Guide to all variables in notification emails

Heya @alexandra.culler ,

That might not be possible or practical unfortunately. While it might seem strange, it’s generally pretty common for most forum software to address users by their username across everything the forum does, including notification emails. It also acts as a useful username reminder.

The concern I’d have with changing this would be a possible increase in failed logins as people try using their first name to login all of a sudden, rather than their actual username. I can see where your marketing team are coming from and definitely feel free to suggest this one as an idea. But it’s generally easiest to go off what the forum software already knows - and also easiest for it to only use the default fields.

I hope this helps.

While I kind of like this idea @alexandra.culler, I also do agree with the points from @Blastoise186. Next to that, I could also imagine that some users get confused / worried by this: If users expect to be refered to by their username, but then receive a notification using their actual first name, they might wonder if their personal data is exposed to the public (or if they entered their private name as username).

Technically, the challenge here is that we do not have a default profile field for their first name which the notifications could use. In other tools like Hubspot you fill in all general customer data in a pre-defined format, hence there it is much easier for the system to add this to a mail. In our case, you would have to tell our notification system first which profile field to use, as the field has a different ID across all communities. This adds another layer of complexity to this story, so it is not something we could add easily.

You are always open to create an idea about this here on our community. Then the product team will take this into account and also get back to you with their assesment.

Hi @Julian! Could I please check something? For the Activation Email, your guide says:

Thanks for sharing your question, @danvers!

We do send a notification after a user has registered via SSO, but that is a different email:
The activation email is for users to confirm their email address. It has a function to verify that an email address actually exists. Unless a user verifies the email address, this user will not be able to become active on the community.

What you are speaking about should be the welcome email. This email notification has merely informational purpose, to confirm the user is fully registered. It’s also being sent for communities with an SSO login, because it is an ideal opportunity to activate new users. E.g. you can present community-onboarding content and motivate users to start topics or post replies.

I hope this is answering your question, if you have more or if you are making different observations on your community, just let me know!

Thanks for the answer, @Julian! I was getting confused because the content of the two emails is identical in our community!

Hey all, 

Is there any way to modify the “New request to join group” email? It’s not a super important one, but it’s pretty hideous 

Hi Michael,

good question. I could not find this myself, but I have asked the team. I will let you know once I have an update for you.

Hello @Onomatopoeia thank you for you feedback. Could you clarify what you mean by "hideous"? Could you make share a screenshot with us (fo to check you are not having a display issue)?

To answer your question, right now we don't offer customisation for this email as it is received by only Control users and not end users. 

Does anyone have a hack for why this isn’t working?

It reads {topic_title) in the subject currently…

Email subject variable:

Yes, it’s actually a pretty easy fix.

If you replace 

with

It should work fine. XD

Ahh nice spot @Blastoise186 

@Julian the copy in this guide in the ‘new reply’ bit needs a tweak!

thanks for spotting this guys, I have fixed it now. :)

Thanks @Julian 

Another related question on this: is it possible to easily change the formatting of these variables? We want them to stand out from the rest of the copy. Bold or Italics would help..

Super-important point, and actually really easy to achieve. :)

If the variable has styling attached to it, our system will automatically also apply this in the final email being sent out.

Just make sure - It isnt possible to include preview to notification about new private message?

Currently, this is not possible, unfortunately, simply because private messages are extra-protected.

Having said that, with the new feature to report private messages, we have done some improvements which might have gotten us a bit closer to exposing this content in a preview (as we show the content now to a Moderator if a report has been submitted).

What do you mean, what kind of improvements - is the preview there in the future or not? 😀 If yes, when?

I have certain usecase in my mind and with that it is imporant that user can see the preview when user looks his/hers email.

Is there a variable that allows me to include the entire product update in the email instead of just a preview? Realize there may be some formatting to work through at that point on my side, but wondering if we can simply include our full Product Updates posts in the email for users who are subscribed.

Hi @Kenna 👋,

Unfortunately there’s no variable available right now for the entire Product Update, only a preview. I cannot think of a workaround for this in the system email for users that are subscribed to Product Updates. The only other alternative would be to copy + paste the Product Update and send using the Email Campaigns functionality.

Adding my plus one to the “universal variables/tokens” across CC idea. As a CS user, it feels like these should be referencing a CC data object (that would also be available to me in CS through an integration).

Also, I’m curious why some of the variables shown in the default HTML don’t appear in the dropdown menu. Does that mean they won’t work in the email? If so, that’s more than a bit misleading. 🤔

• Variables in CC system emails -- if they aren't on the list, do they still work?