May 2023 Summaries

Transactional emails are automated emails triggered by user actions on web or mobile applications, requiring advanced logic like honoring user notification preferences and batching frequent messages. Courier's notification infrastructure helps pair email providers with transactional email features, making it easy to build production-ready systems and expand, monitor, and scale over time. This tutorial uses Twilio SendGrid via Courier's API to send transactional emails with Node.js, starting by integrating SendGrid with Courier, designing a transactional email template using the drag-and-drop editor, testing and verifying the email design, sending the email from an application using the provided code snippet, and debugging any issues that may arise.

Building a secure password reset flow using Courier and Next.js 13 requires setting up several services and configuration. A new Next.js web application is created, with Courier configured to handle SMS and email notifications. The app uses Vercel KV for token storage and routes token notifications based on user preferences. Client-side pages are built for creating a user, sending a password reset token, and verifying the token. Server-side routes process form submissions for creating a new user, sending a password reset token, and updating the user's password. Middleware is used to secure routes with authentication checks. The app uses Courier templates for SMS and email notifications, storing user profile and preference data in Courier and using Vercel KV for token storage.

As Head of Developer Relations at Courier, Carter Rabasa aims to serve the company's developer community by providing input on API specs, channeling feedback, supporting community events, and writing technical guides. With a background in coding since 1993, Rabasa has transitioned from being an engineer to a product marketer and then a developer relations professional, serving at Twilio for six years before joining Courier. He discovered his passion for DevRel while working at Twilio, where he led initiatives such as the CascadiaJS conference and serverless tools. Rabasa joined Courier because of its vision for building next-generation communications APIs and empowering engineers to build amazing products, and is now excited to meet the developers who are building on it.

Send limits are a new feature in the Courier app that allow users to manage notification rate limits, saving money by imposing spending caps on notifications and improving the customer experience by avoiding overwhelming users with too many notifications at once. Send limits can be applied globally or specifically for individual users or subscription topics, offering various levels of control over messaging costs and customer experience. There are different types of send limits, including global message limits, per-user message limits, per-user subscription topic limits, and limit exclusions, which allow users to set rules that bypass other limits for certain subscription topics. Send limits are useful for users who need to stay within a budget, provide a good customer experience, or want fine-grained control over notification limits. The feature is currently available only to business-tier customers, but interested users can request a demo of the offering.

One-Time Send is a feature that streamlines the process of manually sending one-off notifications using Courier's UI, supporting various channels and personalization through variables. It also offers scheduling capabilities, making it ideal for urgent updates or announcements. Additionally, auto multi-channel content generation simplifies content creation across multiple channels by leveraging existing content from other channels. Furthermore, notification template "last sent" field displays timestamps on the templates list page, providing a clearer picture of template usage. Quality-of-life enhancements have also been made to improve user experience.

One-Time Send is a powerful feature designed to simplify the process of sending one-time notifications through Courier's web app redesign, aiming to save time and streamline workflows for non-engineers across various departments. With its no-code approach, team members can now easily send notifications without relying on technical expertise, promoting efficiency and collaboration within organizations. One-Time Send is a versatile tool that can be used for a variety of purposes, such as engaging users for app growth, rolling out new features in closed beta, and sending surveys, among others. The feature offers flexibility to send notifications to various recipients, including individuals, multiple users, lists of users, or dynamically defined audiences, and includes options like scheduling and message expiration to fine-tune notifications for maximum impact. By empowering non-technical team members with One-Time Send, organizations can improve their communication efforts and reduce engineering time.

Today, we are embarking on a significant redesign of Courier's interface consisting of some new things, some old things in new places, and an overall reorganization of the information architecture. This redesign aims to address the challenges that come with the growth of our platform, where increased size and number of features leads to increased complexity, resulting in a product that may not be as intuitive for new users. We believe that this update will take us closer to a simpler and more organized Courier, setting the stage for more exciting improvements in the future.