Switch from Campaign Monitor to Mailchimp [8,8,1.0]

stenington commented 5 years ago

This will involve changing the automatic mailing list registration code to talk to Mailchimp instead of Campaign Monitor, and potentially facilitating the configuration and import/export of current lists between the services.

hellafitz commented 5 years ago

Context: Mail Clients 2019 doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fBol5jmQVCXSvh556UFpXIDKfjhHyDQi6lCeeVuMSp4/edit

stenington commented 5 years ago

Coordination doc here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rPZItMmzdI1_nHjYH8zQUY3T30oSFKSfvkAQ5TcaIJk/edit#

stenington commented 5 years ago

The marketing team will handle closing down the Campaign Monitor account when they're done with the data there, our job is to flag when the platforms are all off of that API.

The timing is working out such that we don't need to import anything from Campaign Monitor to Mailchimp, we can set up brand new 2020 audiences there.

As for GDPR, our consent forms include email opt-in, so if possible we should mark that on subscribers through the API.

stenington commented 5 years ago

I'm having a hard time not introducing my own scope-creep here. A couple things I'm noticing and tempted to fix:

CreateSend (the Campaign Monitor API library) isn't well isolated. I'm tempted to introduce a MailingList abstraction that captures the interactions with the system (and allows e.g. custom variables to be expressed more naturally) and then translates that to API calls. That module would then be the main place we'd swap in Gibbon (the Mailchimp API library).
Maggie didn't want location data sent for students, and on season registration it looks like location data isn't sent. But if a profile gets updated by the user, it looks like the code updating the mailing list may provide location data for students.
We allow parent accounts to opt-in to the mailing list, but I'm not sure that's handled correctly if a student updates the parent contact info in their account. It looks like a parent might get signed up without consent that way, or if not it relies on the API failing in a subtle way.
I see rake tasks designed to help correct the mailing lists, and I see code that would let failed API calls pass through with just a log message. So if we're not watching logs carefully or regularly running the correction tools, the mailing lists could possibly get well out of sync. If we want to lean more heavily on the correction tools, it may make sense to step back and design a process with Maggie for periodically updating and confirming our lists.

stenington commented 5 years ago

So the way forward here is to try to

do a fairly straight swap of the API libraries
monitor for how error-prone the mailing list sign up is in practice, and
write tickets for the more detailed follow ups

For a swap of API libraries, I would expect the following things to be true:

As a [Student/Mentor/Judge], when I am registered for the season, I'm also signed up for the appropriate mailing list.
As a Parent, when I sign the consent and opt in, I'm signed up for the parent mailing list.
As a Parent, when I sign the consent and don't opt in, I'm not signed up for the parent mailing list.
As an admin, when I edit a [Student/Mentor/Judge] account's email, the new email is updated in the appropriate mailing list.
As a [Student/Mentor/Judge], when I edit my email address, the email address is updated in the appropriate mailing list.
As an admin, when I delete a [Student/Mentor/Judge], their email is removed from that mailing list.

Rake tasks for Campaign Monitor can be removed instead of replaced; we'll write new tasks later if needed. Error handling can also be a best-guess sort of thing since we'll be monitoring and CreateSend and Gibbon don't have the same semantics around their exceptions.

Probable follow-up tickets are:

Double-check on RA approval: does that still happen? If so, are mailing list signups managed appropriately?
Does location data get sent in for students when they edit their email address? Maggie didn't want student location data in Mailchimp.
Are Parents signed up for the mailing list incorrectly when a student changes their parent email address?

A refactoring to better isolate the API libraries may or may not be a part of this work.

stenington commented 5 years ago

Putting this in test, but I plan to do a round of my own testing first before we assign it out for QA.

stenington commented 5 years ago

Potential QA checklist:

Starting assumptions

Signed up when registering

[x] As a Student, when I am registered for the season, I'm also signed up for the appropriate mailing list.
[x] As a Mentor, when I am registered for the season, I'm also signed up for the appropriate mailing list.
[x] As a Judge, when I am registered for the season, I'm also signed up for the appropriate mailing list.

Parents can opt in/opt out

[x] As a Parent, when I sign the consent and opt in, I'm signed up for the parent mailing list.
[x] As a Parent, when I sign the consent and opt out, I'm not signed up for the parent mailing list.

Admin changes reflected in mailing list

[x] As an admin, when I edit a Student account's email, the new email is updated in the appropriate mailing list.
[ ] As an admin, when I edit a Mentor account's email, the new email is updated in the appropriate mailing list.
[x] As an admin, when I edit a Judge account's email, the new email is updated in the appropriate mailing list.

User changes reflected in mailing list

[x] As a Student, when I edit my email address, the email address is updated in the appropriate mailing list.
[x] As a Mentor, when I edit my email address, the email address is updated in the appropriate mailing list.
[x] As a Judge, when I edit my email address, the email address is updated in the appropriate mailing list.

Removed from list when deleted from platform

[x] As an admin, when I delete a Student, their email is removed from that mailing list.
[x] As an admin, when I delete a Mentor, their email is removed from that mailing list.
[x] As an admin, when I delete a Judge, their email is removed from that mailing list.

Notes about Mailchimp

The test audiences are:

TG Staging 2020 students
TG Staging 2020 mentors
TG Staging 2020 judges
TG Staging 2020 parents

We don't collect parents' first and last names separately, so the Parent list only gets NAME as a merge variable, where the other lists have FNAME and LNAME.

Also, I have left GDPR fields disabled on these audiences since that should be covered in the consent forms and we can assume the same permissions across the board. That was easier than coordinating the correct marketing permissions between the audiences and the platform to get started.

Edge cases

If a student has to change their parent's email and the parent selects to opt out after having opted in, that won't be reflected correctly in the mailing list.
Parent emails are not deleted from the parents list when students are removed from the app.
RAs are not subscribed to the mailing list on sign up, but if you change their approval status they may be added or removed from the list.
Users who have logged in and been registered for the 2020 season prior to the PR for this getting deployed may not work correctly.

stenington commented 5 years ago

I worked through the 6 items from the QA list above pertaining to students or parents, and it looked like they were working. I think I'm ready to hand this over to the team for more complete QA.

stenington commented 5 years ago

@rsgonzal see above, I'm ready for this to get looked at by other people, but be aware there's a lot to keep straight!

rsgonzal commented 5 years ago

As admin, staging isn't letting us change the email address for mentors. We're clicking save changes but it doesn't record. Stays on the same screen. When changing student addresses it goes back to the previous page and is recorded

rsgonzal commented 5 years ago

@stenington signed up as a judge and was not added to the mailing list

stenington commented 5 years ago

@rsgonzal can you give me more details? I just signed up as a judge and it did add me, so I want to figure out what I did differently.

rsgonzal commented 5 years ago

my bad! got it now. all looks good minus the admin editing mentor email, opened #2239 for followup

read through the notes and edge cases with @mjaris and no red flags arose.

Iridescent-CM / technovation-app