When working with email templates, it would be good to test them with real world data. Currently there is a Test Email button available, but it does not do any variable substitution, and the processing it does for some functions differs from the actual processing available. It would be helpful to have the ability to test the email with real data from the system so that we could see what would be produced.
The current workaround for most emails is to update the template, then create the situation that sends them in Sandbox, and review the result. This is time consuming and requires a lot of steps to do.
This is specifically an issue with the Certification Due email template. This email is only sent at the System set (NOT user configurable) 7 day interval. This means that to do the work around for this, a test certification needs to be created with a duration > 7 days, started and then wait for those 7 days to actually pass before the certification due email template can be reviewed with real world data.
So the preference here would be to have the ability to test all email templates with real data from the system when you are creating them.
Alternately, for the Certification Due, if there was a way this could be manually sent to allow the work around testing, that would work as well.