What is a fragment placeholder?

A very useful thing to know about email fragments is, in order for them to be visible in your test CRM environment, they need to be added to an email template and synced with that email template to your Veeva Vault or OnCore Vault.

In order for the fragments to show within an email template in CRM (both test and live environments), a fragment placeholder must be added to the body of the email template in Shaman. Without it, a connection between email fragments and email templates will not be successfully established and your field force will not be able to view or send the fragment.

How to add a fragment placeholder to your email content

Let's imagine that you have created a new email template, have completed the email details, and you are now in the HTML editor ready to add elements to your email template. (If you need to revise any of these steps, check out this article here).

From the menus on the right hand side, select the content menu. Find the fragments icon in the content menu, and simply drag and drop that icon onto your email canvas.

Depending on whether you have already assigned email fragments to your template or not, one of two things will now happen:

You have not yet added email fragments to your email template in the email details page: you will notice that a gray placeholder with “Email Fragment Name” has been added to the body of the email template.
You have already added email fragments to your email template in the email details page: you will notice that gray placeholder(s) with the names of the email fragments that have been attached to the email template previously appear on the email template.

Good to know!

The gray email fragment placeholders will not be visible in test or live CRM.

You can only add the fragment placeholder once per email template. You will notice once you have added the fragments icon to the email body, the icon in the menu then grays out, meaning that it has already been added and can not be added again.

In test or live CRM, your field force can select fragments to send from the email template in any order. So even though in Shaman the email fragment placeholders appear in a certain order, this does not mean that they need to be sent in this order from CRM.

You will notice when you click on the email fragment placeholder that some additional configuration options appear in the menu on the right hand side.

Set minimum limit: You can set up a minimum number of fragments which (if enabled) will mean that the end user must send at least the minimum number of fragments defined with this email template. They will not be able to send the email template until they have selected the minimum quantity of fragments stated here. By default the limitation is disabled, to enable it simply click the toggle.

Set maximum limit: You can set up a maximum number of fragments which (if enabled) will mean that the end user can not send more than the maximum number of fragments defined with this email template. They will not be able to send the email template if they have exceeded the maximum quantity of fragments stated here. By default the limitation is disabled, to enable it simply click the toggle.

Container Padding: Padding can be used to perfectly position the email fragments within the body of your email content. You can choose to add the same padding to all sides by maintaining the “All sides” toggle enabled. Or, you can disable this toggle to manually configure the padding size for each side of email fragments. You can use the plus and minus icons to increase or decrease the padding, or you can type a numerical value directly into the padding box.

Hide on Desktop: When this toggle is enabled, email fragments will not be displayed when viewing the email template on a desktop computer or laptop, it will only be viewable on a mobile view.

Good to know!

We highly recommend you to pay attention to how your email content looks on both mobile and desktop view. To learn more great tips when creating email content compatible for mobile and desktop views, take a look at this article here.

Deleting the email fragments placeholder

To delete the email fragments placeholder from your email template, simply click anywhere within the placeholder box to select it. You will then notice a bin icon appears, simply click it to delete the email fragments placeholder.