Implementing Dyspatch

Dyspatch helps you take email templates out of your code base, allowing content creators to build complex email templates free from the deployment process. When it comes time to send an email, how does Dyspatch fit in? This guide outlines how to integrate Dyspatch into your system, and the steps to make Dyspatch a part of your email sending pipeline.

Template Life Cycle

Create, collaborate, and approve email content in Dyspatch. The Dyspatch API exposes approved templates built by your team. A Digital Messaging Service built in your system will store and build emails from the compiled templates taken from the Dyspatch API. How your Digital Messaging Service functions can vary depending on your organization's goals, but there are two main processes we'll outline below to get you started.

Digital Messaging Service

In order to effectively send emails with the most current content from your Dyspatch account, two functions will need to be performed by your Digital Messaging Service: Template Sync and Template Render. Template Sync to update your stored templates with any new content in Dyspatch, and Template Render to build a customer email from a template.

Template Sync

There are two main ways to keep your templates in sync. The simplest is by regularly polling the Dyspatch API. A sync of your templates on Dyspatch can be performed on a regular schedule (once per minute maximum) to update your datastore with any newly published content. This is great to start, but can start slowing down if your account has thousands of email templates.

The second method is by using webhooks to fetch updated content once a template is approved by your team.

Polling Template Sync Steps

1. Fetch List of Templates

Use the Dyspatch List Templates API get a list of your templates.

You'll receive a paginated response with all of your templates and their details. See List Templates to view details of the response.

2. Compare updatedAt Date-time

Compare the updatedAt fields to find newly published or updated templates.

The first time you pull your templates and set up your datastore, you'll need to pull all your organization's templates. Once your templates have been cached, you can target the templates that are new or have been updated. This can be done by comparing the updatedAt fields on the templates in your datastore with the corresponding templates from the List Templates response.

3. Fetch Updated Content

Use Get template by ID for each template and Get localization object by ID to get each updated individual template localization.

We recommend your datastore caches the full API response.

4. Update Your Datastore

Update your template datastore with the new and updated templates.

Your datastore should now be synced up with Dyspatch and the new and updated templates are available for use in the next step: Template Render.

Using Webhooks

1. Implement a receiving server

Start by configuring a webhook integration in Dyspatch. See our documentation for examples of the shape of the webhook. We recommend triggering your fetch off of the template_approved and template_republished events to ensure your published templates in Dyspatch match what's in your template datastore.

2. Fetch the new template

When a template_approved webhook comes into your template service it should then make a "Get Template by ID" request to the Dyspatch API. Make sure to specify the target language of your rendering environment.

3. Update your Datastore

After your template service has fetched a template, it needs to store any relevant fields (eg: HTML, subject line, text version, etc) into the datastore to be used later. Note that these fields are base64 are encoded and they will need to be decoded some point during your render pipeline.

Template Render

When it comes time to send an email, pull a template from your datastore, insert the necessary data, and render the template to build an email.

Template Render Steps

1. Send Request Initiated

A send request is made by your system to your Digital Messaging Service.

The send request from your system should request a template by ID and will need to provide a recipient address and any necessary customer data to customize the email for the recipient.

2. Fetch Template

Fetch the requested template using its template ID and, if needed, its locale from your template datastore.

3. Prepare Data

Prepare the template for render by inserting the recipient information.

Recipient, sender, and localization data must be injected before rendering.

4. Render Using Templating Language

Render the HTML, text, and metadata for the final email. Templates can be fetched and rendered using any of the supported export languages.

5. Return for Sending

The template is customized and rendered for the end user and is ready to be returned for sending.

Ready to Send

With Template Sync and Template Render implemented your Digital Messaging Service will be able to serve the most up-to-date templates from your Dyspatch account and render customized emails ready to be passed on to your Email Service Provider for sending.