CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

The 'Email contact' action has been significantly upgraded since 1.9, with token replacement, HTML and plain text options, ... - which is great!

However the task of sending a an email to a single contact has now been significantly complicated.  Having options for both HTML and plain text for an email to a single person does not make sense since we know that only one will be sent (based on the person's preference).  A CiviCRM user will feel compelled to write both not knowing which will get sent.

A solution might be to do one or more of the following:
- if all selected contacts have the same email preference setting then show it on the Email compose screen
- allow the CiviCRM user to disable the HTML or Plain Text formats (force one format)
- if it is the case that there is the same format for all selected contacts then disable one of the HTML or Plain text options as a default setting.

Dave,
I think you're right that one major use is just to send a simple text message. My take on the use cases and prioritization is

High priority use cases
1. Type in a plain text message and send (possibly as plain to all users even if they prefer HTML)
2. Pull up a template with plain and HTML formatting, possibly edit slightly, then send to users based on their preferences.

Low priority use case
3. Type in a plain text message from scratch, an HTML message from scratch, then send to users based on their preferences and maybe save as a template.


The current interface supports 2 and 3 well, but not 1.  The method you propose would support 1 well, but might make 2 and 3 difficult.

How about this:
* HTML portion of the form is collapsed by default. it can be expanded by selecting a "Enable HTML" checkbox
* if a template is selected, then "Enable HTML" is checked and the HTML portion is expanded
* a small info field is shown at the top listing the number of recipients in each of the three preference bins: "HTML, Both, Plain"

So, by default Use Case 1 is supported, and users would just type a plain text message and hit send, getting it plain to everyone.  For Use Case 2, they would select a template, and then see both HTML and plain.  For Use Case 3, they would manually check the "Enable HTML" box and then type away in both boxes.

Yes, sounding good.  Templates having just plain or just HTML is a good point.

I'll file an issue for 2.2.

No promises but yes, I could potentially have a go at this.