How to test Email Templates

IdentityIQ (IIQ) IIQ Discussion and Questions
1

I have been tasked with updating numerous email templates to alter text and layout. Since this is direct XML, I would like to see what the finished product looks like before emailing it out to the wider world.

How do you test email templates for layout and visuals? I do not see an option to preview, or any utility to send an email to myself to see what it looks like… how do you do it? Any tips are appreciated!
jeff

2

Hi Jeff -

This goes without saying, but testing out EmailTemplate changes should be done in a non-prod/lower environment, and in this case preferably a lower environment with IIQ’s SMTP settings set to redirect all emails to a shared inbox, so you can see live data on a live email but don’t send anything to the wider user base - see this doc on Compass for additional details - Email Config Best Practice Doc

Using SMTP redirect to email is the most accurate and complete way to test out email templates, especially if you are making material changes to their contents, as this method validates that the template works within the business process it’s defined to function within and it shows you “real” data that the business process passes into the template. That said, it can be time consuming depending on what business process fires the template you’re updating.

If you’re just looking to rapidly test out changes to EmailTemplates, here are a couple of additional/complementary options you have available:

  1. SailPoint Professional Services’ Email Template Editor extension - This paid-for extension is arguably the easiest way to accomplish what you’re looking for, especially if there are a large volume of updates you need to make to many different templates - Email Template Editor Compass Page - But again, this is a paid-for extension.

  2. Assuming #1 is not a feasible option, you can test out EmailTemplate updates using a relatively simple Beanshell rule. I’ve attached a sample rule for you to use as a reference. For each template you test, you would need to update line 9 with the name of the EmailTemplate object you’re looking to test and update the EmailOptions entries from lines 13 to 14 with the appropriate argument values as required by the template you’re currently testing (you can remove or add additional mailArgs.put() entries as required). Once these updates are done, you can run the rule via debug. I personally prefer this method in addition to redirecting the emails to a shared inbox.

sendEmailRule.txt (750 Bytes)

Best of luck!

Austin

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