Why did the fax/email/webform for the Action Alert fail?

Jeana Hollingsworth

Many government representatives have webforms online. Convio programs our software to communicate with these webforms so that clients can put up Action Alerts on their site. This process allows a constituent to go to a webform on a client site and submit it there. Once the form is submitted, Convio takes that data to the rep's webform and submits it on behalf of the constituent. This process fails occasionally for a myriad of reasons.

Sometimes the webform is already known by Convio to be bad. In this case the constituent will be shown a page that advises them that the form is bad and provides them with a link to go to the reps page directly so that they can send feedback directly. Also, when this happens, if the client has configured the Action Alert to roll over to fax in the event of form failure, Convio will attempt to send the rep a fax with this data. This can cause a duplicate alert from the constituent to the rep, if the rep submits a webform directly on the reps site and Convio sends a fax..

There are a few reasons why a webform is known to be bad by Convio

• Sometimes the rep's webform has a redirect within it. Convio has not yet worked out a way to work with forms that have a redirect built into them. Sometimes the redirects are temporary in which case Convio will eventually be able to work with the webform.

• Some representatives are taking steps so that only constituents actually on the webform directly can submit the form. This can be done through complex java scripting that does things like keep track of the time between key strokes. Sometimes this is done by blocking Convio's IPs.

• Occasionally the webform will ask for data Convio does not have on the constituent. An example would be asking which municipality the constituent is a part of. This is not data Convio stores and thus it is not data that Convio can provide.

Sometimes Convio believes the webform or email** to be good but it is actually bad. When this happens, the constituents receives a thank you page indicating that their Action Alert was a success. Then when Convio learns that the webform or email was bad, if the client has configured the Action Alert to roll over to fax in the event of form failure, Convio will attempt to send the rep a fax with this data. In this case there should not be a duplicate alert from the constituent to the rep as the constituent will most likely not go to the reps site and send a duplicate alert.

There are a few reasons why a webform is known to be bad by Convio

• All of the reasons stated above could be true but Convio doesn't know there is a problem yet.

• The rep may have changed his/her URL.

• The rep may have changed his/her web form.

When Convio finds out that a webform has broken, we attempt to fix it. If it is a simple URL change, we can fix that. If the webform has changed, we have to reprogram our software to communicate with the new form. This usually works but sometimes doesn't. These changes may take a few weeks to be implemented within Convio. We expect to be able to make this process faster in the near future.

Once a fax has been sent, it is queued up, and sent over phone lines to the rep's office. Typically, a computer at the rep's office receives the fax and stores it in some way. Faxes fail for the usual reasons, e.g. the phone line died, the fax computer died, the phone line had too much noise on it and the fax could not be understood, the phone line could be busy, etc.

Emails also fail for the usual reasons, e.g. the rep's inbox is full, some server between Convio and the rep died, spam filters either at the server level or the email client (A.K.A. Outlook, Eudora, Lotus Notes, etc.) level filtered out the email.

Rarely, Convio will not have any webform, email, or fax data on the a representative. When this happens, the constituent will not be able to send an alert to a rep. If there are other configured audience members for the alert, the alert will go to those members. If that is the only audience member, the alert will not send.

• Representatives' emails are never assumed to be bad as that status can change at any moment. Convio always tries the email addresses. When the Action Alert is sent, it may take a few days for Convio to be alerted by the rep's email server that the email failed. This is when we will attempt to send the fax, if the alert is configured to do such.