Email

With the Designer you can create one or more Email templates and merge the template with a data set to generate personalized emails.

The Email context is the folder in the Designer that can contain one or more Email templates, also called Email sections. The HTML generated by this context is meant to be compatible with as many clients and as many devices as possible.

Email template

It is strongly recommended to start creating an Email template with a Wizard; see Creating an Email template with a Wizard.
Also see Designing an Email template for guidelines on the design. Designing HTML email that displays properly on a variety of devices and screen sizes is challenging. Building an email is not like building for the web. While web browsers comply with standards (to a significant extent), email clients do not. Different email clients interpret the same HTML and CSS styles in totally different ways.

When an Email template is created, either with a Wizard or by adding an Email context to an existing template (see Adding a context), the Email context folder is created along with other files that are specific to an Email context; see Email context.

Only one Email section is created at the start, but you can add as many Email sections as you need; see Email templates. However, when the Designer merges a data set to generate output from the Email context, it can merge only one of the sections with each record; see Generating Email output.

Email templates are personalized just like any other template; see Personalizing content.

Sending email

When the template is ready, you can change the email settings (see Email header settings) and send the email, directly from the Designer, or via Workflow. To test a template, you can send a test email first.

Output generated from an Email template, can have the following attachments (and they will be attached in this order):

  • Inline image attachments (in the order in which they are encountered in the email).

  • The contents of the Print context, in the form of a single PDF attachment. (Compression options for PDF attachments can be specified in the Email context's properties; see Compressing PDF attachments.)

  • Attachments specified in the head of the email; an image or a PDF leaflet for example. These can be dynamic. (See Dynamic attachments: creating file names based on data fields.)

  • The output of the Web context, as a self-contained HTML file.

Attaching the Print context and/or the Web context is one of the options in the Send (Test) Email dialog.

These options are also available in the Create Email Content task in Workflow.

See Email attachments and Generating Email output.