Email templates

Adminium sends email for two reasons: because something happened (a notification, a password reset, an invitation) and because a person decided to write to the team (a campaign). Email templates is where both kinds are designed. A template is a reusable design; a campaign is a template that is sent, once, to the people in your workspace. This guide covers templates; the campaigns guide covers sending.

Templates and campaigns

Open Email templates in the sidebar. The page has two tabs:

• Templates — the emails the product sends on its own (the built-ins) and the designs you keep for later.
• Campaigns — emails you send to your workspace’s users, on demand or at a chosen time.

Both are edited in the same editor and share the same blocks. The difference is the primary button: a template is saved, a campaign is sent.

The built-ins

Three emails ship with the product and are seeded in every language the product speaks: Notification, Password reset and Team invitation. They are live from the first boot.

You can edit a built-in like any other template. Your edits are yours — a product update never overwrites them. Two things keep the built-ins safe:

• Delete on a built-in does not remove it. It moves the built-in to Archived, and from there Reset to built-in restores the shipped copy for that language.
• A built-in switched to Draft is skipped by the sender, which falls back to the shipped copy so the product keeps working.

Starting a new template

New template opens a gallery: Blank email and twelve starters — a welcome email, an email-address confirmation, an order receipt, a delivery update, a weekly digest, a feature announcement, a monthly report, an appointment reminder, a feedback request, a re-engagement email, a payment-failed notice and an account-paused notice. A starter is a full design in your language: heading, copy, a button, and the sections that kind of email usually carries.

The editor

The editor is a live preview. Click any part of the email — the subject, a heading, a paragraph, the footer — and edit it in place; the panel on the right shows every field of the part you clicked, its style options and the variables you can insert.

Nothing is saved while you type. The chip beside the name reads Unsaved changes until you press Save template (or Ctrl/⌘+S), and leaving a page with unsaved edits asks first. Undo and redo cover the last sixty edits.

Sections

An email is a list of sections. Add section (at the end of the email, or between any two sections) opens the picker: headings, text, buttons, images, lists, quotes, social links, custom HTML, and the commerce sections — stat rows, product rows, totals in other currencies, tax and discount lines, payment history, a delivery timeline, loyalty points — plus legal and support blocks. Drag a section to reorder it; a section you like can be saved as a reusable block and picked again in any template.

Brand and sender

The Brand & sender panel sets the brand name, the mark (twelve shipped marks, or your workspace logo), the accent colour and the from name and address. The from address is chosen from the senders configured under Studio → Settings → Email; an address that is not configured cannot be picked, so a template can never send from an identity the relay would reject.

Variables

Variables such as {{name}}, {{first_name}}, {{email}} and {{appName}} are filled per recipient when the email goes out. Click a field, then a variable chip, to insert it. Test sends fill them with sample values.

When a value is missing

Not every reader has every value: a customer with no first name on file still gets the email. A template says itself what to write then, in two ways.

A backup word. In a text block a variable is a chip. Click it (or focus it and press Enter) and type what to write when there is no value: with “there”, Thanks, {{first_name}}! reads “Thanks, there!” for a customer with no first name. The text keeps it after a bar, {{first_name|there}}, and you can type that form yourself in any field, the subject included. {{first_name|}} writes nothing.

A block tied to a value. When no backup word keeps the sentence right, tie the whole block to the value: select the block and, under Visibility, choose Show this block only when first_name has a value. A reader without one is not sent the block. A text or heading block can say other words in its place: type them under Otherwise show.

Switch on Preview with missing values above the canvas to see the email as a reader with none of those values is sent it: every backup in its sentence, every tied block gone or saying its other words.

A variable with no backup that nothing fills is still sent as written ({{first_name}}), so that you can see which one it was.

Languages

A template can exist in several languages at once. Add language in the editor’s language menu creates a linked copy: a starter’s copy arrives already translated; a blank template’s copy is a duplicate flagged Needs translation until someone writes it. All variations of one template are grouped under its topic in the manager, and the sender picks the variation that matches the recipient’s language when it exists. A number the built-in emails say (how many minutes a sign-in link works, how many days an invitation does) is written in the digits of the variation sent: Arabic-Indic in Arabic, and in the Latin digits of US English when an Arabic recipient is sent the US English one. A code the reader types back stays in Latin digits.

Mirroring a change

Adding, removing or moving a section on one language variation asks whether the same change should apply to the others: Apply to all carries the structural change across (copy comes across untranslated, and only when you save); Only this language keeps it here. Text edits never mirror.

Attachments

The Attachments panel adds files to every send of the template:

• Fixed files come from your workspace’s file library (Files in the sidebar, or the Workspace documents list in the panel). The bytes are read at send time, so a file you replace in the library goes out in its new form. A file that has been trashed in the library makes the send fail loudly rather than go out incomplete.
• Generated files are resolved per recipient from a variable — an invoice PDF whose id lives in the recipient’s data, for instance.

Images placed in the email itself come from the same library (or an https URL) and are embedded in the message rather than linked.

Every send has a size cap, set under Studio → Settings → Email; a template whose attachments exceed it cannot be saved.

Senders

Studio → Settings → Email holds the SMTP relay and the list of senders — the from addresses a template may use. The relay’s own address is always the first sender; add more for a support desk or a newsletter identity.

Links in emails

Password-reset and invitation emails carry a link back to Adminium. The address that link opens is Address in email links under Studio → Settings → Email: a scheme, a host and, if you need one, a port, such as https://admin.example.com. A path is refused.

You rarely have to type it. While the field is empty, Adminium fills it in from the browser of an admin who can manage settings, the next time that admin finishes first-run setup, signs in or saves a change. It never fills in localhost or another address only your own machine can reach, so an instance you are trying out locally keeps an empty field until you fill it. Clear the field and Adminium learns the address again the same way. The audit log records each time it does.

Until the address is known, links use the host the request was sent to. They never use the Origin header, which any script can set when it asks for a password reset. Behind a reverse proxy that answers only for your hostname, the host is your hostname. If Adminium’s port can be reached without the proxy, fill the field in yourself, because a direct caller can put any host in its request.

Testing

Test sends the email as it is on screen — unsaved edits included — to the addresses you enter, with sample data in the variables. Teammates are one click away. Use it to check a design in a real mail client before saving.

Duplicating, deleting, archiving

Duplicate makes (copy) beside the original. Delete moves a template to Archived, with Undo in the toast; Archived is reachable from the actions menu and offers Restore, Duplicate and Delete for good (a built-in offers Reset to built-in instead).

Export and import

Export all downloads a JSON bundle of every template (or every campaign, depending on the tab) with fixed attachments inlined. Import template reads such a bundle back, previews what it holds and what already exists, and lets you skip or replace the existing ones. Nothing is imported until you confirm.