Email and Reusable Content in Drawloop

Owned by Jodie Miners
Last updated: Apr 21, 2022

It's been since 2017 that I last used Emails in Drawloop. Do you think there would be an improvement? Well not so fast. Yes, you can now use Images in Emails but there is still such a gap between Buttons (Classic) and Component (Lightning). It seems you can't edit emails in Lightning before sending! Here's 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 has some info about images also, but not much else. 


Email Subject

To set the Email Subject you need to edit the Email layout of Delivery Options to add the Subject Field.

The Subject then works with Merge Fields 

Steps

  • Use the wizard to create a basic Package 
  • Set the document properties to send as an Email Body - this is the main thing that makes it an email. T
  • 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 - when run via a Button. 


A note about Contacts

To run an Email a Contact must be selected. This is so you can view the email in Activities on the Contact record plus the record it's related to. 

You can't select a Contact in the Lightning Component (god only knows why). 

You can put the Contact ID on the button. BUT, it can't just be the lookup to Contact (eg MyContact__c, it has to be the ID - even thought that is just the ID, no they want a text field with an ID), so you have to create a formula field for the MyContact__c.ContactID to include that in the button. RIDICULOUS. 


No Editing in Lightning

You can send the email via a Button, which uses the old classic way of sending, which is view the email in a whole screen. It is very slow and very very UGLY.

You can send the email via the Lightning Component but you can NOT edit it! HOW RIDICULOUS! 



PDF

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.

HERE is the Trick! Thank you Drawloop support for getting back to me.

On the Email Delivery Option choose Separate PDFs

The only one I did NOT try!



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. 


Rich Text Box

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. 


Save Component Group

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.  

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

It looks like if you have an older version of Drawloop that you have upgraded, you have to ask Support to enable Component Groups. This is not so great, but once it's enabled it then works. 

TBA when I do more testing.