Guides

Mails

This document gives you an overview on how to create novem e-mails.

AI assisted, human approved — novem uses AI to review and keep our documentation up to date.

Novem allows you to automatically create e-mails using our standard api. We make it easy to embed your charts, tables, grids and documents as well as manage your recipients.

Impatient? Check out our quick start guide and examples.

E-mails (or mails for short), like most other novem visuals follows the same hierarchical folder structure that you're used to seeing. Mails are mostly similar to Documents in that it has a primary file content where most of the information for the mail is stored.

In addition to the content file, there are also supporting files and folders containing information such as recipients, attachments, configuration etc.

Below is an illustrative example of an overall e-mail structure.

daily_email_summary      => E-mail Name
├── config               => Configuration options
│   ├── theme            => Color theme for the e-mail
│   ├── type             => Layout type for the e-mail
│   ├── reply_to         => Add your registered e-mail as reply-to
│   ├── size             => E-mail size xs | s | m | l
│   ├── subject          => Subject line of the e-mail
│   ├── enabled          => Kill switch for production sends
│   └── comments         => Allow comments on the web view
├── recipients           => Who should receive the e-mail
│   ├── to               => List of primary recipients
│   ├── cc               => List of cc recipients
│   └── bcc              => List of bcc recipients
├── content              => Content of e-mail
├── status               => Trigger sends, poll progress
├── stats                => Send history
├── files                => Rendered outputs (txt, ansi, pdf, png, pptx)
├── assets               => Uploaded images and fonts for embedding
├── vars                 => Attached metadata variables
├── tags                 => Tags on the e-mail
├── threads              => Comment threads from the web view
├── log                  => Activity log (sends, recipient changes, errors)
├── url                  => Web url of the e-mail (read only)
├── shortname            => Auto-generated shortname (read only)
├── description          => Description (meta)
├── summary              => Short summary of e-mail (meta)
├── name                 => Name (meta)
└── shared               => Who can view the e-mail in the web format
    ├── +org~group       => Shared with an org group
    ├── @username~group  => Shared with a user group
    └── public           => Shared with everyone

Creating an e-mail is similar to other novem visuals, a HTTP PUT request to the https://api.novem.io/v1/vis/mails/MAIL_NAME endpoint. Obviously e-mails can be created using any of our libraries or our web page as well.

# this assumes that the novem client is installed in $PATH

cat text.md | novem \
  -m <name>                          \  # mail <name> to create or update
  -w recipients/to  user@example.com \  # recipient of the e-mail
  -C                                 \  # create the e-mail if it doesn't exist
  -S                                    # send the e-mail

  • Overview — the full e-mail API surface.
  • Content — the mail content format.
  • Recipients — address formats and tier restrictions.
  • Config — subject, size, theme and the other options.
  • Sending — test sends, rate limits and send status.
  • Renders — txt, ansi, pdf, png and pptx outputs.
  • Novem Markdown — syntax and every section type.
  • Python Mail — build mails programmatically.
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