Message Templates: Customize and Deploy Global Template

One of RightNow’s major new features on the November 2012 release was the Message Templates for notifications and emails. These are used to customize administrator notifications, administrator emails and contact emails. The messages are designed to support a broad range of business cases across a variety of implementations to communicate with staff as well as with contacts. Message templates let you quickly apply your organization’s brand across all of your messages and personalize message content to your target audience.

Message templates let you customize your administrator notifications, administrator emails, and contact emails for each interface. You can customize your message content, enable and disable notifications and emails, as well as define the message format as HTML or text. Message templates also let you quickly apply your organization’s brand across all notifications and emails, including RightNow CX service email.

Important Note: Staff members must have the Message Templates permission on the Administration tab of the Profiles editor in order to customize message templates.

The Message Templates editor contains the global template and a set of system-generated messages. Using an HTML editor you can edit the global template and the messages directly on the CX Console.

The global template contains the content that frames the message-specific content in each of your individual messages. Think of the global template as a wrapper for your entire set of notifications and emails. Using the HTML editor, you can standardize the design of your outgoing messages giving them all the same look and feel.

When you are ready to deploy your global template, your brand can be applied to a single message or across all of your messages.

The system-generated messages are sent to staff and contacts to support activities and events occurring throughout the system. Using an HTML editor, you can insert links that appear as clickable text and use merge fields to customize each message. The tools that display on the HTML editor are context-sensitive and are the logical tools you would use for the specific message you are customizing.

The message templates ribbon contains buttons for accessing the individual system-generated messages and for working with the global template, including viewing the live global template and editing and deploying the global template.

• Show: The buttons in this group let you toggle between the different message types that are available.
• Global Template: The buttons in this group apply to the global template that is used to apply a standard look and feel across all of your messages.

Customizing the Global Template

The global template contains the content that frames the message-specific content in each of your individual messages. You can standardize the look of your messages by inserting your own logo. You can also customize your headers and footers to display information that needs to be communicated in all of your messages.

In the middle of the global template’s HTML editor are two placeholders – one is an image placeholder and the other is a placeholder for the message-specific content. You can insert HTML above and below the placeholders. The global template, like all messages, is interface-specific.

Important Note: Since the system default global template cannot be restored from the Message Templates editor, we recommend that you copy and paste the original template’s HTML into a text file, such as Notepad, in case you need it at a later time. You can do this from the Source tab on the HTML editor.

To edit the global template:

1. Click the Configuration button on the navigation pane.
2. Double-click Message Templates under Site Configuration.
3. Select the interface you want to customize.
4. Click the Edit Template button on the ribbon.
5. To insert your logo or another image, double-click the image placeholder to the right of the content placeholder. The Image Editor window opens.
6. To edit the global template using the hyperlinks, buttons, dynamic content, and other features available on the HTML editor.
7. To customize your header and footer content, type above or below the placeholders.
8. To discard your pending changes and revert to the most recently saved global template, click the Refresh button.
9. To see the currently deployed template, click the View Live Template button. The content pane refreshes to display the version of the global template that is currently applied to all notifications and messages.
10. To spell check the global template, click the Spelling button on the ribbon.
11. To preview your changes to the global template, click the Preview tab at the bottom of the HTML editor.
12. Click the Save button to save your edits to the global template

At this point, your edits have not been deployed or committed to the database. Deploying the global template is necessary.

Deploying the global template

When you deploy the global template, you copy the version you are currently editing to the version that is sent throughout the system to the entire set of messages. Once you deploy, you still have the option to make changes to your global template because you have not committed anything to the database. It is also true at this point that you can no longer view the active version of the global template. Once you save, your deployed version is the only one you can see.

To make your deployed version active, you must commit your changes to the database by saving after you deploy. It is only after you have saved your deployment that your global template changes are active and are also applied to the entire set of active messages.

To deploy the global template:

1. After saving changes to the global template, click the Deploy Template button. A message asks you to confirm your decision to deploy.
2. Click the OK button. Your deployed version is copied to the version that is sent throughout the system
3. Click the Save button on the ribbon to commit your deployed version to the database.

Now, your deployed version is your active global template and is applied to your entire set of active messages.

To deploy the global template and the messages at the same time:

1. After saving changes to the global template, click the Deploy All button. A message asks you to confirm your decision to deploy the global template as well as all of your messages.
2. Click the OK button. Your deployed version is copied to the version that is sent throughout the system and all of your messages are labelled, “Pending…” under the description of the message. However, neither your deployed global template nor your messages are active at this point.
3. Click the Save button on the ribbon to commit your deployed version and all of your messages to the database.

Now, your deployed version is your active global template and is applied to your entire set of messages. Your deployed messages are also active.