Communications within a Skyve application is where ad-hoc and system email messages are created and edited. New email messages can be created and use data from within the system as the recipient and/or the body of the email. System messages can also be maintained here if notifications need to be updated over time, for example signatures or contact details.

Create and send a new Communication

Prerequisites: Your application has its SMTP settings configured to enable sending email. If SMTP is not configured, a warning banner is shown at the top of the Communication view.

The following example will walk through using the built in Communication feature from the admin module to send an email from within a Skyve application. In this example, we will use the Tag feature to select some Contacts as the recipients of the test email.

  1. Login with a user which has the ContactManager or SecurityAdministrator role

  2. Switch to desktop mode if not already in it, by clicking your username in the top right hand corner and choosing Switch Mode — see Switching Interfaces. Tagging records from a list is only available in desktop mode.

    Switch mode

  3. Navigate to the Admin module, and select Contacts

  4. From the toolbar Tag dropdown, select New Tag

    Create new tag

  5. Name your tag email contacts
  6. Click OK

  7. The toolbar now shows we have the new tag active

    Active tag

  8. Tag some contacts by clicking the checkbox next to contacts in the first column (Tag)

  9. The tagged contacts will update to be marked in bold

    Tagged contacts

  10. From the admin menu, select Communication->Communications
  11. Click the + symbol to create a new Communication
  12. On the Contents tab, enter test email into Description
  13. In the To field, we are going to enter an expression to use a field from the tagged contacts. This operates similarly to a mail merge, and Skyve will substitute the expression value with the contact value for each tagged record. Enter {email1}, which is the name of the contact email address field.
  14. Enter test email into Subject (expression) (this can also contain expressions)

  15. Enter some text into Body (expression). In the default (responsive) interface this is a plain text field — type your message, or paste in HTML directly. In desktop mode, an Edit button opens a rich HTML editor instead — enter your text and click Apply.

    communication properties

  16. Select the Manage tab
  17. Select Admin as the Module from the drop-down
  18. Select Contact as the Document from the drop-down
  19. Select the tag we just created, email contacts, from the Tag drop-down
  20. Click Save to save your Communication

  21. Click Get Count and it should show the number of tagged Contacts in the Results section

    Communication results

  22. Attachments can be added from the Attachments tab if required (see Attachments and calendar invites)
  23. Optionally, click Test Send to yourself first — this sends the email to your own email address, using the first tagged record for expression substitution, so you can check the result before sending to everyone. At least one record must be tagged or the test will fail with an error.
  24. Click Send Now
  25. A new background job will be initiated to send your email immediately in the background. The results of the job can be checked from the Jobs screen, or by clicking Run Result Check Job on the Manage tab.

Two further options on the Manage tab affect the send:

  • Untag successful documents: each record is removed from the tag as its email sends successfully, so after a partial failure the tag contains only the records still to send.
  • Notify when job is complete: sends you a notification email when the send job finishes.

Editing an existing Communication

When you have existing Communcations in your application and wish to make changes to the content of the email.

Prerequisites: Your application has at least one ad-hoc or system communication defined

  1. Login with a user which has the ContactManager or SecurityAdministrator role
  2. From the admin menu, select Communication->Communications
  3. Open the communication you wish to edit
  4. Select the Contents tab
  5. Modify the To or CC To fields if you would like to change who receives the communication. This can be an expression.
  6. Modify the Subject (expression) and/or the Body (expression) with any desired changes. These can contain expressions.
  7. Click OK to save the modifications

Note: communications marked Used for System communications (such as the built-in password reset and user invitation emails) have their Description, Module and Document locked and cannot be deleted — you can still edit the subject and body. Untick the system flag first if you really need to change or remove one.

Embedding an image

To embed an image in the email body without hosting it externally, use the Add Uploaded Image button in the Options section of the Contents tab. Upload an image file and Skyve will append it to the body as an embedded image.

Attachments and calendar invites

The Attachments tab allows up to three files to be attached to the email.

The Attachments tab also provides a Calendar section for sending calendar invites. Tick Include Calendar Item on the Contents tab, then specify the Title (expression), Start Time, End Time and Description (expression) — recipients receive Google and Yahoo calendar links in the email body along with an .ics attachment for Outlook and Apple Calendar.

For bulk communications, recipients should be given a way to opt out:

  1. On the Contents tab, click Add Unsubscribe Link in the Options section — this appends an unsubscribe link to the email body (using the {unsubscribeUrl} token, which is substituted per recipient).
  2. When a recipient clicks the link, a declined Subscription record is created for them for this communication.
  3. Declined recipients are shown on the communication’s Subscriptions tab (visible once the communication has been saved), and are automatically excluded from future sends of that communication.

Generating files instead of sending

Instead of emailing directly, a communication can generate the messages as .eml files on the server — useful for review, archiving, or processing by another system:

  1. On the Manage tab, click Generate File Batch — a batch of files is generated, one per tagged recipient.
  2. Each batch appears in the Batches list on the Manage tab.
  3. Select a batch and use Download Zip to download the generated files, or Delete to remove the batch from the server.