Overview
This article explains how placeholders work in Kayako. A set of concrete examples on how to add dynamic content to your placeholders in action is also shared which your support team can copy and use for their notifications, templates, and messages.
Prerequisite
- Working knowledge of automation features (trigger, monitor, and macros) and email templates.
- Knowledge of HTML to customize content.
Introduction
Your support team responds to a deluge of conversations every day, often responding to similar questions and concerns. To save time and keep your service experience personal, Kayako lets you use placeholders to add dynamic content to your replies and notifications automatically. This saves precious time that would otherwise be spent manually retrieving unique customer information for every response.
Placeholders can be used in the following:
- Email Notifications (triggers and monitors)
- Email Templates
- Conversation Replies and Macros
NOTE: Placeholders do not work on custom fields.
When used correctly, placeholders can customize even the most common support messages and processes. For example, you can automatically acknowledge each customer by their first name while providing their conversation ID number when they submit a conversation. On top of that, you can quickly ask for or deliver information for common issues, such as billing concerns, cancellation requests, or account verification.
Description
Understanding How Placeholders Work
A conversation is structured with different kinds of data, and placeholders reference these pieces of information. These can be users, organizations, tags, a customer's email address, teams, etc.
- Placeholders are, therefore, formatted as keywords that represent the data being referenced. They are then enclosed in double curly brackets. When inserted into a conversation reply or an email template, Kayako replaces the placeholder with its corresponding value provided by the conversation. Make sure that the placeholder is entered in all lowercase letters given that (like any other coding syntax) it is case-sensitive, otherwise, the placeholder will not work.
Example: To reference the conversation's subject, you would use{{case.subject}}. - Kayako also supports for-loop placeholders, which can reference more than one line of information without using several placeholders individually.
Example: You can pull up a detailed list of conversation replies or notes added to a conversation in one go. Recognize these for-loop placeholders by the{% for post ...%}{% endfor %}tags.
NOTE: Notice that 'case' and 'conversation' are used interchangeably here. The case is the shorthand for conversation, and it's used throughout Kayako's backend.
Types of Placeholders That Reference Specific Kinds of Information:
- Conversation placeholders - Let you specify conversation-related data. These placeholders are useful when referencing a conversation in an email template or a notification.
Example:{{case.agent_url}}references the URL of the conversation in the agent panel, while{{case.helpcenter_url}}references the URL of the conversation, which can be accessed if the user logs in to the Help Center. - Post placeholders - Let you specify post-related data. Posts are both your public conversation replies and private conversation/user/organization notes.
Example:{{case.latest_public_post.creator.name}}references the full name of the newest public post's creator, whether it's an agent or a requester. - User placeholders - Let you specify user-related data. Compared to other placeholder types, user placeholders are a little more complicated since there are various types of users.
Example:{{case.requester.first_name}}references the first name of the person that created the conversation. - Organization placeholders - Let you specify organization-related data in the conversation.
Example:{{case.organization.name}}references the organization's name in the conversation, while{{case.requester.organization.name}}references the name of that specific requester's organization. - Update event placeholders - Provide you with information specific to the conversation update event. These placeholders are available only when a conversation has been updated and is available in conversation trigger rules.
Example:{{case.update.via_channel}}references the channel over which the conversation was updated, such as Twitter, Facebook, email, or API.
NOTE: Check out our placeholder reference guide for a full list of placeholders you can use in Kayako.
To save time and effort when drafting your conversation replies, visit some of our useful resources if you need help creating email notifications using automation, working with email templates, or create your first macro.
Related Articles
Below are some basic real-life solutions to issues where placeholders are used in conversation replies, email notifications, and email templates. You can copy these examples and use them for your conversations right away.
Using Automation and Placeholders to Acknowledge New Conversations
Description: You can send a customized trigger notification informing the customer that you successfully received their conversation. You can tweak the acknowledgment trigger and customize the email to be sent to the customer by placing dynamic contents using placeholders.
To learn more about this solution, please visit the Using Automation and Placeholders to Acknowledge New Conversations article.
Using Placeholders to Insert the Latest Previous Public Post in Agent Replies
Description: You can modify the Reply email template to include the last three previous public posts of a conversation in an agent's reply and use placeholders to customize the message content in your replies. This helps the customer and any other cc'ed contacts understand the context of the conversation.
To learn more about this solution, please visit the Using Placeholders to Insert the Latest Previous Public Post in Agent Replies article.
Notifying a Team Member About an Assigned Conversation
Description: You can create a trigger that sends an email notification to a team member that a conversation was just assigned to them. You can use placeholders to customize the message content in your notification email such as to include but not limited to the assignee name, case ID, case URL, and a preview of the message.
To learn more about this solution, please visit the Using Placeholders to Customize the Notification Email Sent to a Conversation Assignee article.
Sending Custom Satisfaction Survey Using a Different Language
Description: If you provide support to customers in different languages, you can create a new monitor that automatically sends a translated satisfaction survey after completing a conversation. This can further make the service experience consistent for your customers.
To learn more about this solution, please visit the Sending Custom Satisfaction Survey Using a Different Language article.
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