Inserting Templates in Gmail

All your templates at the tip of your fingers - just search and insert, or if needed, navigate through your folders to find the right one.

May 29, 2024
Knowledge

Created Date

5/29/2024, 4:56 PM

Last Published Date

5/29/2024, 4:56 PM

Article

Inserting Templates in Gmail

Email templates are a time-saving tool for efficient communication. They allow you to create and reuse pre-designed, standardized messages, ensuring consistency and reducing the need to repeatedly craft emails from scratch. This streamlines your workflow and gives you time back to focus on personalizing the email, vs. retyping the same standard information you just sent to 10 other prospects.

Email Templates within your Groove extension are built help you smoothly, quickly, and reliably find the right template you need for the context of your email.

The Basics

Using Templates: With "Recently used templates", "Favorites", Quick Search, and Quick Insert functions, you can very easily insert your templates with just a couple of clicks
Advanced Search: If you need to view all templates and navigate between the folders, you can open Advanced Search/See all Templates for a larger and more comprehensive view of your templates
Template Management: Create new templates or make edits to existing templates from the Inline View, or from the All Templates templates view
Inserting with Merge Fields (jump to section): Templates support Salesforce merge fields for standard objects (Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities) as well as custom objects that your recipients are related to

Fallback merge fields are also supported.

Templates - "Inline" View & "All Templates" View

Within the compose window, you can access templates either via the Inline View, or if needed, you can also jump into the All Templates View:

From each view above, you can use templates fully in terms of being able to search, create new templates, edit templates, and of course insert templates into your email. The major difference is that the Inline View is built to increase your efficiency with all of the above operations, while the All Templates View is built to give you more flexibility and space to work if you need it!

Templates - Inline View

The inline view of templates allows you quick and convenient access to all the key template related functionality you need when writing emails. When you first open Templates within your compose window you'll notice the following:

1. Recently used templates shows your 5 most recently used templates, sorted by the most recent at the top

2. Star icon allows you to "Favorite" a template, which adds that template to the "Favorites" tab (#5 in the screenshot above), where you have easy access to your most important templates and folders.

Note: you can Favorite individual templates from the Inline view; you can Favorite templates and folders in the All Templates view

3. Quick Insert function: if you hover over a template row, the Insert button shows up and allows you to quickly insert the template without opening the preview for the cases where you don't need to make any edits

4. Clicking anywhere else on the row opens the template preview, from where you can double check the content or make any edits before inserting it:

5. Favorites show you all templates and template folders that have been "Starred" so you have easy access to your most important ones. From the Favorites tab you can complete all of the same actions as you can from the Templates tab (minus the search)

You can Favorite templates from the Inline view; you can Favorite templates and template folders from the All Templates View
Favorite folders show up at the top for clean visibility
A Favorite folder gives you quick access to all templates within a folder so that you can open and quickly insert any templates within that folder, even if the individual templates are not favorited
You can use Quick Insert from the Favorites tab
You can open the preview from the Favorites tab to view the template content or make any edits
Clicking the star icon for a currently Favorited template or folder will remove it from your Favorites

6. Create New opens a wider popup to allow you to create a new template. In some cases you may have written a great email and you want to convert that into a template. If you already have some content in your email body, and you then click Create New within your templates, that content will be pre-populated for you as a starting point:

You can then continue to make edits and Save your template.

7. Clicking 'See all templates' opens the full width modal for you to view all of your templates/folders, manage, or insert templates from the larger view (explained below)

8. Quick Search allows you to run a search from the Inline view to find a template that isn't in your Recently used or Favorite templates. When searching, you can perform the same actions for the templates, including Starring/Unstarring, Quick Insert, and opening the preview to make edits:

9. Additionally, if you don't quite find what you're looking for, you can click 'Open "search term" in advanced search to open the All Templates view, with your search term pre-populated:

Templates - All Templates View

The All Templates View for templates gives you a bit more space, flexibility and navigability to manage, edit and insert your templates if you weren't able to to complete what you wanted to do from the Inline view.

As noted in the above section, you can open the All Templates view in two ways: from the 'See all templates' button, or by opening your search in advanced search:

Within the All Templates view, you can:

Navigate through folders
Complete additional searches
View template previews
Create new templates
Make edits to templates that are in folders you have edit access to
*In the All Templates view, you can also delete templates which is not available in the Inline View
Favorite templates or template folders
Insert templates to your email

Details of Inserting Templates

When inserting templates, there are a few key details to note which will help you efficiently write and send an email that is set up for success.

Note: inserting from the Inline View or All Templates View works the exact same way, so this section will not differentiate between the two

Inserting a template will only use the template's subject line into your email's subject line if your template did not already have a subject line
- This is especially important for when you are using templates to reply to an existing email thread and need to preserve the subject line

Inserting a template will add the body of the template exactly where your cursor was when you opened Templates, and will not replace any content that you already had in the email
- This can be especially useful if you want to quickly insert shorter templates as "snippets" which may be just a couple of sentences that you normally add within your emails

As a follow up to the above point, you can insert multiple templates to the same email. Whenever you insert a new one, it will add to the body of the email wherever your cursor was

When inserting templates, the Merge fields respect the first selected person (contact/lead) you have currently selected in the Name field of your compose bar, and the first selected Related to record in your compose bar (explained further below)

Merge Fields

In your templates, we recommend using merge fields to merge in data from Salesforce for the people you are emailing, along with records they may be related to, so that you can personalize the email with their data.

Some of the common merge fields such as {!Firstname}, {!Company}, or you may use merge fields that are custom to your Salesforce org, such as {!Contact.Contact_website__c}. When creating or editing a template, you can click the {!...} icon to open the merge field selector:

Object	Example	Additional Notes
Object Agnostic	{!firstname}, {!Name},	If you are emailing a contact, Groove will translate this to {!Contact.FirstName} / {!Contact.Name} If you are emailing a lead, Groove will translate this to or {!Lead.FirstName} / {!Lead.Name}
Object Agnostic	{!Company}	If you are emailing a contact, Groove will translate this to {!Account.Name} If you are emailing a lead, Groove will translate this to or {!Lead.FirstName} / {!Lead.Name}
Contact fields	{!Contact.Department}	Using contact specific merge fields will only merge when you are emailing a contact. These are not interchangeable with lead fields *Supports standard or custom fields on contacts
Lead fields	{!Lead.Product_Inquired__c}	Using lead specific merge fields will only merge when you are emailing a lead. These are not interchangeable with contact fields *Supports standard or custom fields on leads
Account fields	{!Account.Associated_Vendors__c}	Pulls in fields from the contact's primary account (unless you specify otherwise - explained below) Supports standard or custom fields on accounts
Opportunity fields	{!Opportunity.NextStep}	Pulls in fields from the first opportunity selected in the Related To field of your Compose Toolbar Supports standard or custom fields on opps
Related Custom Object fields	{!RelatedObject.Name}	Must use the syntax `{!RelatedObject.set_API_name_here}` where you would replace the portion after the `.` with the API name of the field you want to use Pulls in fields from the first record selected in your Related to field of your Compose Toolbar
Fallback merge fields	{!Firstname \|\| "there"}	Will include the fallback value if the value for the field couldn't be found in Salesforce

Notes related to inserting templates with merge fields

Merging fields based on the Salesforce records selected in your extension gives you the flexibility and control of merging templates based on exactly the records you want. Many times you won't need to make any adjustments to the records to pull in data for the people you're emailing, but in some cases you might want to switch the records for which you're pulling in data to the email.

When inserting a template, the merge fields are based on the records you have selected in the Name/Related to section of your compose toolbar; specifically the first records selected in each section:

These records are auto-populated by the recipients in your email if Groove finds a match for them in Salesforce, but you can update the records if you'd like:

For contacts and leads, Groove will use the first-selected record to merge fields such as {!Contact.FirstName}, so in the case below, "Sanket" would be pulled in.

Note: the first-selected contact may not always be the first recipient in your email, as shown below; this sorting is based on which record is the most relevant to log your emails to, so in the below case the Sanket contact is ranked higher behind the scenes for email logging than the Aamir contact is
If you would like to merge the template using the second listed contact fields, the best approach would be to de-select the first one, insert the template, then re-select your other contact to make sure the email still does get logged to that contact.

Account merge fields are pulled in from the first-listed contact's primary account:

Opportunity merge fields are pulled in from the first-selected opportunity listed in your Related to section. In the case that you are actually working on the 2nd or 3rd opportunity listed, you may want to switch to one of those opportunities, for both your merge fields and logging the email:

Related object merge fields are pulled in from the first-selected related record (of any object) in your Related To field

For many users, your Related To record will show only opportunities based on your team's logging settings, so using an Opportunity merge field would work the same way as using a Related Object merge field
For users who are logging to and working with custom records, or perhaps related accounts, Related Object merge fields will pull in from the records you select

Examples of merge fields in practice

The following template includes a contact/lead field (first name), a company field (in this case, it'll be used as Account.Name), an opportunity field, and a Related Object field:

With the following records selected, you'll see how the template gets merged:

First Name: FirstName of the first-selected contact
Company: Account.Name of the first-selected contact's primary account
Opp: Opportunity.Name of the selected opportunity
Related Object: Name of the same selected opportunity

If I switch my records by deselecting "Sanket" as the first contact, and switching my Opportunity to a custom object (Job Opening object), and then I re-merge same exact template:

First Name: FirstName of the first-selected contact (who is now Aamir)
Company: Account.Name of the first-selected contact (in this case, Sanket and Aamir are in the same account, so the same company name was pulled in for both examples)
Opp: doesn't get merged and shows as red in the body of the email, because there is no longer an opportunity selected for merging
Related Object: Name of the Related To record selected

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Inserting Templates in Gmail

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