DotAdmin User Guide

The Order Email Template

Important! Emails created using the Order Email template are all sent as plain-text. You should not include HTML in this template.

When an order is completed, an email can optionally be sent to both the merchant and the customer to summarise the order details. The merchant's email can optionally be formatted to just give notification that a new order has been taken, omitting the full details of the order. These settings can be changed in the Store Settings area of the dotAdmin system.

The order confirmation emails are sent when the callback process runs, and many of the template instructions found here are the same as those found in the callback template, because this template provides a similar service (displaying a confirmation notice and a receipt).

The only real difference between this template and the callback template is that the contents of the shopping cart cannot be included in the same way. This is because the shopping cart template is HTML, and we are sending a plain-text email.

Merchant-Specific Template Instructions

Any messages intended solely for the merchant should be enclosed within a IF {merchant} condition. Messages strictly for the customer can use an ELSE condition.

The first template instruction in the order email template is shown in the example below:

<!-- IF  {merchant} -->
  {mail_notify_body}{header}

  Complete details of this transaction are available at your
  website: <>
<!-- /IF  {merchant} -->

<!-- ELSE -->Hi
  <!--BLOCK {contacts}-->
    {f_name}
  <!--/BLOCK {contacts}-->
  Thank you for your order. This confirms that we have received
  your order. If you have any queries regarding your order, please
  email us at the address below
<!-- /ELSE -->

Providing different messages for the merchant and customer in the Order Email template.

Note that, in the example above, we have used the {contacts} block to extract the customer's first name for the “thank you” message. Blocks can be displayed in more than one place in a template, but blocks which belong within other blocks must still be contained within those blocks.

Contact and Address Details

Reporting the customer's contact and address details is done in exactly the same way as in the callback template, using the same pair of block instructions:

<!-- BLOCK {contacts} -->Billing Contact:
---------------
{salutation} {f_name} {l_name}
{b_flatno}
{b_street}
...
{b_postcode}
<!-- BLOCK {shipping} -->
----------------
Delivery Address:
----------------
{s_name}
{s_flatno}
{s_street}
...
{s_postcode}
<!-- /BLOCK {shipping} --><!-- /BLOCK {contacts} -->

Contact and address details in the Order Email Template.

Again, the shipping address is contained within its own block to allow us to include or exclude it, because an alternative shipping address may or may not have been provided by the customer.

Displaying the Order Details

Showing the contents of the shopping cart in the order email template is done a little differently than on the website. We no longer need both an editable and uneditable version of the shopping cart, because the order is already complete, so we need less template instructions:

<!-- BLOCK {orders} -->--------------
Order Details:
--------------
<!-- BLOCK {items} -->
({quantity}) {title} [ref:{product_code}] at {unit_price} = {price}
<!-- /BLOCK {items} -->
<!-- /BLOCK {orders}-->

<!-- BLOCK {costs} -->-------------------
<!-- BLOCK {subtotal} -->Sub: £{value}<!-- /BLOCK {subtotal} -->
<!-- BLOCK {shipping} -->Ship.: £{value}<!-- /BLOCK {shipping} -->
<!-- BLOCK {tax_a} -->{tax_a_name}: £{value}<!-- /BLOCK {tax_a} -->
<!-- BLOCK {tax_b} -->{tax_b_name}: £{value}<!-- /BLOCK {tax_b} -->
-------------------
<!-- BLOCK {total} -->TOTAL: £{value}<!-- /BLOCK {total} -->
-------------------<!-- /BLOCK {costs} -->

Displaying the customer's order in the Order Email template.

There are some differences between this and the cart template. We enclose the cart items section in BLOCK {orders}, to allow us to exclude any header message we may be using if the customer has only ordered a subscription, and the order lines themselves are within BLOCK {items}, rather than {cart_items} as used in the Shopping Cart template.

We also need to provide information about subscriptions or downloads the customer may have ordered. The template code used here is identical to the shopping cart template, and so we will not repeat it here.

Below is a summary of all template instructions used in the order email template.