For every customer new custom entities are created and in a lot of scenario's it's needed to e-mail. I'd like to have functionality to use dynamic fields from related entities from a custom entity in an e-mail (template).
Scenario:
- custom entity: Group
- fields: Name, startdate, enddate
- custom entity: Group Member
- fields: Name, related contact (lookup Contact), related Group (lookup Group)
- an e-mail needs to be send to the Group Member. Therefor I need fields from the related entities:
- Firstname (from the related Contact)
- Start- and Enddate (from the related Group)
Requirement for customers
- easy to maintain the e-mail templates to body text and dynamic fields
Both Firstname, Start- and Enddate cannot be added to an e-mail (template) because I can only choose fields from the main custom entity Group Member and not from it's related entities like Group and Contact.
This is the article that Microsoft provides: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/user/email-dynamic-text
In a ticket with Microsoft I understand that my scenario cannot be achieved out of the box.
There are some workarounds that is possible to achieve what I want, but all with cons.
- Use Power Automate / Logic App. Then it's possible to achieve what I want. The disadvantage of this method is that it's not good to maintain e-mailtemplates. If a customer needs to change anything, they have to do this in a PA or LA, that's not really user friendly. A salesperson will never do that. This option doesn't meet the customer requirement.
- Synchronize data from Contact and Group to Group Member. The disadvantage of this method is that data is synchronized and is from a architectural point of view not a good idea. It's ugly. While the Firstname doesn't change often of a person, the start- or enddate from a Group might change. Then all data from Group > Group Members needs to be updated. That's ugly and causes unnessary changes in the system.
- Use Dynamics Marketing. Ofcourse this is possible. But not for all clients you want to use Dynamics Marketing for easy e-mail options.
So it would be great if Microsoft adds functionality to extend the possibility to use dynamic fields from related entities from custom entities in an e-mail!
Comments
We were asked the exact same thing and we would like to see this working with regular email templates in Power Apps / Dynamics 365 Sales
Category: Email Management and Outlook Integration