Best practise to send transactional emails with a backend workflow?

Need help App Organization
1

Hi all, hope everyone is safe and well, as are your families.

Quick question, I’ve noticed when my workflows include the sending of an email - this slows things down.

I was wondering, if sending transactional emails would work with backend workflows, and if that is a smarter/more efficient way to handle something like this?

If so, could anyone provide a resource I can read on how to set these up correctly, e.g. for when a new database entry is completed, or a new form submitted (I have user A submittion item A to User B to then login and view Item A).

Thanks!

Matt

2

@matthew2
The integrated email action is slow. You can make an account at sendgrid (or another other transactional email provider) and then send emails by using the api connector to make a post request. This can be done backend.
The documentation vary from provider. I have tried (and use) Sendgrid, but I hear mixed opinions from other users, I’m happy with it though.
There is also Postmark, mailgun etc.
Most support templates with tags, so that your post req. simply has a body with the values that needs to be replaced in the template.
I believe all providers has a kind of free tier, so make a couple of accounts and play around with the api using postman to see which ones work for you and is easier to use. Not all providers has built in template editors, so in those cases you need to provide the HTML template yourself.
Hope that helps :slight_smile:

3

Postmark is very good, although you do need to know a bit of HTML.

The main reason is that it will generate cURL for each template, which you can now import into the Bubble API connector and it will generate your call for you :slight_smile:

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4

Thanks Simon, I am already hooked into Sendgrid, but the actual action of sending via Bubble’s standard ‘send email’ action seems to take quite some time, so I’m thinking of starting to use the backend workflows for things like this. Would you say however that the Sendgrid plugin by copilot would also have the same speed issues, due to using the front-end work flows?

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5

I haven’t tried the plugin, but considering that it will have to wait for a response from Sendgrid, then probably there will be some latency for the user.

I’m not a huge fan of Sendgrids template editor, but it works ok. Under Email API choose dynamic template, make some tags in double quotes like {{name}} {{lastName}} etc. and make a call from postman with curl. If you get the expected result you are good to go in bubble where you can use the standard api connector (I try to limit the number of plugins, so I like this approach).

curl -X "POST" "https://api.sendgrid.com/v3/mail/send" \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer <<YOUR_API_KEY>>' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
   "from":{
      "email":"[email protected]"
   },
   "personalizations":[
      {
         "to":[
            {
               "email":"[email protected]"
            }
         ],
         "dynamic_template_data":{
            "name":"John",
            "lastName":"Doe"
          }
      }
   ],
   "template_id":"[SENGRID-TEMPLATE-ID]"
}'

Haven’t tried Postmark as Nigel suggests, but I have heard good things about them :slight_smile: HTML templates for email can be build in other services, even Mailchimp as I recall.

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