Editing System Templates
When you first get your site, it is best practice to read through all your email templates and make sure the message is the appropriate message you want to relay to your applicants for the specific event that triggers the email to go out. If the message is not the appropriate message for your organization, you will need to edit them, personalizing them to fit the needs of your organization.
Best Practice: Before editing your email templates it is best to review them as a group with the other members of your staff and to decide on your branding strategy. Then you can edit your templates accordingly by starting with the System – Global templates. Maintaining a procedure for how emails will be handled in your organization for applications that are created in the future is critical.
Exercise 1
- Step 1: Open the Notification Center.
- Step 2: In the Select, an Application field, select the application form that you want to edit the template for or choose the “Select” to view and edit the System – Global templates.
Note: If editing a template that is in every application, you will need to select each separate application and make the change to the same template in each application separately.
- Step 3: Select the template you want to edit, by clicking on the Template Name under the Template Name Column. (select the Application: Submit Confirmation for this exercise)
- Step 4: The edit email template will open, like the example below:
- Step 5: Make any appropriate changes to the email template by typing those changes directly into the editor box.
- Below is an explanation of the items in the email template.
- Template Type: The type of template, system template, or custom template
- Copy an existing template or create a new one: This is an automatic default depending on the type of template and cannot be updated.
- Template Name: The name of the template.
Note: When editing system templates the Template Name cannot be edited.
- Template Description: Brief description of the template’s purpose, only internal staff can view this.
- Email Subject: To add a subject line to your email, enter the Email Subject in this field.
Best Practice: Place the name of your Organization in the Subject Line: (ex. Change subject line to (Organization Name) – Your application has been received).
- Template Content: The content information for the email template. Content can be entered using either of the following tabs:
- Design Mode: The design mode editor works like using editing features in Microsoft Word. Type the information into the body of the editor as you would be typing and formatting it in a Microsoft Word document. You can also copy and paste the formatted text from other documents.
- HTML Text: You can create email templates using HTML tags by clicking on the HTML Text tab present beside the Design Mode tab. Enter the HTML tags with the content and it will display all the content as formatted.
- Available Merge Fields for Custom generated templates: To the left of the editor’s box are Available Merge Fields that you can copy and paste into your email. Highlight the red Merge Field item only, being sure to include the {} on both sides of the item, right-click, copy and paste into the body of your email. (See the section: Using Merge Fields for a more detailed explanation of what each is mapping to in the site).
- These are auto-populated fields that the administrator can use when setting up an email template. When you send an email, these fields will automatically be populated with the desired data. For example, if the administrator chooses {FirstName}, it will automatically change to the applicant’s actual First Name, while sending a mail.
Note: Use caution not to add extra spaces or delete any of the fields when copying it. Each template has specific Merge fields available in the field you are looking for is not listed in the column to the left then it is not available for this specific template.
- Step 6: After you have completed the edits, click on the Update button to save your changes.
- Preview: This allows you to see a layout preview of what the email will look like when sent.
- Cancel: Click the Cancel to cancel any changes you have made.
- Step 7: After you have updated your Template, the system will return you to the list of Global Templates.