Send an Email
Before you create a Process step that sends an email, you should create a message template to use. A Process step can send an email to a specific contact or an Email to Contact field. You must designate the email account on a Contact record.
The email sends from the User Contact specified in the Process Manager field on the Process record or the Specific User field on the Process Step record. If the email's Reply To field is different than the Email From field, then the Reply To field value is the user specified in the Process Step record. If the Reply To field is the same as the Email From field, you don't need to enter a value here.
- To Specific Contact: If you always want to notify the same contact, select them in this field. Make sure they have an email address on their Contact record.
- Email to Contact Field: If you want to dynamically look up the contact, use the Related Table Field Name Lookup convention to find the Contact_ID record. This must be configured properly. It may be on the record itself or one or two tables removed. Generally, the value in this field ends in "Contact_ID". You must also ensure the Contact records used by the lookup have valid email addresses. See Dynamic Lookups.
- Email Template: Select a message template record. Merge fields on this template must pertain to the same page identified as the Table Name on the Process record of this Process Step. Also, be sure the Reply To Contact is set so the appropriate person receives any replies to this email.
If you plan to specify a single contact, it's simple to set up this step. If you plan to dynamically look up a recipient contact, we recommend using the Advanced Search tool on the page to get the exact syntax to search for that contact record.
Email Templates
If you plan to use merge fields in the message to clearly communicate which record triggered the email, keep in mind you can only use some merge fields.
Data Merge Fields
The field list for the Table Name associated with Process are available as Data Fields. You can identify these as the column headers on the All Records view of the page set in the Table Name of the Process. These are also the Data Fields you see in the New Message tool for pages configured to use this tool.
If you are a SPoC with rights to the System Setup Page called Pages, you can open the Page that is the main page (Table Name) that triggers this process. The merge fields are listed in the Default Field List. Place these in brackets anywhere in the body or subject of your message.
Here are some advanced notes:
- For Processes, Data Merge Fields take precedent over Contact Merge Fields (below).
- For example, if Nickname appears in both lists, then the value merged may not be the value you want. It may be the value in the record the email is about rather than the recipient.
- For this reason, ensure data field names are distinct from contact field names. To ensure you merge the right value, change the default field list of the page to be Participant_Nickname or something more appropriate.
- You can edit the page record to increase the scope of available merge fields.
- Any Data Fields you include in your template must be within brackets and must have the same format as the Data Field (including any underscores).
Contact Merge Fields
The recipient of the email is the Contact for any Contact Fields. These correspond to the Contact Fields in the New Message Tool.
- For Processes, the Data Field replaces Contact Merge field with the same name as a Data Field.
- For example, if Nickname appears in both lists, then the value merged is the value in the record the email is about rather than the recipient.
- Contact Merge Fields are defined on the server, and you can contact Support to add more. They do not have to be from the Contacts record, but you can use a string generated by the Advanced Search Tool from the Contacts page.
Special Tokens
You can use the following token to represent the ID of the Record. This is useful to send links to a specific Platform record, for example:
[dp_RecordID]