Although this is a mashup plugin, meaning it is normally added to an existing Rails application, we will be creating a new project to show how it can be used. This is the process flow of the mashup:
The marketing user will create a marketing message template with the email, SMS, and fax messages.
The reseller selects the message template to send and provides a link to the list of contacts to send the message to, then creates a message-sending job.
At regular intervals, the system will check for pending jobs, process them and send all messages to the respective contacts.
This is what we will be doing in the next few pages to implement this mashup:
Create a Rails project
Configure the database access and create the database
Create the standard scaffolding
Allow the marketing users to create the message templates
Allow the reseller to provide contacts data through a remote link
Create the rake script to send messages at regular intervals
This mashup's main processing is not in...