As we discussed in the Notifications document, when we manage Bookings in Interpreter Intelligence, such as offering, assigning, confirming, updating etc., the system will send corresponding notifications to the relevant roles/users on the Booking. Templates control the content and layout of such notifications.
When you first get access to your Interpreter Intelligence site, default Templates will be fully enabled for your agency therefore you do not have to do anything. However, if you wish to modify the content or the layout of any of the system notifications you can do this in Templates.
To access Templates, go to the ‘Admin’ menu and click ‘Templates’.
Email Templates
On the Email Templates tab you will see a list of all templates that are pre populated on your II system corresponding to all notifications that may be sent at some point in time by the system.
You can Preview and/or modify any of these templates by clicking on the corresponding blue link.
Snippets
All information inside curly brackets ({ }) are what we call snippets. A snippet is a dynamic field which means that when an email is generated for a specific Booking, it will pull the appropriate values for that Booking. For example, ${booking.customer?.name} will pull the name of the Customer on the respective Booking/Job and populate the corresponding email notification with that Customer name.
The Help Information tab will provide a number of commonly used snippets for any modifications that you may wish to make.
Email Subject
You can override the default Email Subject for any template by simply entering the required text and/or snippet in the Subject box underneath the Template and saving it.
Modifying Templates
Before making any changes we recommend making a backup copy of the current template content. To do this, click on the HTML button on the editing toolbar, select all of the text in the content window and copy this into Notepad and save in a secure location.
Notepad is strongly recommended as other text editors can add html formatting which could corrupt the template if this text is copied back in.
Similarly, if you have produced a mock-up of your template in a word editor outside of II, it is not recommended that this content is pasted from the Word editor directly into the Template (except in the case of Notepad for example); it is recommended that changes are made directly in the HTML editor window where possible. Formatting and/or layout changes can be made in the main window.
After making any change to a Template you can save it using the blue Save button and then Preview, note that changes must be saved to be previewed.
Modifying Templates - an example
Let’s take a look at a simple example of a modification to an email Template. Let’s say we would like to add a site contact to the Booking Confirmation for Interpreters.
- Firstly, let’s find the relevant snippet:
- Navigate to the ‘Admin’ menu and select ‘Templates’
- Click on the Help Information tab
- On your keyboard press Ctrl + F keys and type “site contact”
- This will locate the site contact snippet which you can highlight and copy - booking?.siteContact
- Next, let’s find the relevant template:
- Click on the Email Templates tab
- Click on the Blue link for the ‘Booking Confirmation (Interpreter)’ template
- Then simply create a bullet point for “Site Contact”, you may want to format this in Bold like the existing bullets, and then simply paste the snippet that you just copied
- Remember that all snippets must be preceded by a $ (dollar sign) and surrounded by {} (curly brackets) - you can copy these symbols from existing bullets
- Finally, Save the template and Preview the changes.
- If you receive any error messages when previewing the templates it is likely that there is an issue with the syntax used. In this case review/correct/remove the changes or you can always simply locate your backup of the original Template and paste this content into the html editor window, Save and Preview the template again.
Digest Notifications
Any Templates that have a Digest Snippet box can be enabled for digest, this means that, for Recurring Jobs, only one email will be sent with the details of all relevant Jobs, rather than a single email for each Job which can cause an influx of Notifications for the recipient.
The Digest option is particularly useful for Booking Requests to Interpreters, Booking (New) to Customers and Confirmations to Customers and/or Interpreters.
To use the Digest option within a Template, replace the bulleted list of Booking Details with the following snippet:
${custom.list(company, bookings)}
Save the Template and you can then Preview.
Please also review this video for full instructions on enabling Digest Notifications.
If you need to customise the Digest information in a Notification, or for any issues with templates, or complex changes, please reach out to support@interpreterintelligence.com and we will be happy to either make the changes for you or guide you through the process.
SMS Templates
There are also templates for sms messages (if this service has been enabled for your agency) which can be found on the SMS Templates tab.
As per Email Templates, you will notice that there are some Templates available that have been pre populated and these can also be modified by using snippets.
The most important thing to note with sms messages and hence the corresponding Templates is that there is a character restriction of 160. You can view the character count by previewing the template and if this is exceeded due to any changes it will need to be further modified to meet the character limit or the corresponding sms messages will fail to send.
Be aware also that certain variables could have an additional character count than an example that you have previewed such as a Service Location address and there is a method to truncate/abbreviate this as outlined in the SMS Help tab.
(Important Note: if using the ‘Send Ad Hoc sms’ function on the Job menu and loading an sms template, the same character restrictions will apply if you add any text to the message. For example, if you load the Offer by sms template in an ad hoc sms and this template already has a character account of 131, you can only add another 29 characters to the message or it will fail to send.)
There is an additional tab, SMS Help which will provide some guidance on updating sms Templates and some troubleshooting information when sms errors are received.
Other Templates
You will notice that there are other tabs within the Templates menu such as Verification of Service, Invoice, Payment etc. If you wish to make any changes to these templates we recommend that you contact support@interpreterintelligence.com so that we can evaluate these and either carry out the changes on your behalf or guide you through the process.
Troubleshooting
Unable to Preview Any Templates - Error message occurs
Solution:
- At least two jobs in the system need to be in the Assigned status in order for template preview to work across all templates.
- If just one template will not preview, check to see if there are at least two jobs in the system that meet the criteria to display a preview. For example, to preview the Interpreter Confirmation email template, there should be at least two jobs in the Confirmed status.
- 3d - Templates.pdf1000 KB