How to update your email templates

HandsOn Connect provides the flexibility to allow users to customize the email alerts sent out by the system, and the email templates sent out by those alerts and the workflows that control them.

For this reason - when updates or bug fixes become available for email templates, correcting merge fields and improving on the messaging sent out by the system emails -- system administrators need to manually update their email templates.

If you've not customized your email templates in any way -- then its primarily a matter of replacing the contents of the exiting email template, with the 'new' content.

If you have customized your email template text in any way -- you will want to selectively review new email templates, and decide what content and merge fields you need to update.

Your System Administrator can edit the HandsOn Connect email templates to personalize them for your organization.

Your System Administrator can then edit the email templates

Go to Setup / Administration Setup / Communication Templates / Email Templates    and look in the folder HOC Email Templates.

You should see an email template that matches each of the ones found in the zipped archive.

Select your first email template and click on EDIT.  

Note that some of the emails are of template type HTML and some are of template type Text.  

Updating the HTML templates takes an extra step compared with editing one that is in text only.

 

Click on EDIT next to an email template name

Click on EDIT next to an email template name

Update the email description if your new version has an improved description.  (Feel free to update it further if you want to use your own language to make it clearer to you what the email template does).

 

SAVE the change.  

NOTE: We do not recommend renaming the email template names.  It may create problems with the email alerts and workflows that use them, requiring further updating on your part.

To edit the CONTENT of the email, click on the email template name itself:

To edit the CONTENT of the email, click on the email template name itself:

Then click on the "Edit HTML" button.

Then click on the "Edit HTML" button.

MOST of the emails will be of type html - which means you'll have to edit both the HTML version and the Text Version, as we'll demonstrate here.

If its a 'text only" template -- you'll only have to update the 'text version"

Edit the body of the email by copying the text from the .txt file, and by pasting the new content over the existing content.

Edit the body of the email by copying the text from the .txt file, and by pasting the new content over the existing content.

OR:  If you have customized your emails and want to retain some of your prior customization -- just edit the sections that need to be updated.  Pay particular attention to the corrected merge fields.

FIRST: Update the Subject Line   (this isn't necessary if the subject line hasn't changed)

SECOND: Update the Content of the email.  Select ALL of the content and set the font to Arial and the size to 9 point.  (This is the default -- if you want bigger text in all your emails you can choose to do so).

OPTIONAL:  Click the PREVIEW button to see what the email will look like (font sizes, etc).  The preview will still be showing you the merge fields however, this just shows you how it will look generally.

If you are satisfied with the look of the email:

Then click SAVE

Note:  If you are pasting selected text into an existing email template, you MAY find that your pasted text has a different font size than the rest of the content.

To correct this -- after you are through editing, select ALL of the email's content, and use the Font and Size picklists in the Formatting Controls and set everything to Arial 9 point.

Update the Text version also - for users who cannot view html-based emails

Update the Text version also - for users who cannot view html-based emails

Click on "Edit Text Version"

You already have the text version conveniently on your clipboard. So just paste it in!  

Click Save.

If you have customized the template and changed the text (or made selected updates on your email template) - Use the "Copy text from HTML Version" button.

If you have customized the template and changed the text (or made selected updates on your email template) - Use the "Copy text from HTML Version" button.

You'll get a warning the all existing text will be overwritten.  

In many cases, you'll find that some additional spaces are placed between lines.  Quickly remove the extra spaces so that the text version looks good. (Not waste much time on this though, most people view email as html so few will ever see the text versions.)

Click SAVE.

If you want to test the email template further, you can then choose to Send a Test and Verify Merge Fields.

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