CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I wanted to point out first that the documentation has an example of the required tokens in the body text,  but the documentation does not seem to state anywheres that they are required to be in the body text.

Second,  I included the tokens in html for the body and received an error because civimail is insisting on body text, as opposed to body html....  but there is a sample html message with the tokens....  then I tried it again and it worked with just html....  BUT, the message arrived in html.... it was not interpreted at all! What am I missing here as far as the html window versus the text window...  I copied the html code right from the sample into the the html window.....

    Ahhh How foolish of me...  I didn't recognize it but the
    html editor is in etxt mode and you have to click the <h>
    to put in in html mode!

Third,  how does one edit the message after selecting a previous template.... nothing came up in the edit window after I selected the template.

Fourth,  the documentation does not seem to indicate how one can make use of components other than head and footer.... 

Fifth, is there no way to include the tokens in components that can be added to the message (I have read the discussion in the forum that the tokens need to be part of the body,  but this is frankly a bit of a pain when they should be able to be included in the footer....

And last,  is there a way to use the drupal blocks as header or footer....

Thanks for the reply...  will try to be more comprehensive below ;=}

1. when pointing to shortcoming in the documentation please give us a url so we know what page you are referring to. The documentation is on a wiki and can be edited by users, so feel free to edit and fix the docs. We do monitor all edits and revert if needed.

Sorry, was synthesizing from a posting here: http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,1682.msg7303.html#msg7303  in which poster had similar question.....  Just wanted to point out that while the example show that the tokens are in the body,  I didn't find anything that said they had to be in the body,  and putting them in the footer would probably be the handiest way to do such (as that is where such text is usually...)

If this is something that should be added to the documentation I will go ahead and add text to that effect in the wiki

2. a template selection means u r reusing an existing template. we dont allow edits of templates in the civimail flow.

My misunderstanding then.  I assumed (bad habit) that availability of a template was intended to provide for modification at message composition time...  otherwise you just have a canned message,  not really a template if you know what I mean (template connoting something used as a basis for modification.) Am I the only one confused here or should this also be added to docs?

Confusion is increased because if you select a template and wait long enough the template does appear in the editing box....  it does seem to take awhile....   So if it does appear in the editing box,  it is acting like a template as I am using the term....  No? 

3. not sure what you mean by "not seem to indicate how one can make use of components other than head and footer.... "

There is a way to add new components.  Let's say I add a new component.  How would I use that component in a message. Does the new component get assigned a token that I can then insert? 

4. i'm pretty sure we dont care where the tokens reside as long as they are part of both the text message and the html message. the token checking happens on the entire message. If you feel this is not working, please reproduce on our demo machine and shows us the steps you did to reproduce

Well, as noted above,  mailer seems to bomb if the token is in footer. And post cited above from Dave Greenberg seems to indicate that toek screening takes place before the full message is assembled, as otherwise,  as I think you are suggesting,  you could insert tokens in footer....

5. no u cannot use drupal blocks. However you can contribute and submit a patch back that does so

Well,  I just might try that at some point,  but present learning curve is pretty steep ;=}

Lastly,  as long as this is overly long....   there were a number of postings regarding failure of mail because the crm php code did not reference sendmail.  Is this a feature,  or is this something  that should be addressed in the admin interface,  as if most installs are using the local mail system, would it not make more sense to use sendmail as the default. See, http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,1799.0.html,  but that seems not to be the only solution.....

Regarding the token-in-footer situation:

1. check the documentation at: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Sample+CiviMail+Messages. In general forum posts will not be comprehensive and cover all cases. Footer is mentioned in the docs. 3rd line, 1st paragraph
4. Can you reproduce this on the demo machine and if so please file an issue

Yes, the docs suggest it can be in footer but elsewhere it has been stated (cite in prior post) body only and footer did not work.  Will replicate the situation and see if its a problem on demo site.

5. CiviCRM support only smtp at this point. At some point we will consider adding sendmail as an option. If important to you and you need it now, please file a patch and/or hire someone to write the needed code and contribute back

Is there a more appropriate fix then,  than swapping these lines:
Code:self::$_mail =& Mail::factory( 'smtp', $params );
to
Code:self::$_mail =& Mail::factory( 'sendmail', $params );
to enable the PHP sendmail function

Thanks