Email templates are pre-written emails, which you can use when sending emails either manually or automatically (in Sequence Workflows). For example, you could send the same "Welcome" email to all your new customers.

Email templates can contain merge tags, meaning they can be automatically personalized to suit each recipient (e.g. by filling in the recipient's first name in the email greeting).

You can also manually edit an email after applying a template, meaning you can make use of the pre-prepared text but customize it for your needs.

Email templates are created and managed in the "Settings" Global Tool. It's also possible to create an email template from the email editor panel.

Email templates are organized into categories via labels, which work effectively like folders, except one email template can have multiple labels if it belongs to multiple categories.

Email templates are a perfect way for you to:

Some typical use cases include:

Access to email templates is controlled by a series of permissions that can be enabled/disabled for different Roles.

There is a set of data model permissions called "Email Template", in the "system models" category.

As with other data model permissions, you can independently set Create/View/Update/Remove/Export permissions for email templates, as well as clicking to expand out the property (sub-component) permissions if you would like to configure those too.

The "Outbound Emails" workflow permission gives access specifically to the "Outbound Emails" part of the "Settings" Global Tool. This is where email templates are managed.

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When you're writing an email, it's really easy to apply an email template.

Firstly, let's look at how to apply an email template when you are writing an ad-hoc email.

Once you've brought up the email editor panel, simply click on the "Template" button ("blocks" icon) at the bottom.

This will bring up a dropdown menu showing all the existing email templates in your tenant.

Note that where there are names and then chevrons (>) to the right (e.g. "Default" shown above), these are actually the names of the labels (categories, like folders) applied to email templates within the "Settings" Global Tool - we explain how to create and apply labels elsewhere in this article (here). Here you can mouse over the name of the relevant label to see all the associated email templates to choose from.

Simply click on the name of the email template you would like to apply, and it will load in the window for you.

You can then make any required changes to your specific email before sending.

Using Workflows (Sequences and Projects), you can carry out a specific (yet customizable) series of steps in response to a trigger, such as a new customer joining. "Sequences" are designed for automatically sending emails to End Users; Projects are designed for task management.

You can specify email templates within Workflow steps. If it's an email step, that email template will be loaded up and automatically sent in the step. (Merge tags can be used to automatically personalize the emails that are sent.) If it's a task step, you can still select an email template, but this will then be present in the task for the relevant Planhat user to manually use, rather than the email being sent automatically.

To select an email template in a Workflow step, simply click on the cell to the right of "Email template", and select your choice of email template from the dropdown list. You will note that the emails are organized by labels (categories - we talk about how to set these up here). You can also use the search box at the top of the dropdown menu to find a particular template more quickly.

Now you've seen how to apply an existing email template, let's take a look at how to create email templates in the first place, and how to organize (categorize) them using labels.

The main way to create an email template is within the "Email Templates" part of "Settings" Global Tool. Once there:

Rather than creating an email template completely from scratch, you can duplicate (copy/clone) an existing email template, and edit that. This is useful if you would like to make a new template that's similar to an existing one.

To duplicate an email template:

While you most commonly will be creating email templates in the "Settings" Global Tool, it's also possible to create a template via the email editor panel (also known as the email dialog). This can be useful if you go to write an ad-hoc email, and then decide you would like to save it as a template.

Now you know where to create an email template, let's talk about actually writing the contents of the template. This is very similar to writing any other email in Planhat.

You can write/format your emails however you like - you can copy/paste the text directly into the email template, or you can type it out in Planhat.

There are a wide range of formatting options available. The underlined "A" on the left-hand side is "Text formatting" - click this to open up a full range of options, as shown below.

Next to the "A", you can see options for adding pictures, links, attachments and merge tags (which we discuss below).

One feature to be aware of is "code view", which you can access by clicking on the "A" and then "</>" icon. (You'd click this same button again to come out of code view.)

If you're inserting links in code view, you can use this structure:

You can add a clickable image to your email template via code view. To do that, you just need to add the image in and then click on the "</>" option, and add the following HTML code (changing the source of course):

One characteristic of email templates is that you'll almost certainly send each one to multiple people. To make the email personal to each recipient, you can use merge tags, which enable dynamic field references, such as [[FNAME]] for the End User's first name. To learn more about Planhat's merge tags check out this separate article.

Once you have set up your email template, you can do a quick check to make sure everything looks as expected before using the email template, by clicking on "Show Preview". (Note: you can't currently click "Show Preview" when in code view; you would need to come out of that mode first.)

Note that GIFs are not fully supported currently.

You can (optionally) organize your email templates into categories via "labels" - such as "Marketing", "Scheduling" or "Welcome" etc. Labels operate in a similar way to folders, but each individual email template can have multiple labels applied.

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Within the "Settings" Global Tool, labels can be used (like the "Find in view..." search box) to quickly find particular email templates - to do this, click on "Label" in the top left, and then select your choice of label.

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You'll also see these label categories when selecting email templates when applying them - we showed you this earlier in this article.

You configure labels in the email templates part of the "Settings" Global Tool.

To add one or more labels (categories/folders) to an email template, simply click in the "Label" column, in the row of your template. This opens up a menu where you can use the checkboxes to select (or deselect) your choice of label(s), or click "+ Add label" if you would like to create a new label.

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If you click to create a new label, this will open up the modal below, where you can give your label a name and a color.

If you would like to edit a label, mouse over it in the list, and click on the pencil icon that appears.

This opens up the form where you can change the name and/or color of the label if desired.

You can also delete the label (using the button in the bottom left of the screenshot above) - this completely removes the label from the options (rather than simply unassigning the label). You'll see a pop-up warning you of this, before the label is actually deleted.