Fortunately, the person in charge of this had us run the email with Flash within our Corporate Communications office and lo and behold, with only 10 recipients we found that 4 of them could NOT view the Flash file!

And, because these users were within a rigid corporate environment, they could not use Adobe’s ‘free updater’ on their machines. Imagine the embarrassment if this (annual report) internal email actually went out to 10,000+ employees and 40% could not even see the CEO’s keynote Flash speech?

We fixed the issue (downgrading the Flash file to a version viewable by all machines) and tested again. After we tested internally, we then sent the file down to Legal and over to Public Relations and made sure the file worked correctly on their machines –by actually going to these offices and viewing it ourselves.

Once it launched, there were less than 5 users who couldn’t view the file, but a quick upgrade of their machines resolved the issue.

All told, it saved literally hundreds of hours of ‘reactive fixing’ by proactively testing prior to launch. The bigger the audience, the more important this becomes.

As the old saying goes ‘measure twice, cut once’. . . . .