What
We have new functionality which enhances the user experience of our already brilliant email function, named the Email Editor. The Email Editor can be launched from many places, such as an individual contact record, from a contact list within a View, from a Mercury Search or from within a Hotlist, as well as many additional areas.
In this particular article, we are focusing on three keys areas of improvement. These include emails no longer being sent to deactivated contacts, the Salutation prefix being configurable, new fonts and sizes available to match company requirements and the big one - being able to copy & paste text without any formatting issues! In addition, if you are choosing to use DaXtra Styler (an additional tool that creates a branded CV alongside the original CV within the contact record in Mercury), we have now improved the labelling of the two CVs.
Where
From a Contact record
Home > Contacts > select your contact > Select the Activities button from the top ribbon > select appropriate email option > write email as desired and click Live Preview to check, before clicking Send Email (if desired).
How
Accessing the Email Editor
Within Mercury, there are multiple places where the Email Editor can be launched. All changes in this article will be present whenever the Email Editor is launched. On a Contact, you can Email directly from the ribbon:
The Email Editor can also be launched via the Contact list, within the Views:
Deactivated Recipients
Within the Email Editor, recruiters can no longer search or select inactive Client Contacts, Candidates and Users within To, Cc and Bcc. This will prevent any accidental contact to a person who shouldn’t be contacted.
If launching the Email Editor from a Contact record and the Contact is inactive, the To will not populate.
On the below example, the candidate has a personal email address, but has been marked as Inactive:
When using the Email Editor, due to the contact being inactive, the email address will no longer appear in the To field:
This also applies when using the Cc or Bcc options.
This improvement gives confidence that only contacts you are currently working with will receive emails from your business.
Calibri and Font 11 have been added
Within the Email Editor, users were unable to select Calibri as a font family and 11 as a font size, which resulted in a discrepancy between the Salutation and the body of the email.
NOTE: As companies have brand guidelines, it’s everyone’s responsibility to follow and adhere to those guidelines. We’ve added a new feature within Mercury to restrict users from changing the font family and font size within the Email Editor. Please liaise with your CSM to remove these tabs.
Copying and Pasting Text into the Email Body
Pasting in text from an external source into the Email Editor has sometimes been problematic, and formatting was retained during pasting. This often caused the Email Editor to breach its character limit. We’ve therefore taken the approach to strip all formatting when pasting text into the Email Editor.
When pasting in any text from an external source, all formatting will be stripped. The text will be pasted in a plain format, which will then allow the ability to format within the Email Editor itself:
CV naming convention for branded and unbranded CVs
This new feature is only relevant if you are choosing to use DaXtra Styler to brand your CVs within Mercury.
We have made it easier for senders and recipients of emails that have CVs attached to see which CV is related to which Candidate. This allows senders of emails to know they have attached the correct CVs and the recipient to more easily open or save the documents and know who the CV is related to, without having to rename the file themselves.
The naming convention for the CVs has been changed so that the existing convention of calling them either cv.doc or branded.doc when attaching CVs via the email editor is changed to [<first name> <surname>] cv_branded - for branded CVs, and to [<first name> <surname>] cv - for unbranded CVs.
Configurable Salutation Prefix
Within the Email Editor, the prefix to address the contact within the email is set to Hi. This field could always be amended manually, but the prefix could not be amended. This can now be amended to your company's preference:
Please speak to your CSM to set this up.
Inserting Hyperlinks
New functionality has been added to the Email Editor where users can now insert Hyperlinks into their emails. This function can be found within the Insert tab, where you can include links to content outside of the original email.
To add a Hyperlink, follow the below steps:
1. Select Insert/edit link within the Insert tab and enter a URL web address - eg. https://portal.wearemercury.com/knowledgebase
2. Specify what you would like the Hyperlink to be called - this can look more presentable in an email rather than the full URL address.
3. Decide if the Hyperlink should have a title - when a user hovers over the hyperlink, the title will appear in a text box.
4. Select if the Hyperlink should direct users to a New Window separate from their email window, or choose the None option, which means the user will not be redirected anywhere:
5. Once all necessary fields have been completed, click Ok and the hyperlink will be added to the body of the email: