Understanding how to correctly use smart field links is the key to creating canned emails that you can use for sending forms, contracts, invoices, and schedulers. But, we know it can be a little confusing at first!
⚠️ Heads up! If this is your first time seeing the term smart field, check out our article on using smart fields in canned emails to get the basics down before learning about smart field links. It also helps to know the basics of sending forms.
What Are Smart Field Links?
Smart field links are a special set of smart fields that automatically generate a link to a form, contract, invoice, portal, or scheduler inside your canned emails.
A smart field link is what generates that big, colorful button in your email that the client can't miss!
Why Are Smart Field Links Necessary?
At this point, you're probably wondering why you can't just attach a specific form to a canned email. Before we move on, let's clear this up:
It is NOT possible to attach a Dubsado form to a canned email.
To understand the reasoning for this, let's go over what happens when you add a form to your client's project:
You create a template under Templates >> Forms. This is just a template that you'll re-use from project to project. It's not the actual form that you'll send to a client.
You add the form to the client's project. Adding the form to the project creates a fresh copy from the master template.
This copy of the form now has a unique URL (a unique link) that the client needs to access the form. When you send the same form to a different client through a different project, the form link for that client will be entirely different!
In fact, any Dubsado content you might send to your client - contract, invoice, scheduler, portal - has an entirely unique link! That's why we use smart field links in canned emails.
The smart field link is a placeholder for WHERE in the email you want the unique link to the client's content to appear.
In Dubsado, you will ALWAYS select the form first, then select the email that goes out with that form. You are deciding which form is going to go into the smart field.
Adding a Smart Field to Your Canned Email
You can find the smart field links in the formatting bar when editing an email by going to Smart Field >> Link:
Once you have a smart field link in your canned email template, you will be able to use that email template to send that type of content. Read on to learn about the different types of smart field links and what they do!
Types of Smart Field Links
Invoice Link
The Invoice Link smart field will automatically generate a link to the invoice you have open when you click Send > Via Email from the Invoices tab on the project. To learn how to send an invoice, click here!
There are a couple of other situations where this smart field link may be used:
In any canned email sent through the project, the invoice link smart field will always link to the primary invoice on the project.
When this smart field is used in a payment plan reminder email, it will link to the invoice that the reminder is being sent from.
If you are sending an email with the invoice link through a workflow, the link will always be to the primary invoice on the project, unless used as part of a create invoice action.
Contract Link
The Contract Link smart field will automatically generate a link to the one and only contract on the project. To learn how to send a contract, click here!
Portal Link and Portal Password
The Portal Link smart field will generate a link to that client's portal and the Portal Password will display the password. You can use these two in the same email to provide login instructions to your clients:
If you have not yet set a password for the client, the Portal Password smart field will display the client's email address.
Form Link
The Form Link smart field will generate a link to whichever form you've chosen to send. It works a little like an email attachment in reverse! You are choosing the form you want to send first and then the email to go with it.
The smart field for the form link will know which form to link to because you brought up the email by clicking on the "Send" link for that specific form.
If you're sending the form through the workflow, you are specifying which form template you want to send while creating the action.
The form link will only work for forms that have been added to the project's Forms tab:
Sub agreements
Questionnaires
Proposals
⚠️ Heads up! You can only add one Form Link smart field to a canned email at a time. You can manually send multiple forms in one email using the Add a Link tool in the email composer. If you're sending multiple forms through a workflow, try adding all the forms to the client portal first, then sending your client to the portal to cut down on the number of emails.
To learn how to send a form, click here!
Scheduler Link
The Scheduler Link smart field will generate a link to the scheduler template you have chosen to send. You'll want to include this smart field in the canned email you use for the email body when creating your scheduler template.
This smart field is NOT for your public sharing scheduler link. It only works when the scheduler is being sent through a project or through a workflow.
FAQ
Can I use more than one smart field link in the same email?
In some cases! However, you can only use one of each type of link at a time.
For example, you can create a canned email that contains BOTH the contract link and the invoice link to send a contract and invoice together in a single email. But you can't add more than one form link to an email since you can only specify one form to send at a time.