Secure PHP Development- P101 pdf

Chapter 14E-mail Survey System IN THIS CHAPTER ◆ Designing a survey system ◆ Implementing a survey system ◆ Testing a survey system B EING ABLE TO SURVEYyour customers frequently is an i

As you can see, as a Tell-a-Friend system owner, you can see how many friends have been sent e-mails by the system (in the Friends column), how many sub-scribed (in the Subsub-scribed column), how many rejected subscription request by unsubscribing (in the Rejected columns), and so on

You can also see the top users who’ve given you new leads or possibly cus-tomers If you use promotions such as giveaways for the top ten originators, you can simply review this report from time to time and see who your top customers are who referred you to their friends

Security Considerations

Here we decided to allow anyone to add Tell-a-Friend forms using the taf_form_mngr.php application and restricted modify and delete privileges

However, you might want to restrict add form privilege to a certain list of IP addresses, in such case you have to modify the authorize () method in the taf_form_mngr.phpapplication

Summary

In this chapter, you learned to develop a Tell-a-Friend system that you can use with your e-mail campaign system, whether it’s in-house or outsourced via Internet ser-vice providers This tool can increase exposures and potentially increase customers for your organization; it’s widely used by both large and small companies around the world

Chapter 13: Tell-a-Friend System 471

Chapter 14

E-mail Survey System

IN THIS CHAPTER

◆ Designing a survey system

◆ Implementing a survey system

◆ Testing a survey system

B EING ABLE TO SURVEYyour customers frequently is an important requirement for business today Thanks to the pervasiveness of e-mail, you can now perform most of your surveys via e-mail

Customers provide valuable information when they participate, which benefits both the company and the customers

In this section, you’ll design a simple yet powerful survey system that can be managed by marketing personnel with a bit of HTML form knowledge The system functionality is shown in Figure 14-1

Figure 14-1: Survey system functional diagram.

Survey Message to Customer

Survey System Store Survey

Results

Dear Joe, Please participate in the following survey.

Are you happy with us [] Yes [] No Are you sure [] Yes [] No

1

2

3

4 Survey AdministratorManage Lists, Forms

Manage Surveys Show Survey Reports Submit

473

A typical survey process can be described as follows:

1 The survey system sends an e-mail survey to the customer.

2 The customer fills out the survey from within the e-mail client program

and submits the results by clicking on the Submit button

3 The customer survey results are stored in the survey database.

4 The survey administrator views the compiled survey result as a report.

In the following sections, you’ll develop a survey system that has the following features

Functionality Requirements

◆ Unlimited number of survey email (target) lists: Supports unlimited

number of survey email (target) lists The survey administrator can create many survey target lists

◆ Comma-separated value (CSV) file support: Survey target lists can be

created from CSV files

◆ Duplicate entry protection per list: When a list is added to the system,

the system should automatically detect duplicate entries within a list and should only add one instance of any e-mail address This will ensure that when a survey is executed no user ever gets two or more survey forms

◆ Unlimited number of questions: Supports an unlimited number of

ques-tions However, questions can be only multiple-choice or text data not exceeding the size limit used in the database The survey must support: text data, checkboxes, radio buttons, and drop-down menu selections as answers for questions

◆ Personalized survey form: Each survey form can be personalized using

the survey target’s first and last name

◆ Simple reporting: A simple tabular report to allow the survey administrator

to collect valuable insight into the customer’s understanding and perception

of the company

Now let’s look at the architecture of such a survey system

474 Part III: Developing E-mail Solutions

Architecture of the Survey System

Figure 14-2 shows the system diagram for the survey system you’re going to develop

in this section

Figure 14-2: Survey system architecture diagram.

There are two types of users in the system: the survey administrator and the cus-tomers who are the survey participants The survey system administrator user is able to perform the following tasks:

◆ Add or delete survey target lists The survey administrator can add a new

survey target list using the list-management component of the survey-management application suite

◆ Add or delete survey forms The survey administrator can add a new

survey form that can be used in a survey campaign A survey form is an HTML document that has all the survey questions in it This form is sent

as an e-mail to the target list and the response is collected using the response-management application

◆ Add or delete survey campaigns The survey administrator can add or

delete a survey campaign Each survey campaign consists of an existing

Survey Administrator

Survey Management Application Suite List Manager

Form Manager

Campaign Manager

Report Manager

Execution Manager Response Manager

List

Form

Survey

Report

Response

Customer

Objects

Survey Database

Chapter 14: E-mail Survey System 475