Sapling - Outbox: How To Set Up Automated Emails At Every Step Of The Employee Lifecycle

Introduction

Outbox gives you visibility and flexibility in over all your communications during all employee life cycle transitions (like Onboarding, Off-boarding, Relocations, Promotions, etc.). 

This article covers the following topics: 

• How does it work? 
• Five Sections of Outbox 
  1. Scheduled
  2. Sent‍
  3. Templates
  4. Notifications
  5. Settings
• How to send Emails
  • Our suggested best practice on how to send emails:
  • Pro tips💡

How does it work?

1. Click Administration Tools
2. Click Outbox

In the Outbox tab, there are five tab options: Scheduled, Sent, Templates, Notifications, and Settings.

1. Scheduled

The Scheduled tab shows you all the templated emails that are scheduled to be sent at a future date. 

Use the top filters to search for specific team member by name or email address, adjust the date to view all emails scheduled for a specific day, or filter by Department, Location, Division, Employment Status, or associated Process Type.

You can also schedule a one-off email directly from the Scheduled tab. To do this, click "Schedule an Email," select what template you'd like to use (if any), and select the date it should be sent.

To edit/delete an existing scheduled email, use the right hand side menu to select "Delete" to remove or "Edit" to adjust. In the "Edit" menu, you can adjust any component of the email (text, attachments, and/or the date the email is scheduled to be sent).

2. Sent‍

The Sent tab displays all templated emails that have been sent to your team members.
Use the top filters to search for specific team member by name or email address, adjust the date to view all emails sent on a specific day, or filter by Department, Location, Division, Employment Status, or associated Process Type (i.e. Onboarding, Offboarding etc.) 

The "Status" column is where to find insights on the current state of the sent email. In this column, you will see 4 status types: 

1. Delivered: the email has been sent but has not been opened
2. Opened: the email has been opened by the recipient (the # of opens will be displayed as well) 
3. Processed: the email is being prepared to be delivered. If the email is dropped, it will appear as Not Delivered.
4. Not delivered: the email soft/hard bounced. *note: our system will continue to try to send the email in this case, so if it was a soft bounce check back in 24h. if the status is still N/A, then the email address is blocked or incorrect.

3. Templates

The templates tab offers a single place for you to create an unlimited number of email templates for any HR process you want to standardize. 

Each template is assigned to an HR process type (like Onboarding, Offboarding, Relocation, Promotion, or Other if it's a one-off) so we can auto-suggest these templates when you're assigning workflows to an employee.

To add a new template, from the Templates tab click "New Template". Make sure you are in the right process type (like Onboarding, Offboarding, Relocation, Promotion, or Other) before you click on "New Template", then name the email (only you will see this name), and fill out the template.

Next, decide who should have access to the template (i.e. what Permission group should be able to see it) as well as who the template is for. Click Create when complete.

From there, you can use the righthand menu to Edit, Duplicate, Delete, or Move the template to a different process type.

4. Notifications

The Notifications tab offers visibility over all automatic platform notifications/alerts that Sapling sends out based on triggers in the system (for ex: when a document is completed or a task is assigned).

‍People, Tasks & Documents, Team Insights come pre-built and are messages triggered by certain actions in Sapling. Custom are a way to send custom updates to entire groups about relevant employee events.

In tabs People, Tasks & Documents, Team Insights, use the toggle to turn a notification on/off. If you'd like to edit a notification, click on it to open the Edit menu and click "Update" when complete.

You can edit here: 

In Custom, similarly, you can use the toggle to turn the notifications on/off. To add a new custom notification, click "New Notification", specify who the notification should be applied to, and who should be notified. Click "Create" when complete.

‍

5. Settings

The Settings tab gives you additional customization options that apply to all notifications in the system. 

Here, you can turn on/off specific features, choose your notification frequency for reminders to complete their tasks and documents, as well as decide the "Sender Name" for all of your emails (i.e. have all Sapling emails come from "Rocketship People Ops Team")  

 

How to send Emails

Once you have your templates set up, there are a few different ways to send them to your team. Below is a breakdown of how they will receive emails (i.e. personal email vs. employee email) from you depending on the method of delivery.

1. Directly from your Outbox tab (as highlighted above) = ALL emails scheduled here go to the company email or personal email or both depending on your selection
2. On Step #4 when you are onboarding a new employee = ALL emails scheduled at this step will go to the employee's personal email (even if they are scheduled for after the employee start date)
3. Using the Admin actions menu directly from an employee profile = ALL emails go to company email
4. Sending an email from the dashboard = if you're re-sending an invite to Sapling, this will go to the employee's personal email. If you're sending a direct email, this will go to the company email
5. Emailing via the people directory = ALL emails go-to company email by default, but if this is missing then it will go to the employee's personal email

Our suggested best practice on how to send emails:

We suggest scheduling all Onboarding-related only emails during Step #4 of the onboarding process. Then, use your Outbox tab to schedule all future emails (to ensure Onboarding emails -> personal email, and all future emails go to company email!)  

Pro tips💡

• Check out how to Schedule emails during Onboarding
• Review the list of ideas in How to Maximize Outbox to see how to take full advantage of email scheduling
• The Reply-to allows you to specify who the reply will go to ( could be an individual, a group email, etc.). *Note, this field only allows for one email address, if you add multiple addresses you will receive an error. 
• 'Relative to key date' option is based on Calendar days (that includes weekends too).
• Font cannot be customized.
• Changes to a template don't affect already-scheduled emails. Already scheduled emails need to be adjusted individually or deleted and then rescheduled.
• We recommend to use less then equal to 60x60 pixels for logos in emails.
• The "reply-to" field in templates can be configured to send to 1) the company email or 2) your email as an admin. There is currently no way to add another email, though there is a feature improvement request regarding this here.
  • As a workaround, additional email addresses can be listed in cc/bcc field and if the recipient uses "reply-to-all" while replying to email, the reply will be delivered to these email addresses.
• Message CC and BCC recipients can be individual emails ([e-mail]), group emails ([e-mail]), or personalized emails from tokens (the manager's email address)