EasyEstimates Email Template and Formatting Help

EasyEstimates Email Template and Formatting Help

Introduction

With version 2.0 of EasyEstimates, a completely revamped method for formatting the email that Users receive after sending in an estimate or purchase is available. The EasyEstimates 2.0 email notification allows you to use the existing email notice with minimal or no changes or completely customize the email by adding in your company logo, additional text at any place, including only detail lines that you want to include, include product images, customize text formatting, and really control the email as much as you wish.

An email template is a specialized HTML or web page. You can use the template provided with EasyEstimates or create your own. It is specialized because EasyEstimates fills in values in the web page where you direct EasyEstimates to. Use a simple text editor, like Notepad, to edit templates.

Assigning or adding an email template

On the Email part of Activity Change page, the "Enable Email" box must be checked. Just select the template you wish to use next to "Email Template" and Save the changes. To add a new template, create a file with an extension of "tpl" and add it to the EasyEstimates directory on the Web server. EasyEstimates will automatically identify the file and include it in the template selection box.

Head and Body Includes

You can customize the overall look of the email by including additional HTML in either or both the HEAD or BODY sections. If you add a file named, Activity Name_head.htm , (where Activity Name is the name of your Activity) the contents will be included between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> statements for the email. If you add a file named, Activity Name_body.htm , (where Activity Name is the name of your Activity) the contents will be included after <BODY and before the closing ">" for the body statement statements for the email.

Email Template Contents

An email template allows for inclusion of any valid HTML. Since the email will be read not on the web server, references to files, such as <img src='http://sizzlingwebdesign.com/myimg.jpg' >, must be fully qualified (i.e. include the web site url)

The real power of the template is that EasyEstimates will fill-in the values the customer has selected and the totals EasyEstimates has calculated.

The following values can be filled in by EasyEstimates (spellings must be exact):

Customer Message: %custmsg%
Form Fields: %formemailfields% (includes all the form fields including Name, Email Address, Phone Number, and any other of the optional fields you've included)
Reference Number: %refnum%
All of the detail lines: %detaillines%
All of the detail lines but an alternate format from %detaillines%: %previewrows%
Customer Name: %custname%
Customer Email: %custemail%
Customer Phone: %custphone%
Input Field #1: %infield1%
Input Field #2: %infield2%
Input Field #3: %infield3%
Input Field #4: %infield4%
Input Field #5: %infield5%
Input Field #6: %infield6%
Text for a detail line: %line name_txt% (where line name is the name of the detail line)
Input value or selection: %line name_in% (where line name is the name of the detail line)
Detail line total: %line name_tot% (where line name is the name of the detail line)
Image displayed: %line name_img% (where line name is the name of the detail line) (note: this will display the image chosen by the customer, if that is used in your EasyEstimates Activity.

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