The sentences you send most often

A template is one sentence you send over and over, kept somewhere better than your head. They live at /messages/templates — Ctrl+K finds it as Message templates, and the composer's own picker links to it. The screen says what they are for: The sentences you send most often, written once. Placeholders are filled in from the customer and the repair order. Writing and editing them needs the settings key; using them does not.

They are offered wherever the shop writes to a customer — the conversation beside a ticket has a page icon that opens the picker, and so does the panel that sends a document. Nothing is ever sent from this screen.

The thirteen placeholders

A placeholder is a word in curly brackets that is replaced when the message goes out. There are thirteen and there is no fourteenth: {first}, {last}, {name}, {shop}, {vehicle}, {ro}, {apptdate}, {appttime}, {shopaddress}, {shopphone}, {shopemail}, {vin} and {plate}.

You do not have to remember them. Under the message box is a row of chips headed Drop a placeholder into the message: — pressing one writes it where your cursor is, and hovering it says what it becomes. Under the form, What each placeholder becomes lists all thirteen with the same sentence beside each.

None of them can render as nothing, which is the reason the list is short. Each one has words for a record that is half filled in, and those words are chosen to be grammatical in the sentence the placeholder is usually sitting in.

The customer

{first} is their first name and becomes there when the shop does not hold one, so a walk-in gets "Hi there" rather than "Hi ,". {last} is simply dropped when it is unknown. {name} is the full name, or the company on a business account.

The car and the ticket

{vehicle} becomes your vehicle when the message is not about a particular one — not "your car", because a fleet customer's box truck is not one. {ro} prints the repair order number with a hash in front of it and becomes your repair order on a message tagged to no ticket. {vin} and {plate} print in capitals, the way they are printed on the invoice and stuck to the car, and read not on file when the record does not hold them.

The booking

{apptdate} and {appttime} are the customer's next appointment that has not happened yet, on your shop's own clock. With no booking to point at they become the day we booked and the time we booked. A time with no zone is a wrong time, so the pair renders together or not at all.

Your letterhead

{shopaddress}, {shopphone} and {shopemail} come from the letterhead printed at the top of your documents, which is written from your shop Profile — the same three lines the portal shows. All three become the shop until that letterhead is filled in, which reads correctly in every sentence they sit in: come to the shop, ring the shop, email the shop.

Anything else in curly brackets is refused when you press save, with the whole list of allowed placeholders in the refusal, and the box that is wrong is the one carrying the message. A stray opening or closing bracket is refused the same way. The check is done at save time on purpose: at send time it would be too late for anyone to do anything about it.

Writing one

The form takes a name, the message, an optional email subject, and a Spanish message and subject if you write to customers in Spanish. The name is what the picker shows, so name it after the moment rather than after the wording. A name is capped at 60 characters, a message at 1600 and a subject at 120, and each refusal says which and why.

Under the boxes, What a customer would get shows the message with real values in it rather than the placeholders — an example customer, an example car and an example booking — and it updates as you type. A Spanish message gets its own preview beside it.

Who can use it chooses between Every location and this shop by name, and every row carries the answer as a badge — Every location or This location only — so you can see it before you edit something two branches depend on. Rows also say Has an email subject and Spanish included where those apply.

A refused save comes back with what you typed still in the boxes. Losing a paragraph because a placeholder was misspelt would be a second problem on top of the first.

The twelve you start with

A new shop is offered twelve written templates rather than an empty screen: Appointment Rescheduled, Estimate Ready To Review, Inspection Ready To View, Invoice Ready, Missed Appointment, Ready For Pickup, Soonest Appointment, Statement Ready, Thank You For Reaching Out, Work Almost Complete, Work Request Form - New Client and Work Started. Each ships in English and Spanish and each uses at least one placeholder, because the fastest way to learn what a placeholder is for is to read one already doing its job.

With no templates at all the screen offers Add the standard 12. If your list is not empty but is missing some of them — which is every shop that installed the set before it grew — a line at the foot names the ones you do not have and offers to add those. Pressing either adds only what is missing and changes nothing you have written. A retired row counts as present, so a template you took out is not pushed back at you.

None of the twelve is fixed. Edit them, rename them, retire them; the wording is a starting point in plain English with no emoji and no sign-off, because your own voice goes on top.

Copying, resetting and retiring

Every row carries Edit and three more controls: Duplicate, Reset where the row is still one of the standard twelve, and Retire. Each of the last two asks first, in a panel on the page rather than a pop-up, so it works with scripting off.

Duplicate

Makes a copy with (copy) on the end of the name — (copy 2) if that one is taken — and opens the copy for editing, saying so: Copied. You are editing the copy — give it a name of its own. Both languages, both subjects and the location setting come across; a copy of a one-location template is a one-location template.

Reset

Puts a standard template back the way it shipped. The confirmation prints the wording that would replace yours, because your version is gone afterwards and there is no undo. Both languages and both subjects go back together. Where the template is used is left alone.

Retire

Takes it out of the picker immediately and nothing else. Messages you have already sent keep their own words, and Show retired templates with Bring it back puts it back whenever you like.

Reset is only drawn on a row that is still one of the standard twelve, matched on its name. Rename Ready For Pickup to something of your own and it becomes your row, and the reset control goes with the name.

Using one in a conversation

The page icon in the composer opens the picker with a search box. Choosing a template writes the rendered words into the message box — the customer's real name, the real ticket number, the real VIN — and names the one it used, with the words edit it before you send. Nothing is sent by choosing one.

Read what it wrote before you press Send. The placeholders are filled from the conversation you are standing in, so under an order chip a template names that ticket and its car, and under All — where a message is tagged to no order — the car and ticket placeholders fall back to their words instead. That is the fallback you will meet most often, and the picker showing it is the point.

Where the conversation is being conducted in Spanish, a template that has a Spanish message uses it; one that does not falls back to its English.