Sending Personalized Emails with vRO and HTML Templates

In today’s blog post, we will explore how to send personalized emails using vRealize Automation (vRO) and HTML templates. We will walk through the process of creating an HTML template, uploading it to vRO, and then using a workflow to replace specific variables within the template with actual values before sending the email.

Creating an HTML Template

To get started, we need to create an HTML template that contains placeholders for the information we want to include in the email. Let’s say we want to send an email to a user with details about their virtual machine (VM), such as the CPU usage and memory usage. Our template might look something like this:

“`html

Virtual Machine Details

CPU Usage: {{cpu}}

Memory Usage: {{memory}}

“`

Uploading the Template to vRO

Next, we need to upload our HTML template to vRO. To do this, we will create a new folder in the Resources section of vRO called “Email-Templates” and then upload our template to that folder.

Creating a Workflow

Now that we have our HTML template uploaded to vRO, we need to create a workflow that can replace the placeholders in the template with actual values before sending the email. To do this, we will use a script element in our workflow that contains the code for replacing the placeholders.

Here is an example of what the script might look like:

“`javascript

var vm = input.vm;

var memoryUsage = vm.summary.memory.usage;

var cpuUsage = vm.summary.cpu.usage;

var emailContent = new Properties();

emailContent.put(“CPU Usage”, cpuUsage);

emailContent.put(“Memory Usage”, memoryUsage);

output.emailContent = emailContent.toString();

“`

Replacing Placeholders with Actual Values

In the script, we first retrieve the relevant information about the VM, such as its CPU and memory usage. We then create a Properties object that contains the placeholders for the information we want to include in the email, along with the actual values we want to use to replace those placeholders. Finally, we use the `toString()` method to convert the Properties object to a string, which we can then use as the content of our email.

Sending the Email

With our workflow set up and our HTML template uploaded, we are now ready to send the email. To do this, we will use the built-in `Send notification` workflow in vRO, which is found under Library > Mail. We will create one input in the script element for the VM object, and one output called `emailContent` of type string.

Here is an example of what the workflow might look like:

“`xml

var vm = input.vm;

var emailContent = new Properties();

emailContent.put(“CPU Usage”, cpuUsage);

emailContent.put(“Memory Usage”, memoryUsage);

output.emailContent = emailContent.toString();

“`

Conclusion

In this blog post, we have explored how to send personalized emails using vRealize Automation (vRO) and HTML templates. We have walked through the process of creating an HTML template, uploading it to vRO, and then using a workflow to replace specific variables within the template with actual values before sending the email. This approach allows us to easily customize our emails with dynamic information about our virtual machines, making them more informative and valuable to our users.