An email notification variant is a variation of an existing email notification that only applies to a specific event type or advising appointment type.
Use Case #1 - Events
Sally is responsible for making sure all of the email notifications that are sent out of the events module provide useful and pertinent information for students. One of the most popular event types for the Career Center is "1:1 Company Coffee Chats." Because "1:1 Company Coffee Chats" are in person and mirror an "interview" style format, it is important for the Career Center to remind the students to review the updated "Interview Appearance Guidelines & Etiquette" article for interview best practices. Sally uses the Email Notification Variants feature to create a variant of the "Event Registration" email confirmation for the "1:1 Company Coffee Chats" only. This allows Sally to add in the link for the "Interview Appearance Guidelines & Etiquette" article, along with other tips and details. By creating the variant, students who register for a "1:1 Company Coffee Chats" event type will see a different "Event Registration" email confirmation notification that contains all of the details on coffee chats that Sally has prepared.
Use Case #2 - Advising Appointments
Robert and his colleague Renee are the primary career advisers for a relatively large class. Given these resources, it is critical for students to come prepared to their advising appointments. Robert and Renee leverage the Email Notification Variants feature to provide students with pertinent information within the "Advising Appointment Confirmed" email notification for each "Advising Appointment Type." For example, within the "Advising Appointment Confirmed" email notification for the "Offer Negotiation" advising appointment type, Robert and Renee added a list of key items to bring to the appointment, such as the offer amount, company, industry and target salary. Also included are links to the Research Tools for up-to-date salary data, along with recently published articles on offer negotiation strategy/expectation setting. For the "Mock Interview" advising appointment type, Robert and Renee added links to the Resource Library, where students can practice interviewing, review best practices and watch other curated content.
How To Create an Email Notification Variant
1. Navigate to Site Management - Site Settings - and select either the "Events" or "Appointments" module. In the example below, we will create an email notification variant within the "Events" module.
2. Within the "Events" module site settings, select the "Notifications" tab:
3. Select the email notification that you would like to create a variation of. In the example below, we will create a variation of the "Event Registration" email notification.
4. On the "Event Registration" email notification detail page, select the "Ellipse" (three dots) menu on the upper right corner of the page, and then select "+ Add Variant"
5. On the ensuing page, you will notice that the subject and body content of the original email notification are copied over to the new email variant. Select the "Event Type(s)" that the variant applies to, and make any desired updates to the email subject or body content.
6. After saving the variant, navigate back to the "Event Notifications" list and scroll down to the email notification that you created an email variant for. You will notice the newly created email notification variant listed below, denoted via the squiggly "variant" icon:
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How many email variants can I create per email notification?
A: You can create as many email variants per email notification as there are event or appointment types. For example, if you have 10 event types, you can create 10 email variants for each event email notification.
Q: What happens if I delete an email variant?
A: If you delete an email variant for a notification, users will receive the default (original) email notification.
Q: Can I temporarily disable an email variant?
A: Yes! All email notifications can be disabled, variant or not. If you disable an email variant for a notification, users will receive the default (original) email notification.
Q: Can I create email variants for job fairs?
A: Yes! Because job fairs are just another "Event Type," you can create email variants for any notification and apply it to Job Fair event types. We also recently added an update that allows you to create as many "Job Fair" event types as you would like, so you can create different notification schemes for each job fair event type on campus (e.g., "Engineering Job Fair" or "Internship Job Fair").
Q: I am pretty sure someone made an update to one of my email notification variants, but I can't say for certain. Can the support team tell me who, if anyone, made an update to my email notification?
A: No need! Simply navigate to the email variant in question, select the "Ellipse" (three dot) menu on the upper right corner of the page, and select the "Audit Log." If a change has been made, the change will be listed.
Q: We no longer need a particular event or appointment type and wish to merge it with another value. What will happen to the email variant associated with the outgoing event or appointment type?
A: You will need to remove the outgoing event or appointment type from any email variants (or delete the email variant) before merging, as the system will check to see if there is an active connection to an email variant and will prevent you from merging or deleting the outgoing event or appointment type.