Macros in the Email Editor
Whenever we view an email in the system, any macro appears with a yellow highlight. When we go into edit mode the highlight goes away and we only have the curly braces (as in {macro}) to indicate where the macros are.
However, if a database column has its header changed, all macros that refer to that column now fail quietly and the {incorrectmacroname} and its curly braces are sent to the recipient. This looks very unprofessional and it would be good if we had a better way to detect the error.
How about: Wherever a text string surrounded by {curly braces} is found which is not a proper macro, instead of ignoring it, highlight it in red. You already highlight the macros in yellow, can you not highlight the {non_macros} in red?
I have over 70 emails in my membership levels and any help in managing them would be appreciated.
Gordon Stewart
shared this idea
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Walt Bilofsky
commented
There are a lot of macro suggestions scattered around. This should be treated as one modification and looked at globally.
Macros should be more generalized and available system-wide, not just in emails but in all text usage, including website pages.
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CVMG web Administrator
commented
The use of macros seems unnecessarily restrictive.
Can we have all macros work for all types of emails? Or, put another way: put tick marks in all boxes of the table in the Macros by Email Type on this Help page:
https://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Using+macros+in+emails#Usingmacrosinemails-Macrosbyemailtype -
Dmitry Buterin commented
Thanks, that's a very important point for us to keep in mind.
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Gordon Stewart
commented
A scan for invalid macros would wonderful if we could do it at a high enough level. If there were a single button that invoked a scan of all emails and checked the validity of all macros, I'd say YES, even if it only scanned membership new/renewal related emails.
However, if the scan is invoked as a by-product of the "Save" function after an email is edited, I'd prefer the color coding scheme I described initially.
These broken macros are at the bottom of a cascade of design issues. Wild Apricot does not provide a way to name data fields in the member/event databases. When an membership entry form is being built we describe the data we need and that description is then used as the field name. For instance, I have a membership field "Family Member 1, do not include yourself (First and Last name) (and age if under 18)". This entire text string then becomes the field (or column) name. A year or so ago I added the comma to this description/name and in doing so broke the membership confirmation macro in twelve of my membership emails. Someone pointed it out to me last week.
So, to be of value a scan for broken macros would have to be a high level, perhaps an additional option under Settings -> E-Mails.
Of course it would simplify the field naming issue if we had the option of adding descriptive text to the data entry forms with a tool similar to the current Section Divider but without the limitations of the Section Divider.
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Gordon, good point.
I wonder if we should take it a step further: scan emails and and provide a warning if it contains unrecognized macro. What do you think?
