Sending the email¶
Once a week has groups, two things appear: the Commit panel on the right of the week board — finalize, lock, send, discard — and The email section below the board, showing exactly what will go out plus everything you need to send it yourself if you'd rather.
What participants receive¶
One individually addressed email per placed person — never a BCC blast. Each copy names the recipient's group, carries your roster's opt-out link, and ends with that person's personal "Stop receiving these emails" link. Replies go to your address, so "can't make it this week" lands with you, not a robot.
Wording¶
The Wording card holds three fields, each saved with the week — leave any empty to use the default:
- Subject line — default "Coffee with Colleagues — week of Aug 10"
- Opening paragraph — default "Here are this week's coffee pairings. Find half an hour, grab a coffee together, and talk about something other than work."
- Sign-off — default "Enjoy, The Coffee Crew"
Press Save wording — only saved wording is emailed. If you've typed changes and press Finalize or Send without saving, the confirmation dialog warns you first. On a locked or sent week the wording shows read-only; reopen the week to change it.
Finalize, lock, or send it yourself¶
A draft week's Commit panel offers:
Finalize and send — the normal path. It emails the pairings to everyone placed, locks the week, and counts it toward repeat-avoidance. Done.
Lock without sending — locks the week (it immediately counts as history) but emails nobody yet. Useful when you want to settle the groups now and send later: the locked week offers Send the announcement whenever you're ready, or automatic sending will email it at the scheduled time.
Discard draft — throws the groups and wording away; the week returns to not-generated. (With automatic sending on, the week will simply be regenerated and sent at the scheduled moment — the dialog says so.)
Prefer your own mail client? The composer's cards make manual sending a three-copy job:
- Subject — one Copy button.
- BCC — Copy addresses gives every recipient, semicolon-separated the way Outlook wants them (already excluding anyone who paused or left since generation).
- Message — Copy formatted puts real formatting on the clipboard so Outlook keeps the layout; Copy plain text is the fallback, and a plain-text version sits under the preview.
If you send manually, still press Lock without sending — otherwise the week never counts as history and the matcher may repeat those pairings soon.
Reopening¶
A locked or sent week offers Reopen for editing, which unlocks the board. Two things to know:
- Reopening does not unsend anything already emailed.
- Finalizing again emails everyone again — so after reopening a sent week, prefer fixing things by hand and telling the affected people directly, unless a full re-send is what you want.
Pourover won't let you forget which is which: a reopened week that was already emailed carries an "already emailed once" badge, and the Finalize and Send confirmations spell out that pressing them means a second announcement for everyone.