Sending incoming email with user instructions

A good analogy for understanding user instructions is that they are macros for email. You can make Email Engine interaction easier for your users by creating custom actions that reduce the need to learn the Email Engine syntax of label/value pairs and variables. These custom actions are called user instructions. The following figure provides a sample scenario of how to create user instructions for your user community.

User-defined instruction templates automate actions to make it easy to perform common user actions. Like macros, you can create predefined submit and query actions with these instruction templates.


Related topics

Creating-and-storing-a-template-for-use-with-user-instructions

Creating-and-sending-user-instructions

Every user instruction must be associated with an email template. Templates provide generic layout for similar emails that are sent from or into the Email Engine, simplifying Email Engineinteractions for users. User Instruction templates enable you to associate a template with an incoming email through an entry in the AR System Email User Instruction Templates form.

Overview of using instruction templates

Administering-240.gif


Creating user instructions involves the following tasks:

  1. The administrator creates a template and adds the template to the AR System Email Templates form. The user instruction template looks the same as any other template.
  2. The administrator creates an instruction in the AR System Email User Instruction Templates form by entering an instruction name in the Instruction field.
  3. The administrator associates the template created in  step 1 with the user instruction name.
  4. The user sends an incoming email that contains the user-defined instruction (Action label/value pair) to the Email Engine. The email contains an Action label and a value corresponding to the valid character string in the Instruction field of the Email User Instruction Templates form. The value for the variable that appears after the Action label is extracted from the email, and the associated template is then executed.
  5. As a result, the Email Engineconstructs a message according to the template instructions and sends the message to the user.

 

Tip: For faster searching, add an asterisk to the end of your partial query. Example: cert*