What is a template placeholder?

A template fragment is an HTML snippet that can be added to an email template. A template fragment is similar to an email fragment, but there are two important differences:

Once a template fragment placeholder is added to an email template, the template fragment assigned to that email template will always be sent out automatically along with the email template. That is to say, the end user will not have the option to remove the template fragment or select a different template fragment.
Only one template fragment can be sent per email template.

It may be helpful to point out some use cases of template fragments to help distinguish them from other types of email content.

Template fragments can be extremely useful if you are working across multiple email templates but also need to maintain control of the footer of the email, which in many cases is a legal disclaimer or holds company information specific to a franchise. In the case that you need to update this footer, with template fragments you only need to update the template fragment itself, instead of updating the footer across all of your email templates.

The template fragment will be added to an email template at the moment that the email is sent, so a single update of the template fragment (as well as a resync and approval in Veeva Vault) will ensure that all email templates sent out after that date will have the new, updated footer. This reduces the possibility of errors and also the amount of time and effort spent during creation and update processes.

In order for a template fragment to be visible in your test CRM environment, it needs to be added to the email template and synced with that email template to your Veeva Vault or OnCore Vault.

And in order for the template fragment to show within an email template in CRM (both test and live environments), a template fragment placeholder must be added to the body of the email template in Shaman. Without it, a connection between the template fragment and the email template will not be successfully established and the template fragment will not be sent out with the email template.

To find out how to create a new template fragment, check out this article.

How to add a template fragment placeholder to your email content

Let´s imagine that you have created a new email template, have completed the email details, and 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 templates icon (referring to template fragment) in the content menu, and simply drag and drop that icon onto your email canvas.

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

You have not yet added a template fragment to your email template on the email details page: you will notice that a gray placeholder with “Fragment Template Name” has been added to the body of the email template.

You have already added email fragments to your email template on 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 a test or live CRM.

You can only add the template fragment placeholder once per email template. You will notice once you have added the template 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.

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

Container Padding: Padding can be used to perfectly position the template fragment 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 the template fragment. 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, the template fragment 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 pay attention to how your email content looks on both mobile and desktop views. To learn more great tips when creating email content compatible with mobile and desktop views, take a look at this article here.

Deleting the template fragment placeholder

To delete the template fragment 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 template fragment placeholder.