Email Content

If you need to use ...

You will have to

Text, which is the same for each email which is sent from this template (static text).

Type the required text in any of the fields.

For example:
- Notification of Incident:
- Incident was reported by:

Text, which will represent the value of the current record (dynamic text).

You will need to enter the relevant field, either by selecting it from the field picker, or by typing the field name within square brackets: [field name].

You can insert these at any position within a text or field.

For example:
Notification of Incident [Incident Number]:[Summary]

Relationships, which are "to many". For example Incident : People notified.

(In the Field Picker, these Relationships are denoted either as or as )

The way you need to treat these fields will depend on whether you are using it as part of the TO or CC field, or as part of the Message Body.

• When used in the TO or CC field:
  You will need to select the field which contains the Email Address, for example:
  
  - Send an Email to all People who need to be notified:
  [People notified:Email Address]
  
  - Send an Email to all Staff Members of a Department responsible:
  [Department responsible:Staff:Email Address]
  
• When used as part of the Message Body:
  You can only select the relationship itself, but you won't be able to select include individual fields of a to-many relationship. For example:
  - Correct: [People notified]
  - Not correct: [People notified:Email Address]

Attachments in the Email

To include any files which may be attached to a record, for example Supporting Documentation, you will need to just add the relationship to the File Component to the field Attached.

For example: [File Storage], or [Links to Minutes].

A link in the email, which will take the user back to the record which triggered the email.

The link can be simply created by clicking on the Insert Link button. This will generate the string "#Link to record#", which you can place in your message body.

After saving, this link will be displayed as follows in the email designer:

#WebRoot#view/Actions/[Action Number]

If you intend to take a user directly to a Page on a Form, you can simply add a '#' symbol plus the name of the page to that link, for example:

#WebRoot#view/Actions/[Action Number]?page=Action-Completion

A link in the email, which will take the user to the PARENT record of the record which triggered the email.

NOTE:
You can only use parent relationships if this parent will ALWAYS be there.

For example:

• OK:
  Action Progress back to Actions
• NOT OK:
  Actions back to Incident as Source of Action (because not all Actions will have an Incident as a source).

An example would be: from an Action Progress Record, you want a link directly back to the Action Record, rather than the Action Progress Record.

Follow these steps:

• Using the field selector, place the auto-number field representing the ID of the Parent Record (e.g.: Action Number) onto the Message Body.
  In our example, this would look like:
  
  [Action as source of Action Progress:Action Number]
  
• Now you need to precede the above string with
  #WebRoot#view/[Form Name]/
  
  In our example, this would translate to:
  
  #WebRoot#view/Actions/[Action as source of Action Progress:Action Number]

A link in the email, which takes the user to other parts of the Web Application which can be accessed via Smart URL.

Using Smart URL, it is also possible to create links to other parts of the application within an Email Action. These are for a:

• a Page on a Form:
  #WebRoot#view/[Form Name>>/[Auto-Number]?page=[Page Name]
  e.g. #WebRoot#view/Actions/[Action Number]?page=Action-Completion
  
• List View:
  #WebRoot#list/[Name of List View]
  e.g: #WebRoot#list/All-Actions
  
• BI Report:
  #WebRoot#report/[Menu Group Name/[Report Name]
  e.g: #WebRoot#report/Incident-Management/Incident-Report
  
• Dashboard:
  #WebRoot#dashboard/[Dashboard Name]
e.g: #WebRoot#dashboard/Environment-Management

NOTE: if any of the Pages, Views, Reports or Dashboards have a space in their name, you must replace that space with a '-'. For instance, instead of "All Actions", you need to use "All-Actions".

WARNING WHEN COPYING TEXT FROM WORD DOCUMENTS

While copying text from a Word Document will also maintain some of the formatting, please be aware that Word also inserts invisible control characters which may distort the layout.

Therefore, you may need to perform some 'cleaning up' after pasting text from a Word Document.

CAUTION WHEN FORMATTING THE EMAIL BODY

The email builder does offer rich text formatting, like bold or italics.

If you apply any formatting to a field, make sure that you include and highlight the square brackets ([, ]) of this field.

• Correct:
  Please review Incident [Incident Details] and send your comment.
• Incorrect:
  Please review Incident [Incident Details] and send your comment.

Supported Calendars:

this functionality was implemented using the iCalendar Format, which is supported by the most commonly used calendar tools in the market.

Amongst these products are:

• Microsoft Office Outlook
• Apple Calendar
• Google Calendar
• ...

If your organization is making use of a different calendar tool, please check with your vendor if it does support the iCalendar format.

Limitations:

Updating a calendar is a "one-way street". This means users will not be able to change a record in the application when they for example change:

• times or dates in the Calendar
• the content of the invitation

Sending Calendar Invitations

For the task of ...

I need to ...

Assessing if there is enough information available to create an invitation.

The DATES and TIMES which are necessary to create an invitation will be read from a field on the record - therefore you must have all the necessary information available as part of that record.

Exactly WHAT is required will depend on the circumstances. If you intend to

• create an entry which lasts a calendar day (an 'All Day Event'), you will need
  
  - a single date field only
  
  It can be used for the START DATE and the END DATE, the TIME fields won't be required.
  
  NOTE: for these type of events, the Reminder cannot be altered from it's default setting of 15 minutes (this is a limitation of the calendar tools themselves).
  
• create entries where the START DATE will be the same as the END DATE, but will last less than 24 hours, you will need
  
  - a single date field
  - two time fields (for start and end time)
  
• create entries which can last several days, and they are All Day Events, you will need
  
  - two date fields only (for start and end date)
  
• create entries which can last several days, and are NOT All Day Events, you will need
  
  - two date fields only (for start and end date)
  - two time fields (for start and end time)
  
  NOTE: for these type of events, the Reminder cannot be altered from it's default setting of 15 minutes (this is a limitation of the calendar tools themselves).

Adding an invitation to an email message

If you want to add an invitation to an email, tick the box for Calendar Event.

This will reveal the following parameters, where you can select the fields to define

• Start Date Field
• Start Time Field
• End Date Field
• End Time Field
• Reminders: In addition, from a lookup you can select if, and how long prior to the set date, any reminder should be triggered (see Notes below).
• Then add the fields you selected to the message body of your email.

NOTES:

• If you define an invitation with just a START TIME, and no END TIME, the application will default the duration of the invitation to one hour.
• All Day events will be marked as "Free' in the Calendar, whereas events with a Start and End Time will be marked as "Busy".
• The following variations are always invalid, and therefore will be ignored:
  - Invitations without a START DATE.
  - Invitations with an END TIME, but without a START TIME
• For events without a Start TIME, reminder cannot be altered from the default setting of 15 minutes (this is a limitation of the calendar tools themselves).

Limitations:

This functionality has the following limitations:

• only SINGLE LOOKUP fields can be updated via a reply.
• each reply will only update a single field.
  

Prerequisites

BEFORE you can successfully define a Reply Link, you will need to fully define the Email Responder Import process.

Sending Calendar Invitations

For the task of ...

I need to ...

Creating an Import Process to retrieve the Reply Email.

Before you can set up your Email template to include a response, you will need to have to create an Import of the type "Email Responder".

Adding a "Reply Link" to an Email

In the Email Designer, click on the Reply Link button. This will open a dialogue "Create Reply Link", where you:

• select the Lookup Field which will need to be updated by a reply, for example "Completion Category"
• select the Lookup Value to which the record needs to be set to, for example "Completed"
• select the corresponding Import for this Email Reply.
• Define the Link Text, which will be displayed in the email as the hyperlink, for example:
  "To set this task to COMPLETE, reply by clicking on this link."
• Save the link. You can place this link anywhere in the message container.

Allowing a user to have several reply options.

If the intention is to give the user several options, for example allow the user to also set the task to "Cancelled" or "Re-opened", repeat the above steps for each of the options the user should have.

RECOMMENDATION:

Prevent users to inadvertently 'break' the reply.

The crucial information to update the record is contained in the email Subject. For example:

{"Value":"9999999_1674","RecordUniqueId":"AFBWkBchgs3VpQjRIozaOCeG","AttributeId":"9999999_1695"}

Therefore, by default the reply email will contain the following text in it's message body:

### JUST CLICK SEND, DO NOT MODIFY THIS EMAIL! ###

Sending this email will set the field '<Field Name>' to '<Value>'

Email Actions

For the task of ...

I need to ...

Only sending an email when it's content (To, CC, Subject or Message) has changed.

This will prevent users from receiving the same email time and time again.

Just create an Email Action.

The prevention of sending out identical emails is standard behavior of the system.

Making sure that an Email IS being sent EVERY time when a record is saved.

To achieve this, it will be necessary to work the following workaround, which will ensure that the content of the email is changed EVERY time when the record is saved - even if the "real message" is unchanged.

• Add the following text, including the brackets, at the end of the Email Message:
  [bms_VersionNo]
• Highlight this text, again include the brackets, and set the font color to the same color as the background.
• Since bms_VersionNo will change every time the record is saved, the system will deem the email content as being changed, and will send the email.