Help Needed - Email Template for multiple children

[kitschensync]

I'm trying to write an email template that automatically sends one email listing the name of each newly created child within a space.

For example, pasting 5 files into a folder at the same time with the template/rule active would send one email listing the names of the 5 children.  Having 1 email for each individual file is easy but I can't figure this out.

Can anyone help with this?

[jpotts]

That's a tough one. The rule has no way of knowing when the last file in a batch was pasted. I believe the only way you'd be able to make this work would be if it was a system, not a person, that was putting the documents in the folder. Then, you could make sure that the system used a specially-named trigger file that would be used to trigger the rule. The rule needs to determine which files were added as part of a particular batch. For example, if there were older files already in the folder, or if two people are adding batches of files to the folder simultaneously. One way to handle that is to have the trigger file be a manifest. The manifest has a list of all of the files added in that batch. The rule triggers off of the manifest, and then used its contents to gather up the files in the batch.

Jeff

[mrogers]

Indeed that is a "tough one."    

There are several ways I can think of doing this but first here are a list of questions,  
1) Jeff already raises the question of how you know the batch is finished.
2) I'd add does your email go to the creator of the files?   Seems a bit strange since the creator knows about the files.
3) what's the relationship between files uploaded and the email?   What would happen if user a uploads 2 files, while user b uploads a few more.
4) Or is the requirement to simply know the last 5 files uploaded. Or is that last 5 files per site?