Templates
Templates are built in the console's visual designer. You never write HTML: the designer produces signature HTML that is known to render in mail clients, and a plain-text version to go with it.
Brand kits#
A brand kit holds what several templates share: the logo, an icon, a banner image, colours, fonts and a default disclaimer text. Templates refer to the kit, so changing a colour in the kit changes every template that uses it.
Layout#
A template is a stack of rows; each row has one or more columns; each column holds elements:
| Element | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Text | Free text with formatting and links. |
| Fields | Directory attributes such as name, title and phone numbers, inline or stacked, with labels and formatting (upper case, national or international phone format). |
| Image | An uploaded image, or the logo or icon from the brand kit, optionally linked. |
| User photo | The sender's own photo, square, rounded or round. |
| Social icons | Links to your social profiles, in colour or monochrome. |
| Button | A call to action. |
| Divider, spacer | Visual structure. |
| Banner | The currently active campaign banner. |
| Disclaimer | The legal text of the sender's legal entity, from the brand kit, or your own. |
Drag elements from the toolbox onto the canvas or reorder them in the layers panel; the side panels can be collapsed when you need room. The document style sets the font, sizes, text and link colours and the width.
Conditional blocks#
Every element can be shown always, only when a condition holds, or hidden when it holds. Conditions look at:
- a field: empty, not empty, equals, contains, …;
- group membership;
- recipients: internal or external;
- compose: new message or reply.
A typical template shows the full signature with banner and disclaimer to external recipients on new messages, and a single line on internal replies.
Variants#
Every template compiles into four variants per user: external.new, external.reply,
internal.new and internal.reply. Which one a message gets depends on its recipients (see
Internal under Domains) and on whether it is a reply. The preview shows all four for any
person in your directory.
Images inside the message#
Remote images are often not shown until the recipient allows downloads. For each image, logo, user photo or set of social icons you can choose:
| Option | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Follow the template | Use the template's default (a checkbox in the document settings). |
| Inside the message | The image travels with the message as a related part, referenced from the HTML, and shows immediately. |
| Linked | The image is loaded from ScaiLine's image service when the message is opened. |
Embedded images travel with every message, so they are capped: 64 KB per image and 192 KB per signature. Anything larger, and any image that cannot be fetched, stays linked; the message is never delayed for it. The user photo and campaign banners are currently always linked. Mail clients show embedded images inline; a few (Outlook desktop among them) may also list them among a message's attachments.
Publishing and versions#
Edits are saved as a draft. Publish creates a new version and recompiles the signature of everyone the template applies to, usually within seconds. The versions drawer lists earlier versions; you can open, publish or restore any of them.
Which people get a template is decided by rules.