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.

Oh FFS Images just don't work well.

Embed an image in the doucument - it doesn't download in the email.
Use the Include Image from URL Syntax <<Contact_MyField__Image>> and it doesn't work
Use Link to File and include a publicly accessible image from Salesforce and it doesn't download in the email

Salesforce > Email and Reusable Content in Drawloop > image2017-1-6 18:42:14.png

HOW are you meant to include an image in your email? Grrr!

HOW DO YOU SET THE EMAIL SUBJECT?

There is no option anywhere to set the email Subject?

How can you auto send this email without a Subject?

How can you include merge fields in the subject without a Subject?

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.

Salesforce > Email and Reusable Content in Drawloop > image2017-1-6 17:15:33.png

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 NOPE, I get an error and can't continue.
- Include this Error Id if you contact Drawloop Support: 68bf795f-17c5-4d1e-8017-32c9df895687
- Off to Drawloop Support.
- Of course I could not let this go, and tried and tried again.
- It works from Contacts. So let's continue working this from Contacts.
And as I thought, it's UGLY. UGLY. UGLY.

The file is STILL attaching as a PDF even though I have asked it not to. AND The PDF is 0kb and is not downloadable so it looks really terrible, like you are sending a phishing scam.

I have tried

Ensuring Output Filename is not entered
Ensuring Email as email body is selected
Ensuring that Document Output Type on the delivery option is not entered.

NOTHING. THIS DOES NOTHING!

I tried to Dynamically Include Template Files - it caused an error.
I even tried Optional and it said it must be included, so that's why the Dynamically included did not work.

HOW DO YOU NOT GET THE FILE TO ATTACH?

ARE YOU MEANT TO DELETE IT EVERY TIME? So NO Automated documents then?

OK, I give up. You can sort of send an email, but it is no better, well actually worse, then a bog standard HTML Email template. Granted, I haven't tried complex editing scenarios, but if I can't get a stupid logo in the top of my email, It's just not going to happen is it.

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

Look, Component Groups really do belong to individual document types, so that makes them really kind of limiting, I think.

A component belongs to a component group. This is good for organisation.
This is the component.

Salesforce > Email and Reusable Content in Drawloop > image2017-1-6 19:17:24.png

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

Look, we all know that the Rich Text boxes in Salesforce are a bit, ok well, quite crap. See Rich Text and HTML Editors.

But we also know that Salesforce need to replace their Rich Text Editors everywhere due to CKEditor not working with Locker Service. I'm sure that will be soon, because they want Locker Service to be enabled in prod.

So until Quill is enabled in Summer '17 I'm going to hold off on saying too many bad things about rich text.

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.

I had a bit of a worry when I went to component groups and there wasn't any after I had just created one with two components. So obviously you have to SAVE your component group before adding Components. Luckily you can add existing components to component groups.