About Email Templates

FlexNet Operations 2018

The Producer Portal offers you flexibility in editing your email templates. This topic includes short discussions and examples on the following subjects:

Email Template Types

The Producer Portal includes a number of email template types for producers to use with FlexNet Operations, such as the Entitlement Certificate template and the Update Notification Email template.

Initially, the set of email templates include only the default variation of each template type. Producers can choose to edit the default variation—creating new versions of the default email template—or to add new variations of an existing email template type. For some emails that FlexNet Operations sends, users can choose from active variations of an email template prior to sending the message. Multiple active variations of a given email template type can exist, but each email template variation can only have one active version. (See About Email Template Status Settings.)

Tip • FlexNet Operations supports the use of custom email template variations only for the following email template types: Entitlement, Entitlement Certificate, License, Multiple Licenses, Consolidated License, Multiple Consolidated Licenses, Update Notification Email, and Product Upgrade Job Email.

There are several built-in email template types in FlexNet Operations. You can create one or more variations for each email type, but not all template types support the use of custom variations. (The original email template for each type has a variation name of DEFAULT.

About Email Template Status Settings

Each email template variation can have one or more versions. There are three possible status settings for an email template version:

Email template versions are set to Active or Draft status depending on how they are saved on the Edit Email Template page. There is no separate status-setting control in the Producer Portal.

When you create or edit an email template, you can choose to save it as the Active version or the Draft version of that template variation. If version of the same template variation already exists in the same state, its state becomes Archived. To return an archived email template version back to Draft or Active status, open its Edit Email Template page and save it as the Active or Draft template according to your needs.

Email Template Attributes

An email templates consist of

More About Email Template Content

The text of the email template body (Text Content and HTML Content) and the Subject can be of two types:

Tip • To avoid typos, copy the merge tag from the Merge Tag List and paste it in the body or subject area. Merge tags must be opened and closed with a double square bracket like this: [[MERGE_TAG]].

See the merge tag examples in this section for examples of merge tag usage.

Merge Tag Example: Repeating Blocks

The Producer Portal allows you to set up repeating blocks of content to, for example, display an order with multiple order lines. To do this, start by creating the content that you need for one order line. Then put the [[for-each]] tag at the beginning of this block and the [[end for-each]] at the end of the block. Here are three examples:

[[FOR-EACH TAG="EntitlementLineItem"]]

[[OrderID]]

Activation ID: [[ActivationID]]

Quantity: [[SeatCount]]

Start Date: [[StartDate]]

Expiration: [[ExpirationDate]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

Merge Tag Example: Selected Contact

The SelectedContact merge tag enables users to include additional criteria when defining contact information for an entitlement.

[[FOR-EACH TAG="Entitlement" child-only="true"]]

[[FOR-EACH TAG="ChannelPartners" child-only="true"]]

[[FOR-EACH TAG="ChannelPartner"]]

Partner Tier Name: [[PartnerTierName]]

Org Display Name: [[Name]]

Org Name: [[OrgName]]

[[FOR-EACH TAG="SelectedContact" child-only="true"]]

Contact Name: [[ContactName]]

Firstname: [[Firstname]]

Lastname: [[Lastname]]

Country: [[Country]]

Email: [[Email]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

Merge Tag Example: Maintenance Line Items

The LinkedMaintenanceLineItems and MaintenanceLineItem merge tags enable users to iterate through maintenance line items.

[[FOR-EACH TAG="Entitlement" child-only="true"]]

[[FOR-EACH TAG="ChannelPartners" child-only="true"]]

[[FOR-EACH TAG="ChannelPartner"]]

Partner Tier Name: [[PartnerTierName]]

Org Display Name: [[Name]]

Org Name: [[OrgName]]

[[FOR-EACH TAG="SelectedContact" child-only="true"]]

Contact Name: [[ContactName]]

Firstname: [[Firstname]]

Lastname: [[Lastname]]

Country: [[Country]]

Email: [[Email]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

[[FOR-EACH TAG="EntitlementLineItems" child-only="true"]]

[[FOR-EACH TAG="EntitlementLineItem" child-only="true"]]

ActivationID: [[ActivationID]]

Order ID: [[OrderID]]

Quantity: [[SeatCount]]

Start Date: [[StartDate]]

Expiration Date: [[ExpirationDate]]

Permanent: [[Permanent]]

Duration :

Length: [[Length]]

Units: [[Units]]

[[FOR-EACH TAG="LinkedMaintenanceLineItems" child-only="true"]]

[[FOR-EACH TAG="MaintenanceLineItem" child-only="true"]]

Maintenance Activation Id: [[ActivationID]]

Order ID: [[OrderID]]

Quantity: [[SeatCount]]

Start Date: [[StartDate]]

Expiration Date: [[ExpirationDate]]

Permanent: [[Permanent]]

State: [[Status]]

[[FOR-EACH tag="Product"]]

Maintenance Product: [[Name]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

Merge Tag Example: Using IF to Display Conditional Text

You can make some email content conditional with the use of IF tags.

[[IF TAG="OrgType" value="PUBLISHER"]]

You can now login to your FlexNet Producer account by clicking this link: https://producer-fno-uat.flexnetoperations.com/flexnet/operations/logon.do

[[ELSE]]

You can now login to your FlexNet End User Portal account by clicking this link: https://enduser-fno-uat.flexnetoperations.com/flexnet/operationsportal/logon.do

[[END ELSE]]

After your initial login, you will be prompted to change this password.

If you have problems with your account, please contact your Administrator.

Best Regards,

Administrator

[[END IF]]

Using the "no value" clause:

[[IF TAG="ServerIDs" VALUENOT=""]]

Server Ids : [[ServerIDs]]

[[END IF]]

[[IF TAG="NodeLockedIDs" VALUENOT=""]]

Node Locked Ids : [[NodeLockedIDs]]

[[END IF]]

Merge Tag Example: Custom Attributes

If you use custom attributes, you can also use them in your email templates.

Look in the list of Merge Tags and see if you find a tag like this "[[ENT_CA]]". If that tag is in the list of allowed tags, you can add any CA that is defined on that level in your Email Template (in the example that would mean you can use Entitlement CAs but not Member CAs).

Since you can have many custom attributes, you must add the CA-ID to properly identify the custom attribute to use. If you don't know the value of the CA-ID, go to the Custom Attributes page in the Producer Portal.

Here is an example showing how to use a user-level custom attribute to localize an email:

[[IF TAG="MEMBER_UDF" CODE="LANGUAGE_PREFERENCE" VALUE="US"]] Dear

[[FIRST_NAME]] [[LAST_NAME]],

Welcome to the XXXXXXXX Download Center, an online software delivery service

that helps you manage and stay current with your XXXXXXXX products. You are

receiving this email because [[ACCOUNT_NAME]] has purchased XXXXXXXX products.

Here is the login and password to [[ACCOUNT_NAME]]'s XXXXXXXX Download Center

site:

[[IF TAG="ENT_CA" CODE="SHIP_LANGUAGE" VALUE="US"]]

Dear [[DisplayName]]

Thank you for your order.

Your Activation ID is: [[ActivationID]]

The Activation ID will be required to login. You will also need the Hostid of the computer with which this license will be associated.

If you have any questions, contact your local XYZ Corporation office.

[[END IF]]

[[IF TAG="ENT_CA" CODE="SHIP_LANGUAGE" VALUE="FR"]]

Cher [[DisplayName]],

Nous vous remercions de votre commande.

Votre code d’activation : [[ActivationID]]

Le code d’activation est nécessaire pour vous connecter. Vous aurez également besoin de l’adresse d’hôte de l’ordinateur pour lequel la licence sera associée.

Si vous avez des questions, n’hésitez pas à contacter le bureau XYZ corp le plus proche.

[[END IF]]

Merge Tag Example: CHILD-ONLY

Useful when the logical flow of the merge tags in an email template encompasses multiple FlexNet Operations entities (such as entitlements and entitlement line items, accounts and members, and the like) and the same attribute is present in two or more of the entities, CHILD-ONLY, allows you to restrict the evaluation of a condition to a particular entity.

For example, the Status tag exists for both entitlements and entitlement line items. In a FOR-EACH loop of entitlement line items, you might want to force the parser to look for the Status tag only in the entitlement line item rather than allowing it to consider the Status tag value in the parent entitlement.

[[FOR-EACH TAG="EntitlementLineItem"]]

[[IF TAG="Status" VALUE="Deployed" CHILD-ONLY="true"]]

...

[[END IF]]

[[END FOR-EACH]]

Special Handling of Alert Email Templates

Email templates for alerts are managed differently from most other email templates. While the templates for sending license certificates, entitlement certificates, shortcode ASRs, and so forth are managed through the Producer Portal UI, the alert email templates can be customized only by producers who use FlexNet Operations On-Premises and who have direct access to the alert email template files.

Alert email templates are located in the <ops_install_dir>/webapp/templates directory. The name of an alert email template is usually composed of the following elements:

For example, the template operations.changedProductsTemplate.xsl is defined in FlexNet Operations to send alert messages when a product’s features or feature bundles change (Updated Products alert).

FlexNet Operations enables you to manage each alert email template individually. You can customize one template while leaving the other templates untouched, and FlexNet Operations uses the custom alert email template you provided while employing the default templates for the other alert emails.

Common Email Template Questions

Here are some common questions about email template management:

You are writing HTML mail and therefore you will need to use the <br> and <p> tag to create your line breaks and paragraph breaks.

Just use the image tag like you would on an HTML page but make sure that the SRC parameter is a full path that points to the image on your own web server. There is no need to upload these images to FlexNet Operations.

There is probably a typo in the brackets and therefore the application does not consider it a merge tag and, as a result, leaves it unchanged. Merge tags needs to be opened and closed with a double square bracket like this: [[MERGE_TAG]].

Look carefully through the email and make sure that all the merge tags are replaced with a preview value. Make sure that the sentences still make sense now that there is real content where the merge tag used to be. If you are happy with the result you can save the email template, you have the choice to save it as a Active or as a Draft template.

See Also

Managing Email Templates

Managing Email

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