Use Zimbra Email Templates to Save Time!

Hi Zimbra Friends, Partners & Customers,

Today’s post about how to use the Email Templates Zimlet is from Barry de Graaff, Channel Evangelist for Zimbra Synacor. Wondering what a Zimlet is? It’s a mini-app built into Zimbra that lets you do even more right from email!

The Email Templates Zimlet is a huge time saver if you send regular,  similar looking emails that have small changes. For example, someone in Finance may send invoices at the end of the month. Now she or he can create an invoice template with all the usual text and put placeholders in the template where the changing data goes. When it is time to send out the invoices, the user simply:

• Clicks New Message.
• Inserts the invoice template.
• Replaces the placeholder text.
• Sends the email.

Bam! It’s that easy!

Is the Email Template enabled?

Like all other Zimlets, the Email Templates Zimlet is only available if your Email Administrator enables it. You can check to see if you have the Zimlet by clicking the triple dot menu (…) in a compose tab.

Create an Email Template

To create a template with boiler-plate text and placeholders:

1. Click New Message.
2. Add boiler-plate text.
3. Add placeholders using $ sign with a name in curly braces: ${MY_PLACEHOLDER}
   Note: Placeholder names are case-sensitive and can use letters, numbers, hyphen, underscore, dot and space characters.
4. Click … menu and choose “Save as Template” option. You will see a list of folders. Select any folder and click the Save button.

Note: User can also save templates in any “Shared Folders” with write permission.

Use the Email Template

To use an email template:

1. Click New Message. Insert the template at any position using the cursor.
2. Click … menu and choose Insert Template. It will show the list of folders.
3. Click a folder for the list of templates in that folder.
4. Click a template and click Insert. You can insert as many templates as you want.

Note: Templates are saved as regular emails, and any email can be used in the Insert dialogue.

You will be prompted to complete the placeholder content as shown.

And it works like this …

We hope you enjoy the new Email Templates Zimlet!

Your Zimbra Team