Force24 Transactional Emails and Custom Objects

Transactional Emails are those that get sent as part of the service, as a result of a transaction or interaction, and normally contains data specific to that event, e.g.

• Order Confirmation – sent after Order is placed, containing details of that Order.
• Invoice Payment Reminder – sent X days after Invoice date, containing the Invoice details.
• Training Course Reminder – sent X days before Training Course date, containing details of the Course.
• Subscription Renewal Reminder – sent X days before Subscription End Date, contains details of the renewal.
• Event Registration Confirmation – sent when someone registers for an Event, containing details of the Event.

Force24 supports the sending of emails like this with their Custom Objects functionality. Custom Objects allow you to store additional details about the contact’s transactions or interactions, which then make this data available to use in filters when building mailing lists, when building journeys, and available to pull into email templates.

Custom Objects are related to a Contact. You can have more than one of an Object attached to a Contact, for example, multiple Event Registrations, each for a different Event and each tracking the Contact’s status for that Event. You can also have more than one Custom Object Type against a Contact, for example, tracking their Event Registrations and the Orders they have placed.

Custom Objects is an additional feature for Force24, speak to your Account Manager about licensing.

The data needs to be synchronised from Workbooks to Force24. To give you control over which records to synchronise and which fields to map, a report is used to drive the sync process. The report contains the record type to be synchronised, the fields to map, and any criteria to restrict which records are sent.

Initially, you’ll need to synchronise all historic data, but on an ongoing basis, you only need to synchronise the records that have been most recent created or updated, so the report limits the results to only the most recently updated. The process will fetch the results from the report and create or update the corresponding Custom Objects accordingly. The Id of the Custom Object will be mapped back onto the Workbooks Record.

The process also handles deletions, if the Workbooks record is deleted the process will delete the corresponding Custom Object record from Force24.

You will need to set up multiple syncs if you have more than one Custom Object type to sync.

1. Create a Force24 Custom Object

First set up the Custom Object in Force24, using this guide Force24 Custom Object FAQs to do so. You’ll need to make note of the id of the new Object and field names for later.

2. Create a Workbooks Report

There are some Template Reports set up to get you started:

• TEMPLATE – Force24 Custom Object Sync – Event Registrations
• TEMPLATE – Force24 Custom Object Sync – Subscriptions

If one of these doesn’t cover your scenario, you need to build a report that contains:

• The Id of the Person that the Custom Object should be related to
• The Id and Lock Version of the Record you are synchronising
• The Updated At of the Record you are synchronising
• Columns for each of the fields that you want to map to the Custom Object
• A criterion to limit the report to only the most recently updated records
• Any other criteria to restrict the data to what’s relevant, e.g. if you only want Event Attendees from certain types of Events, or only Line items for certain Products.

3. Create a field in Workbooks

On the Record Type that you are synchronising, create a Text Custom Field, for storing the Force24 Custom Object Id.

4. Set up a Scheduled Process

Create a new Scheduled Process, using the ‘Force24 Integration’ Script Library script.

Set the Parameters as follows:

• Mode = send_custom_objects
• Custom Objects Report View Name = the name of the report set up in Step 2, including the view name, e.g. “Event Attendees to sync to F24:Details”
• Custom Objects Type Id = the id of the Object you set up in Step 1, e.g. “4145d01f4a”
• Custom Objects Mapping = the mappings between the Force24 field name and the report column api name, with a new line for each field, e.g.
  Event Name : event_name
  • Event Attendee Id : attendee_id
  • Attendee Status : attendee_status
  • Event Date : event_date
• Person Id Column = the api name of the report column that contains the Person Id, e.g. “person_id”
• Record Endpoint = the Workbooks API endpoint for the record type you are synchronising, e.g. “email/mailing_list_entries”
• Record Force24 Identifier Field = the field name of the field created in Step 3, e.g. “cf_mailing_list_member_f24_object_id”
• Record Id Column = the api name of the report column that contains the Id of the record you are synchronising, e.g. “attendee_id”
• Record Lock Version Column = the api name of the report column that contains the Lock Version of the record you are synchronising, e.g. “attendee_lock_version”

Set the Schedule of the process depending on how often the records are updated in Workbooks and how immediately the data needs to be reflected in Force24.

5. Create your Force24 Journeys

The data will now be available in Force24 for you to use in filters when building your Audience, adding Decisions into the Journey, and to pull into Email Templates.

Event Invitation Journey

You would like to send people through a journey to invite them to your event, sending invite reminders in the build up to the event. You would like anyone that has registered to automatically come out of the Journey.

Step 1 – Create Force24 Custom Object

Create a Custom Object in Force24 called ‘Event Registration’. Add fields to the object for:

• Event Name (text)
• Attendee Status (text)
• Event Attendee Id (integer)

Make a note of the Custom Object Id for later

Step 2 – Create a Workbooks Report

Create a report from a template, using the template called “TEMPLATE – Force24 Custom Object Sync – Event Registrations”.

Name it “Force24 Sync – Event Registration”. You should not need to add any columns or criteria, unless you are only interested in sending over registrations for certain Event Types. Save the report.

Step 3 – Create a field in Workbooks

On Mailing List Members, create a text field called “F24 Object Id”.

Step 4 – Set up a Scheduled Process

Create a new Scheduled Process, using the ‘Force24 Integration’ Script Library script.

Set the Parameters as follows:

• Mode = send_custom_objects
• Custom Objects Report View Name = “Force24 Sync – Event Registration:Details”
• Custom Objects Type Id = the id of the Object you set up in Step 1
• Custom Objects Mapping =
  Event Name : event_name
• Event Attendee Id : attendee_id
• Attendee Status : attendee_status
• Person Id Column = “person_id”
• Record Endpoint = “email/mailing_list_entries”
• Record Force24 Identifier Field = “cf_mailing_list_member_f24_object_id”
• Record Id Column = “attendee_id”
• Record Lock Version Column = “attendee_lock_version”

Set the Schedule of the process to run once an hour at least.

Step 5 – Set up the Force24 Journey

Create a new Journey from a template, using the ‘Event/Webinar Invitation Journey’ template, and set Journey Type to be ‘Standard’.

You can set up the Audience as per your normal criteria.

On the “Suppress?” and “Registered?” blocks, amend the criteria to be

• Event Registration – Event Name equal [your event name]

AND

• Event Registration – Attendee Status equal Registered

One step further

If you also map the Event Date onto the Custom Object, you can use this in your criteria when creating the Audience to send different invitation emails to people that have attended your events before.

Event Registration Journey

You would like to send people through a journey to thank them for registering and remind them about the event in the lead up to it. You would like anyone that has registered to automatically add into the Journey.

This uses the same Custom Object set up as ‘Event Invitation Journey’

Step 5 – Set up the Force24 Journey

Create a new Journey from a template, using the ‘Event/Webinar Reminder Journey’ template, and set Journey Type to be ‘Custom Object’ and Custom Object Selection to be ‘Event Registration’.

Your Start Audience will be based on the Custom Object:

• Event Registration – Event Name equal [your event name]
  AND
• Event Registration – Attendee Status equal Registered

Event Attendance Journey 

You would like to send people through a journey to thank them for attending your event. You would like anyone that has been marked as Attended to automatically add into the Journey. 

This uses the same Custom Object set up as ‘Event Invitation Journey’ 

Step 5 – Set up the Force24 Journey

Create a new Journey and set Journey Type to be ‘Custom Object’ and Custom Object Selection to be ‘Event Registration’.

Your Start Audience will be based on the Custom Object

• Event registration – Event Name equal [your event name]
  AND
• Event Registration – Attendee Status equal Attended

Subscription/Membership Renewal Journey

You would like to send people through a journey to remind them of their upcoming renewal. You would like anyone that has renewed to automatically come out of the Journey.

This set up assumes you manage you Subscriptions or Memberships using Contract Line Items, and that the Customer of the Contract is the Person you wish to send the email to.

Step 1 – Create Force24 Custom Object

Create a Custom Object in Force24 called ‘Subscriptions’. Add fields to the object for:

• Product Name (text)
• Start Date (date)
• End Date (date)
• Contract Reference (text)
• Subscription Id (integer)
• Subscription Status (text)

Make a note of the Custom Object Id for later

Step 2 – Create a Workbooks Report

Create a report from a template, using the template called “TEMPLATE – Force24 Custom Object Sync – Subscriptions”. Name it “Force24 Sync – Subscriptions”. You will need to update the Person Id column if the renewal emails should be sent to someone else, like the Contract Primary Contact. You also need to add a column for ‘Subscription Status’, depending on what field you use to track whether a Subscription is Renewed or not. Save the report.

Step 3 – Create a field in Workbooks

On Contract Line Items, create a text field called “F24 Object Id”.

Step 4 – Set up a Scheduled Process

Create a new Scheduled Process, using the ‘Force24 Integration’ Script Library script. Set the Parameters as follows:

• Mode = send_custom_objects
• Custom Objects Report View Name = “Force24 Sync – Subscriptions:Details”
• Custom Objects Type Id = the id of the Object you set up in Step 1
• Custom Objects Mapping =
  • Product : product
  • Start Date : start_date
  • End Date : end_date
  • Subscription Status : subscription_status
  • Contract Reference : contract_reference
  • Subscription Id : line_item_id
• Person Id Column = “person_id”
• Record Endpoint = “accounting/contract_line_items”
• Record Force24 Identifier Field = “cf_customer_contract_line_item_f24_object_id”
• Record Id Column = “line_item_id”
• Record Lock Version Column = “line_item_lock_version”

Set the Schedule of the process to run once an hour at least.

Step 5 – Set up the Force24 Journey

Create a new Journey from a template, using the ‘Renewal Journey’ template, and set Journey Type to be ‘Custom Object’ and Custom Object Selection to be ‘Subscriptions’.

Set up the Starting Audience using the Date Relative criteria:

• Subscriptions – End Date – Relative equal 90 days in the future
• Subscriptions – Subscription Status not equal Renewed

On each of the ‘Renewed?’ blocks, add a Custom Object Filter for

Subscriptions – Subscription Status equal Renewed

When creating the Email Templates, you can connect them to the Subscriptions Custom Object, using the ‘Connect this email to a data object’ button on the Info tab.

You can then add values from the Subscription objects in the Personalisation fields.

Because the Journey is driven from a Custom Object, the Object that triggered the Contact to enter the Journey will be the one used when pulling data into the Email Templates.