E-mailing a thank-you letter, cancel notice, etc.

DISCLAIMER: This article involves Advanced Customizations, which can be technically challenging to get working and is not part of standard support.  This is programming and must be done precisely or the results can be unpredictable.  This information is provided as a service for those who have the technical skills to work through it -- we cannot help you solve any issues with getting it working.  For more information about Advanced Customizations, see the full documentation:

https://campgroundmaster.com/help/overview32.html

Some users have requested being able to E-mail other types of letters besides confirmations, like thank-you notes after check-out, cancellation notices, etc.  This hasn't been added to the standard features because there are so many variations on what might be needed in them, and also because it's already possible through Advanced Customizations.  Here's a generic example of adding an E-mail form and how to modify the text as needed.

The good news is that we've done sample forms with all of the "hard" stuff already in them -- the heading with the name & address, reservation information, etc.  So all you need to do is import an example, remove the bits you don't need and change the special text.  Once an additional E-mail form of any kind is added, the "E-mail Confirmation" button on the Reservation Transactions dialog will show a list of your forms so you can choose the one to send.

Note that this assumes that you already have the SMTP setup done in Campground Master so you can send E-mails directly.  If not, see the documentation here:

http://campgroundmaster.com/help/smtpsendmailsetup.html

1. Go to Maintenance / Advanced Customizations / Forms

2. Click the Import Form(s) button, and you'll get a typical Windows file-open dialog labeled "Import Forms".

3. You need to locate the sample Forms folder, which is typically C:\Program Files (x86)\Campground Master\Samples (most likely you just need to double-click the "Samples" folder to get there, but you may have to navigate to the C: drive first using the "Look In" drop down at the top").

4. Now select the appropriate file, "Sample Forms - E-mail confirmation with special text", and click Open.   You might get some warnings about renaming some items, just click OK.

5. Scroll to the bottom, where you'll see the new form.  You might want to make a copy of it so if you make a mistake you can start over without having to import it again.  Just select it and click Copy selected form(s).  Now select the form (or your copy) and click "Edit form definition" (or as with most lists like this, you can just double-click the entry to edit it).

6. You'll see a lot of complicated information... but mostly you want to focus on 2 things in the top area:

Form name: Change this to whatever you want it to be called.

E-mail subject expression: Click Edit, and change the text inside the quotes to the topic, e.g. "Thank you for visiting Heavenly Camp".  Be sure to keep the quotes at each end, otherwise it won't work.  This is really a programmable expression that would allow adding information to the subject like their name, etc., but we won't cover that here.

7. Now for the Elements -- there's a big list of elements that tell it exactly what to put in the E-mail.  Most of it "looks" pretty obvious as to what it does, but I don't recommend messing with any of it unless you want to remove something.  Generally you can just Delete the elements for the information you don't need, but be careful to delete the right elements, e.g. both the Text element that's a label and the Data Expression element(s) that put the information there.  For now, just continue with the next step...

8. Check the "As E-mail" box at the top under "Save & Test Form", and then click the "Save & Test Form" button.  That should open an E-mail dialog to some customer (I believe it will use the latest reservation made that has an E-mail address for the customer).  You can see what the E-mail will look like for that reservation.  Note the 2 lines ****** TOP TEXT HERE ****** and ******* BOTTOM TEXT HERE ******.  This is what you can easily change to your special text, using one or both locations.  For now click Cancel (don't send it!) and get back to the list of elements.

9. Now if you scroll through the elements, you can easily find those 2 lines under the Text column.  All you need to do is Edit those elements and replace them with the text you want for your E-mail message.  It can be as long as you want, since it will wrap to multiple lines as needed.

Again, there may be a lot of those other elements that you don't want on your special E-mail (unless it's a confirmation letter).  By going back and forth to Save & Test Form, you should be able to figure out which Elements correspond to the parts you want to delete.

10. Of course when you're all done, Save and Close.

Have fun!