Summary

Once the workspace is created in Backstage, with all the content added and all the functionalities configured and tested, you will need to invite the participants to join the event.

This is done by sending an invitation email from Backstage.

Emails are managed using templates available in Backstage that can be easily edited. Organizations or Backstage users can also create their own fully branded emails, using the HTML editor.

In this article we will go through the steps required to edit the default invitation emails in the workspace, and send the email to the participants.

More information on ensuring that invitation emails sent from Backstage will be safely received by your partipants is also available in the Configuring email systems for app activation article.

Tip: You may also wish to set-up a public registration page, to allow people to sign up for your event directly.

Editing the invitation email template

1. Go to the Design category in the main menu, and select Emails.
   
2. In the Templates tab you will see the list of available default email templates.
   
   
3. To invite your partipants to join your virtual event, select the Your SpotMe web app login link template in order to edit it via the View template tab:
   
4. Start by changing the Your SpotMe web app login link subject line, if needed.
   Variables (metadata) can be used here to further personalize subject lines.
   For example, you can us the following subject line "{{fname}}, {{_event_name}} is starting soon”, in order to address the recipient by their first name and and to add the event name to the subject line, which would become: "John, Sales Summit 2021 is starting soon".
   
   
5. Select the sender from whom the email will be sent.
   In the default template here, SpotMe Support is the name of the sender, and the email address is <noreply@spotme.com>. You can change the sender name here, but to change the email address to another domain, your domain administrator needs to amend the domain SPF record to include mail.spotme.com (192.2.132.142).
   
   
6. Edit the body of the email:
   - Text and formatting can be added and adjusted using the rich text editor. Add and edit the text you would like to include in the email, and format the text using the formatting tools available in the tool bar. Bullet lists, numbered lists, and tables can also be added.
   - Links to online content, and web app content can be added to the email body. 
   For more information on adding links to your emails that point directly to web app content or external online content, please refer to the Using links in emails article.
   - Placeholder fields can be added by selecting the {i} button in the toolbar. This allows the email to pull the personal information of the participant who is receiving the email. For example, in this template the introduction used the {{fname}} placeholder, so if the recipient's first name is "John" (based on their user profile in the workspace), then the recipient would read this as "Dear John" in the email they receive.
   - The images in emails cannot be modified without accessing the HTML code of the page.
   For more information about this please refer to the Creating a branded invitation email using HTML section.
   
   
7. Once you have made the necessary changes to the email, click on Save. Email templates are saved using the "Subject" field as their name, so make sure you do not duplicate subject lines across multiple emails to avoid confusion.

Sending the email to the event participants

Once you've created an email that is ready to be sent, you can send it from Backstage.

Before sending the email, we recommend that you test it out by sending it to yourself so you can check how it looks.

Please note that a workspace must be in production in order to send invites to more than one user at a time.

Depending on your event, you may wish to send the invitation email some time before the start of the event. This will provide early access to the event, and if your partipants are using the mobile app will also give them plenty of time to download the app. It will also give you time to send a reminder email if needed before the start date.

1. Go to the Users module, in the content category of the main menu, and click on the Send email button:
2. Select the email template to be used, and then select the group of users you wish to send the email to in the dropdown list.
   

Note: In addition to the user groups in the dropdown list, you can send emails to individual or selected users. To do so, before clicking on the Send email button (in step 1), you can select specific users to send the email too, and then choose the Selected users option here in the drop down list.

For more detailed information on the options available to you for sending emails to app users, and for troubleshooting, please refer to the articles available in the App activation section.

Creating a branded invitation email using HTML

Fully personalized and branded invitation emails can be created using the HTML editor. This allows Backstage users and their organizations to create their own fully customized email templates, that include their own images, layout and content.

Please note however that the HTML editor is a powerful tool that requires extensive knowledge on how to create an email template using HTML.

New email templates can be created by clicking on the + icon to the left of the screen, next to the list of templates.

In order to access the source HTML code of the template and directly edit it, click on the three-lined icon in the toolbar of the template editor, and select Source code.

This will open the code view of the email template, where the code can be entered or modified in order to build the email.

Note: All images linked in the email template need to be hosted online in order to be used and displayed in the email.

What's next?
Once you've sent off all your invitation emails you can monitor how many of your app users have activated the app, and monitor the workspace performance via the Workspace dashboard.
More detailed data on your app users' interaction with the workspace is also available in the Analytics module.
You may also wish to set-up a public registration page, to allow people to sign up for your event directly.