Managing e-mail templates

Kentico sends automatic system e-mails for various purposes, for example workflow notifications. The content of such e-mails is determined by templates according to the type of the given e-mail. Many Kentico features send e-mails based on predefined templates that are included in the default installation.

To edit the templates, open the E-mail templates application. Editing templates allows you to alter the e‑mails sent by the system to match the required design and/or language.

There are two types of e-mail templates:

Global - only users with the Global administrator privilege level can manage global e-mail templates. Choose the (global) option in the Site selector.
Site-specific - allow you to override the global templates for specific websites. You need to select the appropriate Site and create a new template with a Code name that matches the corresponding global template.

The system only contains global templates by default.

When editing e-mail templates, the following properties are available:

Property	Description
Display name	The name of the template displayed in the administration interface.
Code name	Serves as a unique identifier of the e-mail template (for example in the API).
E-mail type	Identifies the type of functionality to which the template is related. This can be used to categorize and filter e-mail templates.
From	E-mail address used as the sender (From) address of the e-mail.
Cc	E-mail addresses of copy recipients.
Bcc	E-mail addresses of blind copy recipients (receive a copy of the e-mail, but cannot see the addresses of other recipients in the mail).
Subject	Subject of the e-mail.
HTML version	Defines the content that is used for the template when sending e-mails in HTML format. Supports all standard HTML tags and syntax (tables etc.). You can select the preferred format using the Settings -> System -> E‑mails -> E‑mail format setting.
Plain text version	Plain text version of the e-mail template.

Example of the HTML version of a template:




<html>
  <head>
  </head>
  <body style="font-size: 12px; font-family: arial">
    <p>
      This is an automatic notification sent by Kentico. The following document is waiting for your approval. Please sign in to the Kentico administration interface and approve it.
    </p>
    <p>
      <strong>Document:</strong> <a href="{%DocumentEditUrl%}">{%documentname%}</a> {% ifEmpty(DocumentPreviewUrl, "", "(<a href=\"" + DocumentPreviewUrl + "\">preview</a>)")|(encode)false%}
      <br />
      <strong>Last approved by:</strong> {%approvedby%}
      <br />
      <strong>Last approved when:</strong> {%approvedwhen%}
      <br />
      <strong>Original step:</strong> {%originalstepname%}
      <br />
      <strong>Current step:</strong> {%currentstepname%}
      <br />
      <strong>Comment:</strong>
      <br />
      {%comment%}
    </p>
  </body>
</html>

Most templates contain macro expressions (such as {% currentstepname %}), which the system resolves dynamically when sending the e-mails. The use of macros is necessary to ensure that individual e-mails contain information relevant to the situation that caused the e-mail to be sent. You can add macros into fields by clicking Insert macro () or write the required expressions manually.

If you wish to display data loaded via a macro in a specific format, you can apply transformations. See Using transformations in macro expressions for more information.

You can attach files to an e-mail template through the Attachments button in the header of the template editing page. The attachments are included when the system sends out e-mails based on the given template. Clicking the button opens a dialog where you can manage the attachments.