Technical documentation - Mail managers

Owned by Corentin Humbert
24 Aug 2023
2 min read

Version 5.2 and later.

Different modes

The WebViewer supports different ways of creating and sending emails. The following table describes the three different modes that currently exist.

Name

Identifier

Rendering

Sending

Name

Identifier

Rendering

Sending

Native

native

SMS engine. Supports plain text, HTML and Handlebars.

SMTP server

External (“SendGrid”)

external

SendGrid renderer. Supports plain text, HTML and Handlebars.

SendGrid email API

Legacy

legacy

Supports plain text and HTML only.

SMTP server

The Native mode is the default one. Emails are created by loading templates and rendering them through the SignifikantMailService (SMS).

The External mode, which uses SendGrid by default, has the same rendering capabilities as SMS but sends the email via the SendGrid email API.

The External Mail Manager can be easily overridden to use a custom email service instead of SendGrid.

The Legacy mode is the old way of handling emails and should be avoided. It reads templates from text files and does not support Handlebars.

A new way of handling emails is currently being developed. It aims to fix the flaws of SMS and to improve on some areas.

Key features:

  • Templates are stored in files so that they are easily editable

    • Each template has two files: one for HTML content, and one for metadata

    • Metadata are used to identify templates and register them. This way, it is easy to make an app to interface with the templates and edit them via a beautiful UI.

  • Rendering engine supports Handlebars and defines custom helpers

    • Formatting: Convert to uppercase, lowercase, etc.

    • Logical: Insert current date, translate text and data, etc.

  • Simplifying the WebViewer by removing all email-related logic to its own project. This will make it easier to maintain the existing code for emails and also reduce the complexity of the WebViewer.

  • Separating rendering/sending in two different projects. This way, you can still leverage the power of the rendering engine even if you want to implement your own way of sending emails.

Configuration

There are two ways of setting up emails in the WebViewer:

  • Via the admin configuration panel

  • In profile.config

Admin configuration panel

In the WebViewer, go to Administrate > Configuration > Mails and you will see the following:

For now, you have access to six different sections:

  • CompanyConfig: Brand information that appear in the email (header, footer)

  • Global: You can set the mode for the mail manager here (native, external or legacy).

  • Email Test: Test the mail manager by sending a test email

  • Advanced: Specific settings for order emails

  • SMTP: Configuration for the SMTP server. Irrelevant if using the external mode

  • SendGrid: Configuration for SendGrid. Only used in the external mode

 

Profile.config

Open up App_Data/<site>/profile.config:

<ProfileSettings> <CompanySettings> <Name>Signifikant</Name> <FullName>Signifikant Svenska AB</FullName> <Website>https://www.signifikant.se/</Website> <Country>Sweden</Country> <LogoUrl>https://www.signifikant.se/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Logotype-tag-1.svg</LogoUrl> </CompanySettings> <MailManagerMode>native</MailManagerMode> <SmtpClientSettings> <Host>smtp-mail.outlook.com</Host> <Port>587</Port> <EnableSSL>true</EnableSSL> <UseDefaultCredentials>false</UseDefaultCredentials> <UseCredentials>true</UseCredentials> <SenderEmail>example@outlook.com</SenderEmail> <UserName>example@outlook.com</UserName> <PassWord>a very secure password 123</PassWord> </SmtpClientSettings> <SendGridMailManager> <SendGridMailManager> <ApiKey></ApiKey> <SenderEmail></SenderEmail> </SendGridMailManager> </SendGridMailManager> </ProfileSettings>