Solved: Append a variable to all links in an html email

NiklasM · ‎06-01-2022

Hey everybody,

at the moment I am struggling with appending an variable to all links in an email. I create an email in M365 Marketing and get the email entity into Power Automate with the whole html body. Now I want to add utm parameters to every link in the email. Did anybody know how I do this? I did some things in Power Automate but I am far away from being a IT professional.

I start with getting the entity from data verse, when someone adds a value to an utm column I configured with Power Apps.

Then I get the html body of the email to Power Automate. Now I want to append to every link the utm tag I got from Power Apps with a variable.

Could anybody help me or does anybody has a solution to this and can show me how to achieve this?

Best regards

Niklas

eliotcole · ‎06-04-2022

Aha ... well that's much easier, then.

Still, I will not be attempting it myself right now, however if I were, I'd make a flow thusly:

create two string variables thisQueryVAR & htmlContentVAR
Apply to each - an apply to each dataverse item fill them accordingly (replace DV_CALL with the appropriate call in the expression):
1. thisQueryVAR - the UTM that needs to go in
  utm_campaign=DV_CALL
2. htmlContentVAR - the html for the email
3. create a separate Select action with the keys:
  1. subStringPos - registers the numerical position of each href=" in the text
  2. hasQuery - registers if it already has a 'query' on the end, by seeing if it has a '?' before the end of the url (complex, but not impossible)
4. Apply to each looping the items in the Select:
  1. Compose - pulling the current value of htmlContentVAR into a Compose action called blah
  2. Substring - an action (not expression function!) on the text in blah replacing the url with the the new one
  3. Set variable - to set the value of htmlContentVAR before moving on to the next one
5. Send the email with the text from htmlContentVAR

I'll try to come do that over the next day or so unless someone else already has. Suffice to say, it might require concurrency rules to be limited to 1 in case of weirdness with variables, however it should automatically figure that out.

View solution in original post

eliotcole · ‎06-01-2022

I'm not suggesting that I'll be the fixer, here, @NiklasM, but if you show us what this UTM data looks like when it's coming in (an example, or obfuscated text/images) it might really help with how someone can push that through and into your ongoing email.

One thing I can advise, with regard to formatting the link correctly, is to build the whole email in the code view of what ever email application you use in the flow. Because then you can set the HREF and value of the <a> tag.

NiklasM · ‎06-02-2022

So I have an HTML File, which is saved as an Marketing Email in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing. I adjusted the Email Header Table to define for the email some utm tags. After saving I want to add those parameters automatically to every link in the email. I can get the HTML with the data verse connector, aswell as the utm tags, which I define for the email. Then I need to go through the HTML with Power Automate and add the utm tags to the links or to replace them with a version of the link with the utm tags.

eliotcole · ‎06-02-2022

Apologies ... I mean the *literal* data as it comes in.

such as:

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<p>Oh my gosh, I am a web page!</p>
</body>
</html>

or maybe it's a stringified in a JSON string field:

{
  "type": "html",
  "htmlBody": "<html>\n<head>\n</head>\n<body>\n<p>Oh my gosh, I am a web page!</p>\n</body>\n</html>"
}

Without knowing what your flow is seeing, folks might have a tougher time translating that into any meaningful logic processing.

For example, if your urls are stored in list items within that HTML, like this:

It would look like this code:

<ol>
<li><a href="https://startpage.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">StartPage.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://duckduckgo.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DuckDuckGo.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Power Users Forum</a></li>
</ol>

If that were the case, then folks here would know that your flow needs to parse an HTML list, and then the href data and content for each <a> tag.

NiklasM · ‎06-02-2022

From a markup perspective it could differ, since there are many modules we are using. But for example the email template in MS Dynamics could look like this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"><title>My Email Subject</title><meta name="referrer" content="never"><meta type="xrm/designer/setting" name="type" value="marketing-designer-content-editor-document"><meta type="xrm/designer/setting" name="layout-editable" value="marketing-designer-layout-editable"><meta type="xrm/designer/setting" name="layout-max-width" value="600px" datatype="text" label="Layout max width"><meta type="xrm/designer/setting" name="font-family" value="Verdana, Arial, sans-serif" datatype="font" label="Font Family"><meta type="xrm/designer/setting" name="body-text-size" value="14px" datatype="text" label="Body Font Size"><meta type="xrm/designer/setting" name="body-text-color" value="#000" datatype="color" label="Body Text Color"><meta type="xrm/designer/setting" name="outer-background" value="#FFFFF" datatype="color" label="Email Background"><style>body,div {font-family:/* @font-family */Verdana,/* @font-family */Arial,/* @font-family */sans-serif/* @font-family */;font-size:/* @body-text-size */14px/* @body-text-size */;color:/* @body-text-color */#000/* @body-text-color */;background-color:/* @outer-background */#fff/* @outer-background */;}div div {background-color: transparent;}[data-layout="true"] {margin: 0 auto;max-width:/* @layout-max-width */600px/* @layout-max-width */;}</style></head><body><div data-layout="true" data-layout-version="v2"><div data-section="true" class=""><table class="outer" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;width: 600px;display: block;"><tbody><tr><th style="padding: 30px;"><table style="    display: block;    width: 100%;    border-collapse: collapse;" class="containerWrapper tbContainer" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th data-container="true" class="columnContainer" data-container-width="100" style="vertical-align: top; min-width: 5px; width: 540px;" id="containere364b9bf77a831647881692858"><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th class="inner ui-sortable" style="min-width: 5px; padding: 10px; vertical-align: top;  word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;"><div data-editorblocktype="Image" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><div align="center" class="imageWrapper" style="width: 100%;" width="100%"><img src="https://mktdplp102cdn.azureedge.net/public/1.83.2008.0/static/email/images/LogoImages/newTemplate_logo80x40.png" style="max-height: 100%; max-width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box;  border-radius: 0px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" class="" alt="Company logo"><div class="clear" style="clear: both; height: 0px; width: 0px;"></div></div></div></th></tr></tbody></table></th></tr></tbody></table></th></tr></tbody></table></div><div data-section="true" class=""><table class="outer" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;width: 600px;display: block;"><tbody><tr><th style="padding: 30px;"><table style="width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse;" class="containerWrapper tbContainer" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th data-container="true" class="columnContainer" data-container-width="100" style="min-width: 20px; width: 540px;" id="containerfdb102f122ed61647868141605"><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th class="inner ui-sortable" style="min-width: 20px; padding: 10px; vertical-align: top;  word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;"><div data-editorblocktype="Image" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><div align="Center" class="imageWrapper" style=""><img src="https://mktdplp102cdn.azureedge.net/public/1.83.2008.0/static/email/images/PlaceholderIcons/sample_image_placeholder_800x300.png" style="max-height: 100%; max-width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; border-radius: 0px;"></div></div><div data-editorblocktype="Text" style="margin: 30px 0px 0px;"><p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="line-height:1.5;"><span style="font-size: 28px; line-height: 1.5;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;, Frutiger, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">Keep headline short and relevant&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></span> </p></div><div data-editorblocktype="Text" style="margin: 10px 0px 30px;"><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="line-height:1.5;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;, Frutiger, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">Customize your email with fonts and colors that reflect your brand and add personalized content for better engagement.</span></span></span></p>

<p><br></p>

<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="line-height:1.5;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;, Frutiger, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">Keep it short and have a clear action for your audience to act on.</span></span></span><br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;</p>
</div><div data-editorblocktype="Button" align="center" style="margin: 0px;" class="buttonWrapper"><a class="buttonClass" href="#Button" style="text-align: center; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; display: inline-block; background-color: rgb(34, 102, 227); border-radius: 4px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); width: fit-content; height: auto; padding: 10px 20px; max-width: 100%; border: 1px none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle; line-height: normal;" data-msdyn-tracking-id="6a58f5fbcacdd1647868177098" data-msdyn-tracking="false"><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;">Call to action</span></a></div></th></tr></tbody></table></th></tr></tbody></table></th></tr></tbody></table></div><div data-section="true" class="emptyContainer"><table class="outer" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;width: 600px;display: block;">
                  <tbody>
                      <tr>
                          <th style="padding: 0px;">
                  <table style="
                width: 100%;
                border-collapse: collapse;
            " class="containerWrapper tbContainer multi" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
                      <tbody>
                      <tr>
                          <th data-container="true" class="columnContainer" data-container-width="50.00" style="vertical-align: top; min-width: 5px; width: 300px;" id="containercbe6d1d25ea5881654187906001">
                          <table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
                              <tbody>
                              <tr>
                                  <th class="inner" style="min-width: 5px; padding: 10px; vertical-align: top; word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;">
                                  <div data-editorblocktype="Text"><p>&nbsp;asdasd</p>

<p><br></p>
</div><div data-editorblocktype="Button" align="center" class="buttonWrapper"><a class="buttonClass" href="#Button" style="text-align: center; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; display: inline-block; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(34, 102, 227); border-radius: 4px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); width: fit-content; height: auto; padding: 10px 20px; max-width: 100%; line-height: normal;mso-hide: none !important;" data-msdyn-tracking-id="bb76c384057c1654187933289"><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;">Button</span></a></div></th>
                              </tr>
                              </tbody>
                          </table>
                          </th>
                      <th data-container="true" class="columnContainer" data-container-width="50.00" style="vertical-align: top; min-width: 5px; width: 300px;" id="container18d4cdef7ff7d81654187915792"><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
                         <tbody>
                             <tr>
                                 <th class="columnContainer inner" style="padding: 10px; min-width: 5px; vertical-align: top; word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;">
                                 <div data-editorblocktype="Text"><p>asdsad</p>

<p><br></p>
</div><div data-editorblocktype="Button" align="center" class="buttonWrapper"><a class="buttonClass" href="#Button" style="text-align: center; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; display: inline-block; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(34, 102, 227); border-radius: 4px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); width: fit-content; height: auto; padding: 10px 20px; max-width: 100%; line-height: normal;mso-hide: none !important;" data-msdyn-tracking-id="1cae4cf67bbd481654187923972"><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;">Button</span></a></div></th>
                             </tr>
                         </tbody>
                     </table></th></tr>
                      </tbody>
                  </table> 
                  </th>
              </tr>
              </tbody>
          </table></div><div data-section="true" class=""><table class="outer" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;width: 600px;display: block;"><tbody><tr><th style="padding: 30px 30px 0px;"><table style="    display: block;    width: 100%;    border-collapse: collapse;" class="containerWrapper tbContainer multi" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th data-container="true" class="columnContainer" data-container-width="30.00" style="vertical-align: top; min-width: 5px; width: 162px;" id="containerdd669325ff6111647875557440"><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="" style=""><tbody><tr><th class="columnContainer inner ui-sortable" style="min-width: 5px; padding: 10px 0px; vertical-align: top;  word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;"></th></tr></tbody></table></th><th data-container="true" class="columnContainer" data-container-width="13.00" style="vertical-align: top; min-width: 5px; width: 70.2px;" id="container57981bc051edf1647875557440"><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="" style=""><tbody><tr><th class="columnContainer inner ui-sortable narrowContainer" style="min-width: 5px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;  word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;"><div data-editorblocktype="Image" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><div align="Center" class="imageWrapper" style=""><a href="{{msdyncrm_contentsettings.msdyncrm_facebookurl}}" data-msdyn-tracking="null"><img src="https://mktdplp102cdn.azureedge.net/public/1.83.2008.0/static/email/images/SocialIcons24x24Gray/Facebook.png" style="max-height: 100%; max-width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box;  border-radius: 0px; height: 24px !important; width: 24px !important;" class="" alt="Facebook" height="24" width="23"></a></div></div></th></tr></tbody></table></th><th data-container="true" class="columnContainer" data-container-width="13.00" style="vertical-align: top; min-width: 5px; width: 70.2px;" id="container2e14ab49d4cd81647875557440"><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="" style=""><tbody><tr><th class="columnContainer inner ui-sortable narrowContainer" style="min-width: 5px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;  word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;"><div data-editorblocktype="Image" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><div align="Center" class="imageWrapper" style=""><a href="{{msdyncrm_contentsettings.msdyncrm_twitterurl}}" data-msdyn-tracking="null"><img src="https://mktdplp102cdn.azureedge.net/public/1.83.2008.0/static/email/images/SocialIcons24x24Gray/Twitter.png" style="max-height: 100%; max-width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box;  border-radius: 0px; height: 24px !important; width: 24px !important;" class="" alt="Twitter" height="24" width="23"></a></div></div></th></tr></tbody></table></th><th data-container="true" class="columnContainer" data-container-width="13.00" style="vertical-align: top; min-width: 5px; width: 70.2px;" id="containerbf100d5d438f21649404515004"><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th class="columnContainer inner narrowContainer" style="padding: 10px; min-width: 5px; vertical-align: top;  word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;"><div data-editorblocktype="Image" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><div align="Center" class="imageWrapper" style=""><a href="{{msdyncrm_contentsettings.msdyncrm_youtubeurl}}"><img src="https://mktdplp102cdn.azureedge.net/public/1.83.2008.0/static/email/images/SocialIcons24x24Gray/Youtube.png" style="max-height: 100%; max-width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box;  border-radius: 0px; height: 24px !important; width: 24px !important;" class="" alt="Youtube" height="24" width="23"></a></div></div></th></tr></tbody></table></th><th data-container="true" class="columnContainer" data-container-width="31.00" style="vertical-align: top; min-width: 5px; width: 167.4px;" id="container24318fde3c3971649404517379"><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th class="columnContainer inner" style="padding: 10px; min-width: 5px; vertical-align: top;  word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;"></th></tr></tbody></table></th></tr></tbody></table></th></tr></tbody></table></div><div data-section="true" style="" class=""><table class="outer" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;width: 600px;display: block;"><tbody><tr><th style="padding: 10px 30px 30px; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border-radius: 0px;"><table style="display: block; width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse;" class="containerWrapper tbContainer" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th data-container="true" class="columnContainer" data-container-width="100" style="min-width: 5px; width: 540px;" id="containereaaad505204851647868141605"><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th class="inner ui-sortable" style="min-width: 5px; padding: 10px; vertical-align: top;  word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; border-width: 1px;"><div data-editorblocktype="Text"><p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="color:#605e5c;"><span style="font-family:Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:11px;">© 2022 Company Inc. All rights reserved.</span></span></span> </p><p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="color:#605e5c; font-size: 11px;"> <font face="Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif"><span>{{msdyncrm_contentsettings.msdyncrm_addressmain}}</span></font> </span> </p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="{{msdyncrm_contentsettings.msdyncrm_subscriptioncenter}}"><span style="color:#1f6cf9;"> <font face="Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 11px;">Unsubscribe</span></font> </span></a></p></div></th></tr></tbody></table></th></tr></tbody></table></th></tr></tbody></table></div></div></body></html>

eliotcole · ‎06-02-2022

OK, nice, that makes emails that look something like this, right?

lost email image 😞

I'm assuming from your initial post that you're taking the 'cr5eb_utmcampaign' value from the dataverse data.

The final (two-part) question I have which will help whomever resolves this for you is:

Which URLs do you wish to change in/on that email?
Where does that 'cr5eb_utmcampaign' value need to go in the URL?

The resolver will need to know the first piece of information to work out how to parse the HTML, for the correct URLs.

They will need the second to know where to place the extra information. For example, does it go in a query at the end like this?

<a href="LINK_ADDRESS?cr5eb_utmcampaign_id=VALUE">LINK_NAME</a>

If it doesn't need to actually be a part of all of the URLs, would it be OK in an attribute of the <a> tag, like this?

<a href="LINK_ADDRESS" cr5eb_utmcampaign_id="VALUE">LINK_NAME</a>

NiklasM · ‎06-02-2022

Good morning,

almost right 🙂 The Parameter from data verse needs to be attached to every URL like this:

<a href=“https://www.example.com?utm_campaign=ValueFromDataverse”>Linkname</>

The utm tags are used for tracking purpose and to see the interaction later in Goggle Analytics and other Tracking engines.

Best regards

Niklas

eliotcole · ‎06-04-2022

Aha ... well that's much easier, then.

Still, I will not be attempting it myself right now, however if I were, I'd make a flow thusly:

create two string variables thisQueryVAR & htmlContentVAR
Apply to each - an apply to each dataverse item fill them accordingly (replace DV_CALL with the appropriate call in the expression):
1. thisQueryVAR - the UTM that needs to go in
  utm_campaign=DV_CALL
2. htmlContentVAR - the html for the email
3. create a separate Select action with the keys:
  1. subStringPos - registers the numerical position of each href=" in the text
  2. hasQuery - registers if it already has a 'query' on the end, by seeing if it has a '?' before the end of the url (complex, but not impossible)
4. Apply to each looping the items in the Select:
  1. Compose - pulling the current value of htmlContentVAR into a Compose action called blah
  2. Substring - an action (not expression function!) on the text in blah replacing the url with the the new one
  3. Set variable - to set the value of htmlContentVAR before moving on to the next one
5. Send the email with the text from htmlContentVAR

I'll try to come do that over the next day or so unless someone else already has. Suffice to say, it might require concurrency rules to be limited to 1 in case of weirdness with variables, however it should automatically figure that out.

NiklasM · ‎06-07-2022

Hey Eliot,

thanks a lot. I will try to reproduce this in my Power Automate instance but I don't think that I will manage this because I never used Power Automate to query text.

I will keep you updated 🙂

Best regards

Niklas Mages

NiklasM · ‎06-09-2022

Hey Eliot,

unfortunately it didn’t work out 😞 could you share the steps you would take with the expressions or could you show me in a Teams meeting? That would be great.

Best regards

Niklas

eliotcole · ‎06-09-2022

I'll try to take a proper look at this over the next couple of days, and if you don't get movement on it from someone else, then drop me a private message to remind me. 👍

Keep making test flows, though, you learn more with each try! (and really break each thing that you want to do down to the most basic step)

NiklasM · ‎08-23-2022

Was a little bit easier and the solution takes like 15sec to execute.

drummer · ‎11-05-2022

To get a dynamic link to a file, for me I'm using Dynamics 365.
In email just use the html view and insert the a href link and insert field for the =GUID. If you look at your link for the GUID format you can copy that. requires basic knowledge of html link and a href but solved easy for me this morning.