by clicking Email delivery on the Home page as described in section 6.1.3.

List of Tokens

#TITLE	e.g. Ms
#FORENAME	e.g. William
#SURNAME	e.g. Smith
#FAM	Familiar name e.g. Bill
#MEMNO	Membership number
#EMAIL	Email address
#TELEPHONE	Telephone (usually a landline and associated with an address)
#TELEPHONE4	Telephone (last 4 digits)
#MOBILE	Mobile
#MOBILE4	Mobile (last 4 digits)
#EMERGENCY	Emergency contact (a free format field for each member)
#AFFILIATION	Associate member’s home u3a (blank if no affiliation entered)
#RENEW	Renewal date e.g. 1st April 2023
#LASTRENEW	Last renewal date
#FEE	Renewal fee e.g. £20.00
#LASTFEE	Last renewal fee
#MEMCLASS	Membership class e.g. Individual
#GIFTAID	Date consented to gift aid e.g. 22nd January 2017(or blank)
#ADDRESSH	Address in 1 line, comma separated
#ADDRESSV	Address over several lines (no commas)
#POSTCODE	e.g. SW1A 2AA
#POSTCODE3	Last 3 characters of Post Code
#TODAY	Today's date e.g. 26th February 2023
#U3ANAME	u3a name with u3a appended
#CUSTOM1	Name given to the first custom field (if there is one).  Also versions #CUSTOM2, etc.
#P	These insert the Partners details
#GIFTAID	Shows the date from which the member gave permission for Gift Aid claims (only available on the Gift Aid Declaration page)
#GIFTAIDLIST	Shows all sums eligible for Gift Aid claims during the claim period (only available on the Gift Aid Declaration page)

Revision History

v1	2020-04-04	Graeme Bunting	First version.
v2	2020-05-18	Graeme Bunting	Reference to Beacon User Guide replaced by a link to the Knowledge Base article about tips for sending emails from Beacon
v3	2020-08-13	Graeme Bunting	Mention of bug with tokens when using U3A Officers
v4	2021-04-03	Graham Tigg	Authors added to this Revision History section
v5	2021-04-04	Lyn Bossons	Info about Members Portal & External Links added
v6	2021-04-11	Graeme Bunting	Info about Tokens added
v6	2021-04-27	Graham Tigg	Sending emails with a secondary address added
v7	2021-07-19	Graham Tigg	Limit of 20MB upload noted
v8	2022-02-05	Graham Tigg	Added tips including TOKENS work in the subject line
v8	2022-05-10	Graham Tigg	Added that #FORENAME only uses first name in the field and to use #FAM to substitute all forename names.
v9	2022-10-02	John Alexander	Inserted link to video
v10	2023-02-26	Graham Tigg	Replace image of tokens with a list so they can be found by searching (e.g. #PFAM gives no search results)
v11	2023-08-16	Graeme Bunting	Additional text formatting options & spell checker added. Insertion of Tables, Images & Emojis added. New Link List options added. New clickable Tokens added.
v12	2023-09-09	Graeme Bunting	Note about timing out added
v13	2023-09-15	John Alexander	Add additional detail on #P to try to stop confusion Added note about new Cloudflare tests
v14	2023-11-15	Graeme Bunting	Images updated to show new layout of Tokens
v15	2025-04-03	John Alexander	Updated images for new Do with Selected and Send Mail buttons
v16	2025-06-26	Graeme Bunting	Gift Aid Date token added