Email templates give Lineup admins a way of bringing consistency to all outgoing communications. They can be reused by Managers and above across all of your teams.
This article will cover the following:
Template descriptions
You'll be able to manage five different types of email templates:
- Team Invitations
- These emails are used to invite people to teams. It's the email with the button that sends a person to the team landing page.
- Team Reminders
- These emails can be scheduled to go out if someone hasn't accepted or declined an invitation. They can also be sent out immediately. Learn more about team reminders.
- Team Invitation Confirmation
- These are system emails that go out automatically when someone accepts a position on a team.
- Team Invitation Declined Confirmation
- These are system emails that go out automatically when someone declines a position on a team.
- Team Email Templates
- Team emails can be sent to all the team members on a team—or a subset of them. They can be in any status but declined.
If you're looking for email templates for Lineup Forms or Lineup Evaluations, those can be accessed from the individual form or evaluation (also in admin). We're currently working on bringing this feature to Team Surveys.
Each of the email types above must have at least one template. You can modify the system one, but you cannot delete it until you've created another template of that type.
Managing email templates
You can manage all email template for teams by going to Admin > Team Templates. Obviously you must be at least a manager to do this.
If this is your first time coming to this page, you'll see a single template for each email type. These are the system defaults.
Editing existing templates
You can edit any existing template (including the system default) by clicking on the "Edit" button at the bottom of the template card. This will open an edit sidebar.
Creating new templates
You can also create a new email template by clicking the "New Email Template" button, which will be to the right of all the existing templates of that type. This will open a new email template sidebar (see below for more information).
Setting a new default template
Once you have multiple email templates of the same type, you can change which one is the "default." Do this by clicking on the three vertical dots in the lower-right corner of the template card and selecting "Set as default."
This menu will also let you clone (or copy) the template, and delete the template if you no longer want to use it.
A default email template will be the template that a new team will use. This can be overridden (see the next section, Selecting email templates for teams).
Updating existing templates and creating new ones
Whether you're editing an existing template or creating a new one, you'll see the same sidebar.
Here are the fields associated with a template:
- Template Name (required)
- Name of the template. This is used for administrative purposes only. It'll be what team managers will select when they're actually using the templates. People receiving the emails will not see this.
- From
- The name that the email comes from (not to be confused with the from email address)
- If this is left blank, we'll default to the Administrator Name, found in the Account details.
- Reply to email
- When someone hits reply after receiving an email, this is the mailbox it'll go to.
- If this is left blank, we'll default to the Administrator Email, found in the Account details.
- Subject line (required)
- Subject line of the email.
- Also, the subject line supports merge tags (see below)
- Message (required)
- The actual body of the email. We support HTML formatting, just like all other emails.
- Also, the message contents support merge tags (see below)
Selecting email templates for teams
Once you've set up your email templates in the Admin page, it's time to put them to work! You can do this a couple of different ways, but we recommend first setting the template you want to use at the team level.
Configuring templates in team settings
Do this by going to the team that you're working with and click on the Settings tab. There, you'll see a list of the four different Team Emails:
- Invitation Email
- Reminder Email
- Invitation Accept Confirmation Email
- Invitation Decline Confirmation Email
Hey, they line up with the first four types of email templates! Below each of these, you'll see the template that's currently set. These should be the defaults, unless you've modified one, in which case it'll have the word "custom" before it.
Now, clicking on the edit button of any of those team emails will open up a very similar looking email edit sidebar. Only exception is that you'll see a new dropdown at the top: "Email template." If you want to change the template, simply select the one you want to change it to from here.
You can still edit the contents of the email. You may want to do this to bring in special language for that particular team. Making these edits will not update the email template. It'll only make the change for this particular field.
Click "Save" once you're happy with the email.
Selecting a template when sending an email
You can also select a template just before you're set to invite someone to the team (or send out a team email). The same dropdown menu will be present at the top of the email form. Just be aware that if you've customized your template in the team settings, the template selected will be: "This team's invitation".
Using Merge Tags
You can personalize your emails with something we call merge tags. Merge tags are placeholder text that Lineup will replace just before you send it out. If you're familiar with mail merges in Microsoft Word, the concept is the same.
Lineup merge tags are surrounded by a straight bracket and asterisk, like this:
[* TeamName *]
You'll know that a merge tag is formatted correctly previewing the email. The preview will replace those merge tags with double alligator brackets, like this:
<< Team Name >>
For a full list of supported merge tags, please see this article.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.