Why do I have to enter a recipient after selecting users in the VBO send emails operation?

Question

I'm using VBO module in D7. I created a table view listing users by some filter criteria. I want to send a mass mail to selected users. I'm using the VBO field bulk operations: user and selected the send email functionality. The view looks like that:

Selecting multiple users and hitting the send email execute button brings me to this form:

Why do I have to enter a recipient after selecting users in the view? What does that send email operation do if not sending emails to the selected users?

Is it my fault and I messed up the installation or did I miss some settings or configurations?

Answer 1

VBO does not provide the "send email" function. It is provided by core actions and it really doesn't know the context that it is being used in. Therefore, you need to insert a token in the "Recipient" field as mentioned in the help text just below the field e.g. user:mail , node:author:mail etc. I can't tell for sure what the base table your view is using based on your screenshot but it looks like you can use the token [user:mail].

If you would like to have this info prepopulated you need to use the views send module. It used to support VBO but it now provides it's own UI. It's a pain if you want to combine it with a VBO view as you get double checkboxes etc...

See http://drupal.org/node/575980 for more info

Answer 2

I think it is so that you can select which address to use. all tokens are available. you probably want to enter [user:mail] in most cases. works fine with vbo