🌞🏗 Your step-by-step setup guide: Email Templates for alert emails

Read time: 5 minutes

Hey there! Do you hate that Workday’s Notification Designer isn’t compatible with alerts yet? If so, you’re certainly not alone 😅. BUT…

Don’t let this deter you from utilizing alerts!

(ICYMI, Notification Designer allows you to create image-rich, beautifully formatted emails for business process, benefits, candidate notifications, etc. More to come on this next week).

You actually can add logos and images to your alert email notifications—without HTML. Here’s how…

Create an Email Template.

While Workday’s Notification Designer currently supports just 22 notification types, Email Templates support nearly twice as many:

⚠️ WARNING: If your organization is using alerts without an Email Template, within the next 5 minutes, you may just upgrade alert aesthetics for your entire workforce 😜

After reading today’s newsletter, you’ll know how to create and deploy an Email Template for your alerts… so you can say buh-bye 👋 to robotic, imageless alert emails while we await Notification Designer’s potential expansion.

Before we dive in… if you missed our last two newsletters on alert setup, check em’ out here: 7-step alert setup guide and next-level alert setup tips.

And with that, let’s get to it! 😎

Step 1: Create your email template

🚨 Remember to complete your setup in a test environment first!

Run the task, “Create Email Template”. Type a name for your Email Template. For “Email Template Behavior”, select “Alert Notification Email”.

Use the “+” button to add a new Content row. The “Order” column is required and will determine in which order your Contents appear. Label these alphabetically, like you would a business process step.

The “Static Content / Dynamic Content” column determines what Content appears within your alert email. “Static Content” is always the same, while “Dynamic Content” is specific to every notification.

For Static Content, you’ve got 4 options:

1. Text - Any text you want! This static text will appear in every alert email notification. Note that you can use HTML here (e.g., <br/> for a line break), however, I don’t recommend getting too fancy. Keep it simple to ensure your alerts stay polished.

2. URL - A link, optionally hyperlinked as text provided within the “Label” input:

3. Embedded Image - Upload an image as an attachment. Optionally, include a link to which the user will be directed if they click on the image:

4. External Image - Provide the URL at which an image lives. Again, optionally include a link to which the user will be directed if they click on the image:

For Dynamic Content, you’ve got 3 options:

Note that your options for Dynamic Content change based on the “Email Template Behavior” you’ve selected for your Email Template.

1. Email URL - This option includes the hyperlinked text, “Click here to view the notification details”. This link takes the user to view the same notification within Workday.

2. Links - If you configured an “Included Task” within your alert, you can use the Links function to display the task as a hyperlink within your alert email. If there is no Included Task in your alert, the Links Content will be blank—no hyperlink will be displayed.

3. Main Body - Every Email Template you create should include a Main Body as a row of Content. This is the dynamic content configured within your alert itself. For example, this alert Body:

… set up as the Main Body in your Email Template:

… will yield this in your alert email notification 👇

Are you seeing how the Email Template Contents translate to the alert email notification?!

If not, here’s a side-by-side to bring it all home (note that this example doesn’t include Links Content):

Alright! Now that you’ve created your Email Template, let’s get it up and running 🚀…

Step 2: Maintain your email templates

Run the task “Maintain Email Templates”. Find the line item “Alert Notification Email” in the “Used for” column and set your new Custom Email Template to “Active”.

And that’s it! Your Email Template will now be applied to all of your alert notification emails 🥳

Step 3: Test!

Is it even a #wellbuiltworkday guide if we don’t tell you to test? 😜 To quickly test what your layout will look like, Email Templates have a helpful “Test” feature:

With this feature, you can send an instant test email to any email address:

This feature is helpful for swift visualization of your Email Template. However, to confirm that any Email URLs and Links are working properly, ensure you test by triggering the alert itself as well (check out step 6 in our 7-step guide for help here).

And there you have it! You have officially upgraded your alert aesthetics while we patiently await the delivery of Notification Designer for alerts 🤩

As always, thank you for reading!

We’re celebrating you and your pursuit of a Well Built Workday 🥳 

Until next time!

Ceci & Mia

Co-Founders of Well Built Solutions