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DriveWorks Pro 21
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Email

DriveWorks Autopilot has the ability to send Emails, and optionally include attachments. Rules for the Email parameters (To, Cc, Bcc, Subject, Body, Attachments) are applied in DriveWorks Administrator.

DriveWorks Autopilot is required to send Emails.

Emails are sent by Autopilot when it is started, and as soon as all of the attachments in the Email are available.

If there are no attachments, then Autopilot will send the Email as soon as it sees it.

Emails can be released at any suitable point in the Specification Flow, but will only be processed once attachments are present with the specified name and path.

The Email Document is triggered in the Specification Flow by the Release Emails task.

To Add an Email

In DriveWorks Administrator open the Project and go to Stage 4: Output Rules then Documents - Files

  1. Click the Add button on the command bar.
  2. Choose the Email Document from the list on the Add Document wizard.
  3. Give the new Document a name.
  4. Click Finish.

The Email Editor will open displaying the parameters that should be applied for the Email Details, Email Recipients and Email Body.

Options

Sender, To, Cc, Bcc

The Sender Rule must result in a valid Email address, for example, click Build... and enter the following:

Sender Rule Example
 "john.doe@acmeengineering.com"

Rules can be built for the recipients, carbon-copy recipients, and blind carbon-copy recipients of the Email, for example:

Recipient Example
 "jane.daphoe@thecustomer.com|michael.mcyintyre@thecustomer.com"
Multiple recipients can be separated by using a pipebar delimited list (|) as shown in the example above.

Subject

The Subject Rule controls the subject line of the Email, for example:

Subject Rule Example
"Quote for Specification " & DWSpecification

Attachments

The Attachments Rule is used to attach Documents to the Email, for example:

Attachments Rule Example
 "\\Data\Models\GA.edrw|\\Data\Corp\TandCRev3.pdf"
Multiple attachments can be separated by using pipebar delimited lists (|) as shown in the example above.
It is possible to specify any file created by DriveWorks as an attachment for an Email by building an attachment rule with the full path (or a path relative to the Default Specification Folder) to the file that will be created. For example, this could be an eDrawing of a generated SOLIDWORKS file, a Document, or any other file created by DriveWorks.

It is possible to control which Documents are displayed as an Email attachment. This can be done by the file returning the value "Delete".

Tags

Tags are relevant when two or more DriveWorks Autopilot machines are deployed.

Tags allow control over which DriveWorks Autopilot processes the required information for a Specification.

The result of the Tags rule must match a tag set in DriveWorks Autopilot.

RuleMeaning
If(HighPriorityCheckBox=True,"High","Low")When the check box HighPriority is checked will result in the tag High being applied to the parameter. Otherwise the tag low will be applied.
DriveWorks Autopilot must be set to process the information being tagged.

General Options

The following general settings can be applied to each Email sent.

  • Prevent Outlook from removing line-breaks
  • Send as HTML Email
Line-breaks (a blank line space) applied in the Email Body editor will be removed when viewed in Microsoft Outlook. To prevent this from happening check the option Prevent Outlook from removing line-breaks.
Sending an Email as HTML allows the body text to be formatted using standard HTML formatting tags.

If this is unchecked the Email will be sent as plain text.

Please see w3schools - HTML for information on HTML formatting.

Email Body

The text to include in the Email is entered directly in the Email Body editor.

For Plain Text Emails, text is entered exactly as it will appear when read in an Email client.

For HTML Emails the text should include HTML formatting tags (see image below). Please see w3schools - HTML for more information.

Please note the following when sending HTML Emails.
  • An Email formatted as HTML but sent as Plain Text will display all formatting tags to the recipients.
  • An Email formatted as Plain Text but sent as HTML will display the entire body of the Email on a single line.

Where a rule (the result of a variable or form control for instance) is required to be included in the body:

  1. Place the cursor at the point in the body where the data is to be inserted.
    For HTML Emails this should be within the HTML formatting tags.
  2. Click the Build... button to launch the Rule Builder.
  3. Select the data (Variable, Form Control, etc.) or build a rule for the data that is to be inserted.
  4. Click OK in the Rule Builder.

    The rule will appear within double angle brackets << >>

To edit an existing rule in the body of the Email, double click the rule to launch the Rule Builder.

To Preview the Email:

  1. Click the Preview button.
    Preview will convert all rules in the body to their current values.

    It will not format any HTML applied to the body.

  2. Click the Preview button again to continue adding to the body.
    No text or rules can be added to the body while previewing the Email.
Sending Images and using Hyperlinks

Plain Text

Plain Text Emails can only send images as attachments.

Hyperlinks will display all formatting tags to the recipient, the link will not be clickable.

HTML

HTML Emails can send images as attachments, but they can also be embedded within the body.

Embedded images must be included as an attachment or be available on a web server, in which case the recipient will be given the option to download the image in their Email Client.

The correct HTML to use when embedding an image that is also an attachment is:

<img src="MyImage.jpg">

Where MyImage.jpg is the file name and extension of the image included as an attachment.

The correct HTML to use when embedding an image located on a web server is:

<img src="http://www.driveworks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/RuleBuilder.png">

Where the full address to the image, name and extension is included within the "".

The correct HTML to use for a Hyperlink is:

<a href="http://www.driveworks.co.uk">DriveWorks Website</a>

Where the full address is included within the "", and the text to display for the link is included before the closing </a> tag.

Send Test Email

The Send Test Email button will queue an Email to be sent.

The Email will be sent when DriveWorks Autopilot is set to send Emails and has been started.

Please see DriveWorks Autopilot - Email Settings for more information.