Types of email templates

You can create specific templates for various functions. This topic presents an overview of the different types of templates, which are all described in more detail later in this section.

In this topic:

Incoming and outgoing mail templates

You can create separate templates to specify different formats for incoming and outgoing mail.

• Content templates — Used for outgoing messages. These templates can be associated with a specific form and contain the fields and their corresponding values relating to a specific record. They can also contain plain text or reserved variables.
  
  You can create these templates in a text editor (shown in the following figure), or export them by using Developer Studio, selecting the form and fields that are to be contained in the template. The content template can also contain formatting instructions and label/value pairs to specify a header, footer, result, or status template. A content template is attached by using the AR System Email Messages form or by using workflow with filters and escalations.
  
  A plain text content template
  (Click the image to expand it.)
  
  
  When using a content template with workflow, ensure that you include the fields specified in the content template in the Fields tab of the Notify action. Content templates can also be formatted in HTML, similar to the result template shown in the following figure.
• Header and footer templates — Used to place lines of text or a graphic at the beginning or end of a message. They can be specified in the outgoing email using the AR System Email Messages form. If they are specified in content templates or an email body as label/value pairs, they will be applied to the email reply.
  
  An HTML header and footer template
  (Click the image to expand it.)
  
  
• Result templates — Defines the format to use when replying to an incoming instruction with the results of an action. A label/value pair must be specified in the email containing the action. Result templates can be either HTML or plain text.
  
  Result template – HTML
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• Status templates — Used when the execution of an incoming instruction results in an error. A label/value pair must be specified to include specific status information in the email or content template. Status templates can be either HTML or plain text. (For more information, see Reserved variables.)
  
  An HTML Status template
  (Click the image to expand it.)
  
  

User-defined instruction templates

User-defined instruction templates enable administrators to associate a template with an incoming email by way of an entry in the AR System Email User Instruction Templates form. When the user sends an email with the appropriate entries, the Email Engine executes the relevant template.

Using this feature, the administrator can set up variable substitutions to be used in an email with minimal input from the user. The associated template supplies the rest of the information. For example, the template shown in the following figure logs the user Demo in to the server reepicheep, queries the HD Incident form for all tickets with an urgent status, and returns the full information about all fields that this user has access to. But all that the user needs to do is send an incoming email with the Action label/value pair that identifies the user instruction, for example, Action: Urgent.

A user-defined instruction template
(Click the image to expand it.)

User-defined templates look the same as other templates and are stored in the AR System Email Templates form. For more information, see Action label and Sending incoming email with user instructions.