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Tutorial 8: Send an Email

Estimated time: 10 min.

Prerequisites​

Email - Intro​

In this tutorial, you will learn how you can send emails from a pipeline, with and without attachments.

1 - Create the pipeline and send simple email​

  1. Login to the portal https://NAMESPACE.pipeforce.net

  2. Navigate to LOW CODE → Workbench

  3. Select the node of your app or create a new one.

  4. Click the plus icon at the top of the tree.

  5. The new property view opens:

    1. As property key, use: global/app/YOUR_APP/pipeline/send-email
    2. As mime type, use: application/yaml; type=pipeline

  6. Click SAVE

  7. The new property has been created, and the content editor was opened for you.

  8. Now copy and paste this content into the editor, and overwrite any existing data there by this:

    pipeline:
      - mail.send:
          to: "your@domain.tld"
          subject: "Test email"
          message: "This is a simple email, sent from a pipeline."

  9. Replace your@domain.tld by your real email address.

  10. Click SAVE and then RUN to execute the pipeline.

  11. After a while, you should have received an email similar to this, decorated with the default layout:

2 - Extra: Add attachments​

In this step, you will learn how to add attachments to such an email pipeline. For this, we will upload a PDF document to drive first, which will be used as an attachment.

  1. Login to the portal https://NAMESPACE.pipeforce.net

  2. Open Files / Drive.

  3. Upload a file with name invoice.pdf into the root folder.

  4. Change your pipeline send-email to this:

    pipeline:
      - drive.read:
          path: "invoice.pdf"
      - mail.send:
          to: "your@domain.tld"
          subject: "Test email"
          message: "This is a simple email, sent from a pipeline."
          attachments: "#{body}"

  5. As you can see, we added the command drive.read to read the PDF from drive into the body of the pipeline (which happens automatically for you). Additionally, we added the parameter attachments to the mail.send command. As value, the PEL expression #{body} is used. This expression points to the body of the current pipeline where the PDF document was loaded to. You can add multiple attachments by adding them separated by a comma. You can also point to resources inside the property store by using the uri format uri:property:path/to/resource.

  6. Click SAVE and then RUN.

  7. After a while, you should receive again an email, but this time with the PDF as an attachment

  8. Done.

3 - Extra: Set from + dynamic text in emails​

Sometimes it is necessary to put dynamic text to emails. The easiest way in PIPEFORCE to do so, is by using the Pipeline Expression Language (PEL). In this step, we will simply add the currently logged-in user as the from email field, so that the recipient can easily reply to you with the current date and time in the email text using PEL:

  1. Change your pipeline send-email to this:

    pipeline:
      - drive.read:
          path: "invoice.pdf"
      - mail.send:
          to: "your@domain.tld"
          replyTo: "#{@user.email()}"
          fromName: "#{@user.displayName()}"
          subject: "Test email"
          message: "This is a simple email, sent on #{@date.now('dd.MM.YY, HH:mm')}"
          attachments: "#{body}"

  2. As you can see, we did several changes in the pipeline:

    1. We added the parameter replyTo: "#{@user.email()}". Its value will be replaced by the email address of the currently logged-in user, so the recipient can simply press the reply button to reply to this email.
    2. We added the parameter fromName: "#{@user.displayName()}". Its value will be replaced by the display name of the currently logged in user.
    3. Finally, we added the PEL expression #{@date.now('dd.MM.YY, HH:mm')} to the email message, in order to display the current date and time dynamically inside the email.

  3. Click SAVE and then RUN.

  4. After a while you should receive an email similar to this:

  5. Done.

Auto-completion in online editor

In order to get auto-completion for available PEL utils in the online editor, simply start typing in the parameter value fields #{@ and then press Ctrl + Space. Then, you should be presented with the list and short description of all available PEL utils. After you have selected a util, type a period . + Ctrl + Space, and you will be presented with all available methods of this util.

References:

Pipeline Utils Reference

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