SP2010: Mass email from custom view in custom list

Question

In Sharepoint 2010 Designer, is it possible to mass email people in a custom list from a custom view? For instance:

1. I have a custom list called Package Pickup
2. The list pulls information from our users such as Name and Email and stores it
3. I created a custom view to show those who did not pick up their packages.
4. Maybe as a HTML button with a mailto link, I would like to grab the email addresses and open an email box in Outlook. The user can customize the message if they choose.

Is any of this functionality built into Sharepoint? Or would this need to be custom coded? If so, are there any recommendations on how to proceed? I don't have access to VB Studio, SP Foundation or importing third-party apps.

Answer 1

This will be hard to implement in a workflow. Because of two issues

1. Get the list of emails - The main reason is to get all items, which require some kind of loop. In 2010 this is not supported out of the box
2. Run every day and sent emails (I am not sure about how frequently you want this to execute.

For #1 above we can solve it using some workarounds are explained here. Then read the items and form the email as a comma separated list into a workflow variable

For #2 - The technique is to create two identical workflows (Say A and B). The logic in A

Pause 24 hours
Start Workflow B

Logic in B

Pause 24 hours
Start Workflow A

Update

You can easily do this using JavaScript and SharePoint (client object model or WebServices)

1. Handle page load event $(document).ready()
2. In this Using SPServices get the list items. http://spservices.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=GetListItems. Here you can specify a CAML query to filter the list items to get only those who didn't picked up the packages
3. Now iterate through the items and form the email in the format MailTo:[email protected];[email protected] etc. Check this

4. Put the result in a hyperlink as

   <a href="' + variableWithEmails + '"'>Mail To</a>
   

Now click the link will open the default email client.