You Higher Logic community site is designed to automatically send system-generated email messages to community members and Admins, based on various activities within the communities in your site. These system-generated email messages are based on a set of pre-configured, out-of-the-box templates.

For example:

• When an Admin adds a member to a community, that new member is notified via an email message; that message is built on the Community Member Added Notification template.
• When an automation rule has completed processing, an email message is sent to the Super Admin who scheduled it. Depending on the Automation Rule, that message might be built on a "membership-renewal" template or a template for a message that reminds new members to complete their profile.

There are lots of templates pre-loaded in your community site and they are pre-populated with suitable content. However, you have two management options to customize this aspect of the user experience. You can:

• modify the pre-populated templates (e.g., customize the language and apply your preferred formatting) and
• create your own templates.

These templates can be formatted in HTML and plain text, though the plain text version is often not necessary because most email clients automatically display HTML content as plain text.

ACCESSIBILITY: When you are designing content for a web page or an email message, it's important to keep in mind modern accessibility principles. Because this article touches on content design, we recommend that you refer to Best Practices - Accessibility and review the tips and guidelines.

Access your email templates

To access your templates:

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Email > Email Management > Email Templates.

The Email Templates page is where you can access all of the:

• System templates - those that were created by Higher Logic and pre-loaded in your account and
• Non-System templates - those that have been created in, and which are unique to your account.

Email Templates page options

Templates are grouped into categories which makes them easier to locate and to manage. (Refer to Appendix A - Email template categories, below, for descriptions of the types of email templates in each category.)

You can perform a variety of Admin tasks on this page.

Create a template

You can click Create in the upper right to create a template in one of only three Categories:

• Automation Rules; see the Automation Rules section
• Community Messages; see Community Messages Email Templates
• Events; see Manage Event Email Templates

NOTE: The other email-template Categories contain only System templates, which you can edit. You cannot add templates to these Categories.

Manage which templates display

You can use the dropdowns to select which templates display.

• Click the Category, Community, and Opt-Out Group dropdowns and make a selection in order to filter the list of templates.
• Use the toggles (On/Off) to show and hide Active and Inactive templates, as well as System or Non-System templates.

Manage the templates

• Click either a template's name or its Edit button to open its edit page.
• Click the down arrow next to a template's Edit button to copy or delete the template.

NOTE: Templates that have only an Edit button (no down arrow) are system templates that cannot be deleted or copied because they are associated with actions in the system.

WARNING: While Super Admins can edit the default community-based system templates, we recommend keeping edits to a minimum—specifically, the links should not be altered. These defaults are system wide, and have evolved over time to provide the information sought by new members and to answer their questions. These links (e.g., the links to accept or reject community invitations) are critical to the function of your communities.

Use and understand variables

When editing or creating a template, you can use variables to provide individualized and community-specific content and links to each recipient. These variables are replaced with the appropriate information when the email is sent, allowing you to easily include information that's automatically personalized for each recipient (e.g., automatically inserting each user's first name). Variables allow you to greet recipients by name and include other member-specific links and text.

The default templates for community invitations and join messages use variables which are then replaced with community-specific links when a message is sent. The variables make these templates applicable to all communities because each community's unique information gets automatically inserted. If you create templates to serve single communities, be sure to use specific links to any applicable community pages and Microsite pages.

Adding variables

You can add variables in the HTML editor only.

IMPORTANT: When mail merge variables are used in a message, they must exactly match how they appear in each template. Note the capitalization and absence of spaces and punctuation. If the syntax or structure of a variable is changed, the variable will not populate a value in the message.

To add variables:

1. Place your cursor where you want to insert the variable and click the Mail merge variable selector button.
2. Expand the categories to access the variables.
3. When you locate the variable that you want to insert, click it to add it to your message.

TIP: Variables do function in the Text version, and you can paste them there.

Recommended variables

There are four categories of variables:

• Contact
• Tenant
• Community
• Community Member

The Contact and Community categories offer the best options for Admins; the other two include numerous variables that Super Admins and Community Admins might never use.

The most commonly used variables are listed below. The bold text in the examples represents the contact- and community-specific information that replaced the variable.

Appendix A - Email templates categories

The following table describes the types of email templates in each category.