Create dynamic content elements

This article refers to our legacy product, eNotify, which will no longer be available and support for the product will be discontinued, effective August 1, 2023. For the best Finalsite experience, we recommend using our Finalsite Messages, which provides enhanced security and reliability for your school's email communication needs. Visit our client portal for additional information and next steps.

Dynamic content elements are placed into eNotify templates and pull News, Calendar, or Posts information into finished emails. Dynamic elements are created independently from specific templates, and they can be added to one or more templates as needed.

There are three types of dynamic content elements: News configuration (for posts from News Manager), Calendar configuration (for calendar data from both Calendar Manager and Athletics Manager), and Posts configuration (for boards from Finalsite Posts). This article will walk you through the process of creating a new dynamic content element.

Create a new dynamic content element

From eNotify, go to the "Templates" tab and click the "Dynamic Content" button on the left. Then select which type of configuration you want to create using the buttons on the left. Click the green "Create News Configuration," "Create Calendar Configuration," or "Create Posts Configuration" button.

Give the configuration a name to open the setup window.

Set up configuration

Use the checkboxes at the left to select which news categories, calendars, or boards this element will pull content from. Posts or events from multiple boards, calendars, or news categories can be displayed; just select the checkbox next to one or more names.

Underneath the calendar/category/board selectors, choose how many posts or events to include.

News configuration

Use the second dropdown menu to set the element to either display news posts that have been published most recently, or to pull from a specified day range.

News and Posts configurations

Use the "Posts to Include" dropdown menu to determine how many posts will appear in the element each time an eNotify message is sent, up to 25.

Calendar configurations

On the top of the right-hand column, select the number of days before and after the date the eNotice is sent to display events. Use the "Display Posts in" radio buttons to set whether calendar events are displayed with the oldest or the newest event listed first. The "Date Format" dropdown menu determines how event dates will be rendered in the eNotice.

Athletics configuration

Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click the "Include Athletic Events" checkbox to reveal the additional athletics settings. Events from multiple teams can be displayed by expanding the list to display the teams and selecting the checkboxes next to one or more team names.

Use the checkboxes in the Athletics configuration section to include standard, tournament, practice and/or scrimmage events. The last checkbox allows you to filter out any events that do not have an associated score result.

Set display options

Use the "Vertical space between" control to determine the amount of white space between individual posts or events in this element. (If the element is set to only display one post/event, you do not need to adjust this.)

The "Open In" settings determine which page of the website will open up when a recipient clicks the "Read More" link at the bottom of a post or event.

• For Composer sites, this setting is adjusted in Composer, not in eNotify. For more information on how to change the landing pages, see Setting a News Landing Page. The same procedure applies to events, as well.

• For Page Manager sites, users will see a dropdown where they can select a page of the appropriate Page Type to serve as the landing page.

• For Posts, the post will be displayed in the default page for the Board, as defined in the Posts module.

Using the toggles in the right-hand column, select which pieces of content from each post or event will appear in the email.

• Calendar or Athletics configuration: date (mandatory); month header; event title (mandatory); event time; event location; notes; description

• Athletics configuration: time; location; transportation information; score; result; opponent(s)

• News configuration: title; plain text summary; author; read more link; post date; thumbnail image; post content; rich text summary

• Posts configuration: title; RSS summary; author; summary; body

Note: By default, some fields are hidden behind a "Not Recommended" checkbox because they may contain HTML content. HTML content in an eNotice may change how it is formatted, meaning that it may not render correctly on some recipients' devices. If you're confident that there's no HTML content in those fields you can turn them on, but it's always a good idea to thoroughly test any eNotify messages that use this element.

For each field, you can configure the font family, font size, alignment, color, and whether or not the text is in boldface.

Best practice: Make a note of the font attributes you select when creating each dynamic content element and replicate those settings when building an eNotify template. This way, all of the text in the resulting email will look consistent.

The Thumbnail Image control in the News configuration doesn't have any font styling, but it requires you to set the maximum width, as well as its alignment.

Save and add to eNotice

When you've finished, click the green "Save" button to lock in your selections. After you save this dynamic content element, you can select it when you add the "Dynamic Content" placeholder to an eNotify template or eNotice.

When the eNotice is sent, the dynamic content element placeholder will be filled with live data from News Manager, Calendar Manager, Athletics Manager, or Posts. Any dynamic elements in the email will be populated and fixed at the time the email goes out; all recipients will see the same email.