User Account Placeholders

[Mark]

Hi Ben,

Sorry about the delay in getting back to you.

I'm gutted to read that the Account Placeholder feature has been completely dropped! As a result we're having to patch the '2.1.0-beta-20110731' with the feature from when it was available in previous Beta releases.

Allow me to explain why the feature was so useful to us...

We use FormTools purely internally to compliment our Call Logging system on the IT Helpdesk. When calls have to be passed to third-parties via Email, each Analyst constructs the Email differently (fonts, sizes, styles, different data etc.) I wanted to make our communication to third-parties consistent regardless of which colleague actions the job ticket.

In short, the Account Placeholder feature allows us to automatically generate our Email signatures. The third party and the end customer (who also gets a copy) receives the Email as if it was personally constructed and sent from Microsoft Outlook etc. In fact, by defining an additional recipient within the FormTools form setup and then adding a Filtering Rule into Outlook, form submissions sent out externally would actually appear then appear in our Mailbox Sent Items folder! Neat!

For example:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

New Call To Log: Complete Plumbing Services

Please can we log the following call with you?

Call Ref: XT235771
Customer: Complete Plumbing Services
Job Description:
etc.......
etc.......

Kind regards,

John Smith
Support Analyst, IT Helpdesk

T: 01234 567892
E: john.smith@company-name.com.uk

Company-Name
Unit 3A, Westfield Business Park
Coverdown
Southants
SU22 3RL

Please consider the enviroment - do you really need to print this Email?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Or in Email Template form:

------------------------------------------------------------------

Kind regards,

{$FIRSTNAME} {$LASTNAME}
{$COMPANYNAME}

T: +44 1234 567892
E: {$EMAIL}

Company-Name
Unit 3A, Westfield Business Park
Coverdown
Southants
SU22 3RL

Please consider the enviroment - do you really need to print this Email?

------------------------------------------------------------------

Note we use the COMPANYNAME field in the account profile as the Job Title and Department.

I hope this makes sense and is a good enough reason for you to perhaps re-consider the feature :-)

All the best,

- Mark

Hey Mark,

So I was looking into this tonight and now I'm leaning towards the opposite direction: remove those client account placeholders altogether.

Here's the thing: the feature doesn't really make sense - it never did with the Form Tools design. In the past, I've explained it like so: "those placeholders ({$FIRSTNAME}, {$LASTNAME}, {$EMAIL} and {$COMPANYNAME}) will be converted to the appropriate value if the email is sent to a client account."

It sounds like that makes sense, but actually it doesn't. Email templates with Form Tools 2 are designed to permit multiple recipients - the main recipient, multiple cc's and multiple bcc's. So what happens if you target multiple client accounts as ccs or bccs? What value would get those placeholders? Presumably the only logical solution would be to have those placeholders be evaluated if the MAIN recipient is a client account - but then, why not hardcode it? The name would never change; the only benefit would be in case the email itself changes, but does that need to be in the email content itself...?

Frankly, it seems very complicated for such a minor feature, and offers very little value.

You convinced? Disagree? Anybody? I'm going to wait a few days, but unless I hear a convincing counter-argument I think I'm going to drop the feature.

All the best!

- Ben