VSys One: Volunteer Management Software

SendGrid

SendGrid is an online system that can provide SMTP relay if you don't have your own server, or if the one you have isn't suitable due to volume, spam blacklisting, or other reasons.

To have VSys send outbound mail using SendGrid,

Sign up for a SendGrid account.
On the "Settings" page in SendGrid, add one or more credentials which are allowed to send mail. These credentials will have a Name and Password associated with them.
Configure the SMTP E-mail Robot:
- Use smtp.sendgrid.net as the Server
- Check Server requires authentication and use the credentials you created above.
- Set SSL to either No SSL or Support SSL.
- Check Use non-standard port and set the port to 587.
- Send a test e-mail to verify your settings.

SendGrid isn't free and it's not included with VSys One or VSys Live.

Advanced SendGrid settings

Prevent SendGrid from transforming hyperlinks into tracking links	By default SendGrid will transform hyperlinks in your messages into tracking links. Clicking on the tracking link calls SendGrid's server so it can track that the link was followed. Check this to leave hyperlinks unchanged for all outbound e-mails. Note that if this is un-checked, you can still prevent tracking links for specific letter templates.
Check external server for SendGrid e-mail events	Checking this allows VSys to query external servers (either a centralized one or SendGrid itself) regarding the status of individual letters. If you provide a SendGrid API key then VSys queries SendGrid itself, otherwise it will use a specialized endpoint that is (usually) configured to accept SendGrid events.
SendGrid API key	(see below)
SendGrid teammate name	Used by the SendGrid API to limit e-mail status checks to only those sent by a specific subaccount in SendGrid. VSys will always only show the statuses of e-mails known to the current VSys database; setting this appropriately greatly reduces the number of irrelevant records processed.
SendGrid override last results retrieval	Normally VSys keeps track of the last known timestamp of any events retrieved from SendGrid, and when requesting new events it asks for only those after that timestamp. Use this to specifically override that value.
Use alternate SSL negotiation behavior when checking SendGrid statuses	Having trouble with VSys reaching the SendGrid or endpoint servers for results? Try changing the value of this field: it sets how VSys performs the SSL negotiation with the remote server.

SendGrid API key

Providing a SendGrid API key allows VSys to perform some special functions:

Adds the tools SendGrid E-mail status check and SendGrid Blocks Exporter.
Adds the VSys Anywhere tool SendGrid E-mail Statuses.
The SendGrid e-mail status retrieval scheduled task retrieves results directly from SendGrid rather than from a central server (this is much, much more efficient). Note that using this requires the SendGrid add-on "30 days of Email Activity History" which comes at an additional cost from SendGrid.
Enables the notification event SendGrid e-mail status checks.

The SendGrid API key must have the permissions "Email Activity", "Suppressions", "Tracking -> Open tracking" and "Tracking -> Open Tracking".