JungleMail | Dynamic Content
Dynamic Content is one of the most useful features in JungleMail. Using this feature, you can generate and personalize email content with a click of a button. In this tutorial, you will learn how to do this.
Understanding Dynamic Content
Dynamic Content is the type of content that is automatically retrieved from a SharePoint, library or page, and inserted into email content. Dynamic Content, as a feature, can be enabled for a whole section or only a particular block. As a result, a static section becomes a Dynamic Section, and a static block becomes a Dynamic Block.
Dynamic Block/Section properties:
- By default, a Dynamic Block/Section is automatically repeated as many times in the email body as there are items (pieces of content) in the content source. For example, if a Dynamic Block is configured to display news posts from a SharePoint page with 4 posts inside, this block will be repeated 4 times (one block per post).
- Dynamic Content is highly customizable. Not only you can specify content sources, but you can also limit the number of content items to be displayed, automatically filter content by subscriber preferences, block email sending if there is no new content etc.
Dynamic Content feature is perhaps best explained by showing it in action.
Creating a Dynamic Section and Dynamic Blocks
In the example below, we will configure the Dynamic Content for a section.
1. Select a section. Then, in the Section properties window on the right, switch the Dynamic Section to ON:
2. You will now see a pop-up window. Here you can select the SharePoint list with the content you want to include in your newsletter is located. Once you have selected the list, click OK. In our example we have chosen for the News Pages library:
If you want to change the selected list, you can do it by clicking Browse:
3. As you can see in the image above, some additional settings for the Dynamic Section have now appeared: you can change the list view and the number of elements you want to be displayed (for example, if you only want to include the 3 most recent news items). This is also where you can configure the conditions for the Dynamic Section and how you want it to repeat your content. This will be explained in more detail below.
When the Dynamic Section is enabled and a list is selected, you can also see this reflected in the section borders: they will no longer be green but will have turned blue. In other words, a blue border means that Dynamic Content has been enabled for this section.
4. Now you can drag and drop blocks into your Dynamic Section. In this example we have inserted Image, SubTitle and Text blocks:
5. Now we need to configure each block so that it is connected to the correct columns in the News Pages library for the automated content generation. To do this, click on the block you inserted and then, in the right panel, select the column you want to use.
For an image URL, you should click { Column } and select a picture type column, for example {[Page Image]}:
6. In much the same way you will have to configure the other blocks to insert your Title and Comments columns:
This is what that would look like in a Text block:
Once you are done with the configuration, your dynamic section will look something like this:
7. Click Preview. In the Preview step the Dynamic Content has already been processed:
Note: if you are happy with your result you can save this template for later use. In this way, your News articles will be populated automatically based on the Dynamic Section settings in the future, too!
However, if you want to review or use the Dynamic Content in the email builder itself, you can do this by simply clicking the round-arrows icon. This will then immediately load the Dynamic Content from your selected SharePoint lists:
Important: after using this feature your email content becomes static (i.e., it will not be affected by changes in content sources). You can then edit this content to suit your needs. For example, you can remove a section, or move it to a different place, or simply change the text or images.
Tip: if you save your template with the static content, it will no longer be dynamic. If you want to have a Dynamic Content template, so you can reuse it in future, click Undo and save your email as a template before using the round-arrows icon.