Subscriptions Setup

Templates in the Comms Manager are used for the sign-up PIN and the alert emails.

Templates

Templates are managed under the Subscriptions application (this name is set in the Subscriptions Setup - Configuration).

A template is needed for each subsite that will support subscriptions. In the configuration, the name of the template should be added as the value of the "template" property under each subsite in the "email" section.

Within each template, create a variant for Alerts and one for PIN.

Alerts

When editing the variation for Alerts, the data passed to you comprises:

• an object called groups, which represents each subscription group (as defined in the configuration)
• a string called subsiteURL, which contains the URL of the subsite (ideal for use in footer links)
• a string called userParams, which contains the user's object ID and email address as URL parameters that you can add as a query string to links so that the user can return to the Subscriptions form without requiring PIN verification

Each group has the following properties:

• title - this is the heading text for the group of articles, taken from the parent title property in the configuration, eg "Latest Vacancies")
• articles - this is an array of the newly created articles returned that match the user's subscription list

The example variation set up for Alerts contains the following block in the body:

{{#each groups}}
<h2>{{this.title}}</h2>
{{#each this.articles}}
<h3><a href="{{this.URL}}">{{this.ArticleHeading}}</a></h3><p>{{this.ArticleSummary}}</p><p>Topics: {{this.Topics}}</p>
{{/each}}
{{/each}}

Here, we loop through groups, output its title, then loop through the articles in the group to output details for those, ultimately giving us all of the articles neatly organised by subscription group (ie new jobs appear under "Latest Vacancies", news appears under "Latest News" etc.)

The properties available for each article are those that would be returned by the iCM API call iCM_obj_articleGet (eg ArticleHeading, ArticleSummary), but with two additional properties added:

• URL - this is the absolute URL to the article, and is constructed from the subsite URL and the article ID
• Topics - this is a list of the subscription topics for the article from the related metadata values, so the user can see what it will have matched for them on

PIN

The variation for the PIN request email only has two data items:

• PIN, which is the generated PIN code the user needs to enter to verify their address
• subsiteURL, which contains the URL of the subsite