I have been WAITING for Email in Drawloop for about 2 years now. Yep 4/12/2014 is when I specifically requested it from Drawlop. So, does it work. Let's see. Here is the blog post. Here are the help docs.

Scenario

You know how HTML Emails in Salesforce are completely ridiculous, right? Well Visualforce emails are great (See Emails), but they are a lot of work, and people who don't know HTML are scared off by them. (Oh, and I don't do VF Emails with Apex Controllers - just the standard controllers, so it's not like there is deployable code or anything).  

I have really extensively coded VF emails that have lots of If / Then statements - IF this field is true on the record, then show this paragraph etc. This is for event management and they need to know lots of different things that are different about every event. So some "flags" are on the Contact, some on the Campaign and some on the Event Registration object. 

Now, If / Then statements in Word are going to be just as complex, but Drawloop now has the Component Library I'm going to see if this makes it easier. But what's the bet you can't have merge fields in components - ooh yay you can!. And what's the bet that the word formatting is going to interfere or be different to the HTML formatting - yep it is. And what about images in Components - nope, of course not. Here's the help docs for component library. 

Rules

Here are my rules for emails. 

• NO CALIBRI - make your document plain Arial BEFORE you start. Modify the Normal Style. Go for Arial 10. 

Setting up the Document

• The blog post says nothing special is required. The help doc says include all your text in a single cell table. 
• The help doc says images must be embedded in the file - hmm, I hope that means I can merge images in. I need my letterhead logo. 

Steps

• Use the wizard to create a basic DDP - oops sorry, Document Package now. 
• Set the document properties to send as an Email Body - this is the main thing that makes it an email. This is in that weird cog icon in the weird flash based part of the screen. I do hope they fix this in Lightning. 

• Add a few fields to your word document and re-upload it. 
• Read the instructions - set the word document as the Email Template - IMPORTANT! 
  • The Select Email Template screen has now changed, and you can choose a document or an email as a template. Cool. 
• Test the email. 
• And as I thought, it's UGLY. UGLY. UGLY. 

OK, I give up for now. You can sort of send an email, but due to the lack of images, it is a no-goer at the moment.

So, let's try these Reusable Content chunks shall we? Let's see if we can get further with these. 

Component Groups

Component Groups only work with Enterprise Edition. I wonder why that limitation? 

Ooh it's Lightning. I like that apps are trying to look like Lightning now. 

Install

Follow the install steps http://help.nintex.com/en-us/docgen/docservices/Services/setup/componentLibrarySetup.htm

Create

• A component belongs to a component group.  
• This is the component. 

• Why is the box so small. 
• No ability to do images. 

• Wait, what? You can't CLONE components. Why? Surely this is the whole point of this, to have "similar" bits of text - similar means that you want to copy one and make minor changes. Cloning is important. 

Ooh Component Groups are really very interesting. Have a look at the bit around Bullets and Numbering in the help document http://help.nintex.com/en-us/docgen/docservices/Default.htm#Services/manageDDP/componentLibraryQuickStart.htm%3FTocPath%3DUse%2520advanced%2520techniques%7C_____2 This is very powerful what you can do with them. 

You know I'm not sure I would have ever thought to use Components within Component Groups. I would probably add that text to a custom object. But this is actually quite interesting as the Components themselves can have merge fields. Ooh full of possibilities. 

Still not sure about how you use the same components on different packages, but that's yet to find out. 

Run

TBA when I do more testing.