Outbound email node (with attachments) – Engagement Console

The outbound email node sends an outbound email with attachments to recipients. Attachments used with this node require an integration.

Settings

Sender details

Sender name: The name that appears in the recipient's inbox to identify who the email is from. This is usually an organisation or name of the person.

From address: The email address associated with the sender of the email. It's the address recipients see when they receive the email.

Email details

The recipient and subject line can be configured here. Merge fields may be referenced in these text fields – refer to the merge fields section for details.

Attachments

The email HTML and attachments combined must be less than 10MB. If the total size is equal to or exceeds 10MB, the email will not be sent.

Link attachments to an email by selecting the attachment merge fields in the search bar.

By linking attachment merge fields here, SmartPath can readily anticipate which attachments uploaded through a custom trigger or custom action node to send with the email when your flow is triggered.

Ensure your file names attached are unique to each email. This delineation is in order to prevent unexpected behaviour, such as incorrect or unintended file attachments.

Supported attachment formats

Plain text
HTML
JPEG, PNG, GIF
WebM
MP4
MPEG
PDF
Word Document
Word Open XML Document
Excel document
Excel Open XML Document

Design

Design your email choosing from two options. Email message bodies are limited to a maximum of 255KB, and will be rejected if the limit is exceeded.

Use HTML code

Merge fields may be referenced in these text fields – refer to the merge fields section for details.

If the HTML code is directly pasted here, you can also preview the template before saving the node.

The preview is only a visual reference and does not represent how each email client will render the email across different resolutions and devices.

Outcomes

Configure different experiences based on the outcomes of this node:

Sent
The experience will continue on this path if no failure notifications are received within a configurable wait time, or immediately if the email is opened or a link is clicked. An opened or clicked email event is confirmation that the email was sent successfully.

Specifically, the email has been sent to a carrier for delivery, and the Engagement Console will monitor for failure notifications for the set wait time. This wait time is shared between the 'Not Sent' and 'Sent' paths. If the email is opened or a link is clicked during this wait time, the Engagement Console will immediately continue the experience down the 'Sent path'.

Configuring the wait time for soft bounces

Soft bounces occur when an email cannot be delivered temporarily, often due to a full inbox or server issues. To cater for soft bounces, we recommend setting the wait time to 960 minutes (16 hours) within the Engagement Console.

This gives the carrier enough time to try sending the email again after a soft bounce, and progress an experience based on the final delivery status (Sent or Rejected). Keep in mind that if a recipient opens the email or clicks a link, the process advances along the 'Sent' path immediately.

Rejected
The experience will either end or continue on this path depending on its toggle settings. Specifically, the email has failed to send due to an error that occurred within the wait time. This wait time is shared between the 'Not Sent' and 'Sent' paths.

When toggled off, the experience will end and exit the flow. When toggled on, the Rejected path will be visible on the canvas, where you can further configure the experience on this path. You can refer to Merge fields section below to personalise experiences continuing on this path.

Where the message is rejected and the Rejected path is toggled, you will see the following in History:

Complete experience in All Experiences table
Fail message status and the outcomeReason in All Outbound messages table. Refer to Merge fields section below for further details.

Mergefield explorer

In later nodes, when viewing the available mergefields for the Conversation node in mergefield explorer you can expect to see:

Mergefield name	Description	Possible outputs	Definition and examples
outcome	The final email delivery status (string)	`success`	The message was sent to the carrier for delivery, and no failure notifications were received during the set wait time, OR the email was opened OR a link was clicked during this wait time. The experience will continue on the 'Sent' path.
outcome	The final email delivery status (string)	`failure`	The message failed to be sent. See outcomeReason (below) for possible reasons. The experience will continue along the Rejected path (if configured) or exit the flow.
outcomeReason	The reason for a message delivery (string)	`attachments-error`	An error occurred while attaching a file to the email. The experience will continue along the Rejected path (if configured) or exit the flow.
		`failed: [reason]`	The carrier has accepted the email message, but encountered an error while sending it to the recipient. The experience will continue along the Rejected path (if configured) or exit the flow.
		`failed-normalization`	The recipient's email is invalid. Ensure it is present and in the correct email format. The experience will continue along the Rejected path (if configured) or exit the flow.
		`other-error`	Another error was found while sending the email message to the recipient. The experience will continue along the Rejected path (if configured) or exit the flow.
		`rejected`	The carrier has rejected the email. The experience will continue along the Rejected path (if configured) or exit the flow.
		`success-timeout`	The email message was sent to a carrier for delivery, and no failure notifications were received during the wait time. The experience will continue on the 'Sent' path.
		`validation-error`	An invalid value was found in the node. Ensure your flow error warnings have been addressed. The experience will continue along the Rejected path (if configured) or exit the flow.