Effective communication with customers, partners, and prospects is critical to success in the fast-paced business world. In Salesforce, the leading customer relationship management (CRM), email templates are pivotal in delivering personalized and professional communication to stakeholders. In contrast, Salesforce Visualforce Email Templates offer many out-of-the-box email templates that haul the entire experience to new heights.
This comprehensive guide will delve into the Salesforce Visualforce Email Templates, exploring their benefits and how they can be leveraged to create highly engaging and personalized email communication. Whether you’re an experienced Salesforce administrator or a budding developer, this blog will equip you with the knowledge and skills to effectively harness the power of Salesforce Visualforce Email templates.
What Is Salesforce Visualforce Email Templates?
With Visualforce email templates, users can send targeted and personalized emails. Template creators can harness the powerful Visualforce programming language to create templated email content.
Developers and administrators can use Visualforce to create email templates. The advantage of using Visualforce over standard HTML email templates is that Visualforce gives you the ability to perform advanced operations on data that is sent to a recipient.
All Visualforce email templates must be contained within a single <messaging:emailTemplate> tag. This is analogous to regular Visualforce pages being defined within a single <apex:page>tag.
- The <messaging:emailTemplate> tag must contain either a single <messaging:htmlEmailBody> tag or a single <messaging:plainTextEmailBody> tag.
- Several standard Visualforce components are not available for use within <messaging:emailTemplate>. These include <apex:detail>,<apex:pageBlock> and all related pageBlock components, and all input components such as <apex:form>. If you attempt to save a Visualforce email template with these components, an error message displays.
How To Use Visualforce Email Templates In Salesforce?
Do one of the following:
- If you have permission to edit public templates, from Setup, enter Email Templates in the Quick Find box, then select Classic Email Templates.
- If you do not have permission to edit public templates, go to your personal settings. Enter Templates in the Quick Find box, then select Email Templates or My Templates—whichever one appears.
- 1. Click New Template.
- 2. Choose Visualforce and click Next.
- 3. You cannot send a mass email using a Visualforce email template.
- 4. Choose a folder in which to store the template.
- 5. To make the template available for use, select the Available for Use checkbox.
- 6. Enter a name in Email Template Name.
- 7. If necessary, change the Template Unique Name. This unique name refers to the component when you use the Lightning Platform API. In managed packages, this unique name prevents naming conflicts in package installations. This name can contain only underscores and alphanumeric characters, and must be unique in your org. It must begin with a letter, not include spaces, not end with an underscore, and not contain two consecutive underscores. With the Template Unique Name field, you can change certain components’ names in a managed package and the changes are reflected in a subscriber’s organization.
- 8. If desired, choose a different character set from the Encoding dropdown list.
- 9. Enter a description for the template. Both template name and description are for your internal use only.
- 10. Enter a subject line for your template in Email Subject.
- 11. In the Recipient Type dropdown list, select the type of recipient to receive email created from the template.
- 12. If desired, in the Related To Type dropdown list, select the object from which the template retrieves merge field data.
- 13. Click Save.
- 14. On the View and Edit Email Templates in Salesforce Classic page, click Edit Template.
- 15. Enter markup text for your Visualforce email template.
NOTE: If you are including an image, we recommend uploading it to the Documents tab to reference the copy of the image on our server. For example:
<apex:image id=”Logo” value=”https://yourInstance.salesforce.com/servlet/servlet.ImageServer?
id=015D0000000Dpwc&oid=00DD0000000FHaG&lastMod=127057656800″ />
- 1. To specify the version of Visualforce and the API used with this email template, click Version Settings. If you’ve installed managed packages from the AppExchange, you can also specify which version of each managed package to use with this email template. Generally, use the default value for all versions, to associate the email template with the most recent version of Visualforce, the API, and each managed package. To maintain specific behavior, you can specify an older version of Visualforce and the API. To access components or functionality that differ from the most recent package version, you can specify an older version of a managed package.
- 2. To view the details of the template, click Save. To continue editing your template, click Quick Save. Your Visualforce markup must be valid before you can save your template.
/********************* Email Template 1 *************/
Example 1: Contact Cases
Recipient
<messaging:emailTemplate subject="Account and Cases Information {!recipient.Name}" recipientType="Contact" > <messaging:htmlEmailBody > <html> <head> </head> <body> Dear {!recipient.Name},<br/> Please find your all open cases:<br/> <table> <tr> <th>Case Number</th> <th>Case Origin</th> <th>Case Status</th> </tr> <apex:repeat value="{!recipient.cases}" var="case"> <tr> <td>{!case.CaseNumber}</td> <td>{!case.Origin}</td> <td>{!case.Status}</td> </tr> </apex:repeat> </table> </body> </html> </messaging:htmlEmailBody> <messaging:plainTextEmailBody > Congratulations! This is your new Visualforce Email Template. </messaging:plainTextEmailBody> </messaging:emailTemplate>
/******************** Email Template 2 ***************/
Example 2: Account Cases
Recipient and RelatedTo
<messaging:emailTemplate subject="Account Cases as Related To : {!relatedTo.Name}" recipientType="Contact" relatedToType="Account"> <messaging:htmlEmailBody > <html> <head> </head> <body> Dear {!relatedTo.Name},<br/> Please find your all open cases:<br/> <table> <tr> <th>Case Number</th> <th>Case Origin</th> <th>Case Status</th> </tr> <apex:repeat value="{!relatedTo.cases}" var="case"> <tr> <td>{!case.CaseNumber}</td> <td>{!case.Origin}</td> <td>{!case.Status}</td> </tr> </apex:repeat> </table> </body> </html> </messaging:htmlEmailBody> <messaging:plainTextEmailBody > Congratulations! This is your new Visualforce Email Template. </messaging:plainTextEmailBody> </messaging:emailTemplate>
Example 3 : Student Fees Details Using Component
<messaging:emailTemplate subject="Submission Of Student Fees" recipientType="Contact" relatedToType="Student__c"> <messaging:htmlEmailBody > <c:StudentFeesDetails stuId="{!relatedTo.Id}"></c:StudentFeesDetails> </messaging:htmlEmailBody> <messaging:plainTextEmailBody > Congratulations! This is your new Visualforce Email Template. </messaging:plainTextEmailBody> </messaging:emailTemplate>
/*************** End Email Templates ************/
/******************* Component ******************/
<apex:component controller="StudentFeesController" access="global"> <Style> table{border:1px solid #000;} td,th {border: 1px solid #000} </style> <apex:attribute name="stuId" assignTo="{!studentId}" type="Id" description="Student Id" /> <h1>Your Fees Deails</h1> <table > <tr> <th>Date</th> <th>Amount</th> </tr> <apex:repeat value="{!feesDetails}" var="fee" > <tr> <td><apex:outputField value="{!fee.date__c}" /></td> <td>{!fee.amount__c}</td> </tr> </apex:repeat> </table> </apex:component>
/************** Class ******************/
public class StudentFeesController{ public Id studentId {get;set;} public List<Fees__c> getFeesDetails(){ return [select id, amount__c, date__c from fees__c where student_Id__c =: studentId]; } }
/******************* Page **********************/
<apex:page controller="SendVFEmailTemplateController"> <apex:form> <apex:pageBlock> <apex:pageBlockButtons> <apex:commandButton value="Send Contact Cases" action="{!sendCases}"/> <apex:commandButton value="Send Account Cases" action="{!sendAccountCases}"/> <apex:commandButton value="Send Fees Details" action="{!sendFeeDetails}"/> </apex:pageBlockButtons> </apex:pageBlock> </apex:form> </apex:page>
/******************* Class ********************/
public class SendVFEmailTemplateController{ EmailTemplate et; public SendVFEmailTemplateController(){ } public void sendCases(){ et = [select Id, Name from EmailTemplate where DeveloperName = 'Account_Cases']; Messaging.SingleEmailMessage semail = new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage (); semail.setTargetObjectId('00328000005cwjF'); semail.setTemplateId(et.Id); Messaging.sendEmail(new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage[] {semail}); } public void sendAccountCases(){ et = [select Id, Name from EmailTemplate where DeveloperName = 'Account_s_Cases']; Messaging.SingleEmailMessage semail = new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage (); semail.setTargetObjectId('00335672305cwjF'); semail.setTemplateId(et.Id); semail.setWhatId('00123400006azlA'); Messaging.sendEmail(new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage[] {semail}); } public void sendFeeDetails(){ et = [select Id, Name from EmailTemplate where DeveloperName = 'Student_Fees_Info']; Messaging.SingleEmailMessage semail = new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage (); semail.setTargetObjectId('00335672305cwjF'); semail.setTemplateId(et.Id); semail.setWhatId('a002320080DGNjx'); Messaging.sendEmail(new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage[] {semail}); } }
Benefits Of Salesforce Visualforce Email Templates
In Salesforce, Visualforce Email Templates provide many benefits that significantly enhance the email communication experience.
Let’s take a look at some key advantages!
- Customization and Brand Consistency: Visualforce allows the admin or developers to customize your emails’ look and feel using HTML and CSS. This ensures that emails align perfectly with your brand’s identity, creating a consistent and professional image for your organization.
- Dynamic Content Personalization: With visualforce, you can render dynamic content in your email templates. This means you can personalize emails based on recipient information, such as their name, company, or any other relevant data stored in Salesforce. Personalized emails are more engaging and increase the likelihood of a positive response.
- Rich Media Support: Salesforce visualforce email templates support all media types, including images, gifs, videos, and all interactive components. This capability enables you to create visually appealing and engaging emails that leave a lasting impression on recipients.
- Responsive Design: With Visualforce Email Templates can be design responsive email templates, which means email can automatically adjust in all sizes of screen. This ensures that your emails look great on desktop computers and mobile devices, improving the user experience for all recipients.
- Advanced Formatting And Styling: With Visualforce, you have more control over the formatting and styling of the emails. Make your brand personality stand out by applying custom fonts, colors, and layouts to create visually stunning emails for your organization.
- Integration With Salesforce Data: Visualforce Email Templates seamlessly integrate with Salesforce Data Cloud to utilize real-time customer data and create more personalized email templates. As a result, you can take up-to-date information from your CRM system in your emails.
- Track Email Performance: Salesforce provides analytics to help you track how well your emails work which we have created from the visualforce. You can see how many people open emails, click on links, and take action, giving you helpful insight and representing data in a graphical form for better understanding.
In a nutshell, Salesforce Visualforce Email Templates offer many advantages, making it easier for us to create stunning and personalized emails that leave a positive impression on audiences while improving your overall email marketing efforts.
We hope this blog helped you learn how to use Visualforce email templates in Salesforce. If you require salesforce development services then get in touch with our salesforce consulting team.