Sending Templated Emails to Customers from Admin and the Storefront
Summary
Infigo now includes a Send Email popup that lets authorised staff send one of your own message templates to an individual customer, straight from the customer edit page in the admin area, or from the Manage Users page on the storefront. Two new control permissions decide who can do this, and a new Customer Context checkbox on each message template decides which templates staff can choose from. This article covers how to assign the new permissions, prepare your templates, and send the first email.
Problem
Before this change, there was no way to send a branded, template-driven email to an individual customer from within Infigo: staff had to copy the address out and compose the message in a separate mail client, losing the store branding and any automatic personalisation.
Environment
Admin area: the customer list and customer edit pages, and the Email Message Templates pages.
Storefront: the Manage Users page. This requires Manage Users to be enabled in your customer settings, and the customers being managed to sit in a department.
You need permission to manage message templates to complete the setup below. Infigo Customer Support must enable the Send email permissions for the customer roles that need them - see the steps below.
Configuration
This guide walks through setting up the new Send Email popup, which lets authorised staff send one of your own message templates to an individual customer from the admin customer pages or the storefront Manage Users page. There are two parts to it: deciding which staff are allowed to send these emails, and preparing the templates they can choose from. Follow it if you administer your storefront's staff permissions and message templates.
Step 1: Create or choose the customer roles that will hold the new permissions
The new permissions are granted against a customer role, not against individual accounts, so start by deciding which roles should be able to email customers. You may want two: one for admin staff who work from the customer list and customer edit pages, and one for storefront managers who work from the Manage Users page. The two are granted independently, so a role can have one without the other. For how roles are created and what else they control, see Customer Roles Explained: https://academy.infigo.net/p/1410/customer-roles-explained
Step 2: Assign the roles to the staff accounts that need them
Add the role or roles from step 1 to each account that should be able to send these emails. Only accounts holding the role gain the ability, so this is what controls who is affected. Do this before contacting Support, so the change takes effect for exactly the right people the moment it goes live. Assigning roles to accounts is covered in Customer Roles Explained: https://academy.infigo.net/p/1410/customer-roles-explained
Step 3: Request the Send Email permissions from Infigo Customer Support
Contact Infigo Customer Support and ask them to enable the permissions you need, naming the roles from step 1 that should hold each one. Admin area. Send email to customers makes the Send email button appear on the customer list rows and on the customer edit page in the admin area; those staff also need the standard permission to access the admin area. Manage Customers. Send email shows the Send email button on the storefront Manage Users page, alongside Manage Customers. Access. Neither is granted to any role by default, and staff who already hold full customer management rights are unaffected and continue working exactly as before.
Step 4: Navigate to the Email Message Templates page
Go to Content Management > Email Message Templates in the admin area, where you decide which templates staff can pick from in the Send Email popup.
Step 5: Open a message template you want staff to be able to send
Open a template that makes sense as a manually sent message, for example a welcome or account-details email. Automated transactional templates are usually best left alone so the popup's template list stays short and relevant.
Step 6: Enable the Customer Context checkbox
Tick Customer Context on the template. Only templates with this ticked are offered in the Send Email popup, in both the admin customer pages and the storefront Manage Users page. It is off by default on every template, including all existing ones, so nothing is exposed to staff until you deliberately opt a template in. Repeat this for each template you want to offer.
Step 7: Add the custom message token to the template body
Place the %CustomMessage% token in the template body wherever you want the sender's optional personal note to appear. If the sender leaves the note blank the token resolves to nothing, so the rest of the template still reads correctly. Check the subject line at the same time, because the popup pre-fills the subject from the template and a good default saves the sender work.
Step 8: Save the message template
Save the template so it becomes available in the Send Email popup for staff who hold the relevant permission.
Step 9: Use the Send email action
There are two places this can be used. In the admin area, staff with the send-email permission see a Send email button on the customer edit page, and also on the customer list row - EXCEPT if that same staff member also holds full customer management and impersonation rights, in which case the list-row button is deliberately hidden to keep the action column focused for full admins; it still always appears on the customer edit page regardless. On the storefront, go to My Account > Manage Users (this requires Enable Manage Users in My Account turned on for the store, and the customer to belong to a department): staff with the storefront send-email permission see the same Send Email button on each row there, with no such restriction. Clicking Send email opens the shared Send Email popup with the recipient address pre-filled, a Template dropdown listing your Customer Context templates, an editable Subject pre-filled from the template, and an optional Custom Message box.
What the email contains
The popup does not send a blank message - it sends your template with everything filled in. Infigo resolves the store tokens, the customer tokens, the account tokens and the custom message token against the recipient, so the person receiving it gets a properly branded, personalised email with working links, including:
%Account.LoginFullUrl% - a full link that takes the customer straight to the storefront login page.
Progress (0) and https://academy.infigo.net/cart, with 0 - links back to the customer's basket and how many items are sitting in it.
/Customer/SavedBaskets and /Customer/SavedProjects (and their full-URL variants) - links to the customer's saved baskets and saved projects.
%Account.LastActivityDate% and %Account.DeactivationDate% - when the customer was last active and, where inactivity cleanup is enabled, the date their account is due to be deactivated.
%CustomMessage% - the sender's own note for this particular customer.
The standard store and customer tokens you already use in message templates, such as the store name and URL and the customer's name and email address.
Verification
Sign in as a member of staff with the admin send-email permission only (no Manage Customers or Impersonate customers). The Send email button should appear both on the customer list row and on the customer edit page, and sending should confirm the email has been queued. Then sign in as a full admin (Manage Customers + Impersonate customers + Send email to customers all granted): the Send email button should be hidden on the customer list row -- by design, so the action column stays focused for full admins -- but should still appear on the customer edit page.
Sign in as a storefront user with Manage Customers. Send email and check the Send email button works from the Manage Users page.
Open the popup and confirm only your Customer Context templates are listed, and that the subject pre-fills from the chosen template.
Send one email to yourself as a test customer and check the tokens have resolved, the links work, and your typed note appears where you placed %CustomMessage%. Then send once more leaving the note blank and confirm nothing is left behind in its place.
Finally, sign in as an existing full-access administrator and confirm they can still edit and email customers exactly as before.
Related links
Closing note
Start with one or two Customer Context templates and expand from there once your team is comfortable - it keeps the popup's template list short and makes the right choice obvious.