Pendula provides you with the ability to personalise the contents of an SMS or email dynamically through merge fields.
Merge fields are placeholders which are replaced with the literal values from each individual record that Pendula sends a communication to, such as a recipient's first name or the start time of their upcoming appointment.
Merge fields which are nested within a callout from Zuora are formatted slightly differently. See Callout flows for more information.
How to add merge fields
To add a merge field to your template, click on the Insert Merge Field button (for SMS templates) or the Add merge field button (for email templates) to access all the available fields on the related object of your template.
To search for a specific field, simply start typing the name into the filter field to narrow the search options.
If your related object shares a one-to-one or lookup relationship with another object (such as a Contact or an Account) within your data source, you can traverse across to reference fields on this object as well.
If such a relationship exists, it will be indicated above the standard merge field options as a field name with an > symbol.
When you are ready to add a merge field, simply click on the relevant field name within the list and it will be inserted into your template.
If adding a merge field to an email template, it will be copied to your clipboard instead. You can then paste the merge field value in the relevant place within your template.
Adding merge fields via Insert Merge Field automatically formats the field name for you with the correct syntax, for this reason we recommend you always add merge fields using this method rather than trying to enter the merge field name manually.
There are some instances when using merge fields where you will want a value displayed in a certain way, for example converting a number value into 2 decimal places or a date/time value to a certain timezone.
This can be done via dynamic formatting, see Advanced merge field formatting for more information.