`admin/customize/email_templates` page should include brief documentation of those templates

feature
1

The request:

the Admin page for customizing email templates should include:

  • a one-sentence description of when the currently selected template will be emailed to users
  • a one-sentence description of each interpolation key that can be used on the current template.

The rationale:

On this page, I often run into two problems:

1: not understanding what will trigger the template to be sent

The name of the template isn’t sufficient to understand when an email template will be sent. Great examples:

  • Custom Invite Forum Mailer
  • Custom Invite Mailer
  • Invite Forum Mailer
  • Invite Mailer

These names only make sense retroactively, after we understand the distinctions between them. So it would be great for these (and all of the templates) to add a little one-sentence description to the page, to let the admin know what the template is for.

You could directly use the text from a useful how-to post on this forum – the content is already written up, at least for the English localization.

2: not knowing which interpolation keys are available or what they do

For example, here’s the template for User Replied:

%{header_instructions}

%{message}

%{context}

%{respond_instructions}

The problem here:

  1. I don’t know what %{context} means.
  2. If I delete these keys it can be hard to bring them back again.

So it’d also be great if there were one-sentence descriptions of each of the keys available for each email template. Perhaps as an expandable/hideable list on the page?

for reference, here’s a couple of posts seeking this information: one, two

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