HelpSpotted

HelpSpot was designed to with the intention to give users full control over how you communicate with your customers, by giving you the ability to fully customize email templates to include the information specific to your organization.

HelpSpot includes 10 default templates found in the Admin -> Tools -> Modify Email Templates Section.  They are available in both plain text and HTML formats,  to ensure users without HTML email support can view emails in their mail client. Because of this, both versions of the templates should be edited when modifying them for consistency.  Additionally, HelpSpot provides dynamic placeholders which can be inserted into the templates to provide specific information.

Let’s take a closer look at these templates and their uses.

• Public Notes to Customers -  Emails to customers use this template. This is a great place for a unified footer or to brand with your organizations design.
• External Notes – Used when staff select the “External Note” option under the note box on the request page. External notes are notes which are usually sent to someone other than the customer (such as a vendor), but where the response is threaded privately back into the request.
• Request Created by Portal Form- When a customer submits a request via the portal form this template is automatically sent to them as an acknowledgment email.
• Notify Staff on A Request - is used when you choose to notify a staff member from a specific request.
• Staff Notifications – Any emails to staff members about events like reassignment, customer replies, and new unassigned requests use this template.
• Reminders-This template is used for reminder emails to staff.
• Forum Topic Subscriber -When a forum thread is updated this template is used to send all thread subscribers an email.
• New Staff Welcome – When a new staff member is created in Admin ->Staff this template is automatically sent to them with their credentials and instructions for logging into HelpSpot.
• Retrieve Portal Password – When customers clicks “Retrieve My Password Link” from the Portal’s Request Check page, this email template is sent with the password included.
• SMS Messages – This template is used for the body of SMS messages the system generates.

Placeholders

Placeholders are specially designed code blocks that are replaced with specific chunks of information such as a the Email Subject, the URL address to check a request, the customers first and last name, etc.

Placeholders start and end with two pound signs, which must remain in this syntax for them to function correctly.

Example:  ##MESSAGE##

Email Templates and placeholders.

Placeholders can be added to both the text and HTML templates and the template’s subject line, by simply clicking on the Insert Template Tag drop down menu and selecting one from the list.

Practical Use

Frequently we get request from organizations who want their Pubic Notes to Customers template to function like a “normal” email, where the history of all the previous correspondence is included, instead of the note.

This can be accomplished easily by adding  the “last email by customer” placeholder to customers email template.  So then when you send a public response, an email is sent to the user. If the user replies by email, the previous correspondence is included in that email. This continues for the duration of the correspondence.

Last Email By Customer

Another common request we get is from organizations is the ability to filter request notifications in their mail client, such as Outlook.  One way this can be achieved is by adding the “Category” placeholder directly into the subject line.  Email notifications can then be arranged by category.

Sorted by Category in Email Client

Finally, some organization prefers to inform your customers of the status of the request, letting them know if their request is active, closed or pending.    This is simple to accomplish by adding the “Status” placeholder within the body of the Pubic Notes to Customers template.

Status Placeholder