A breakdown of the new email designer experience in Dynamics 365 Marketing
As part of Dynamics 365 2021 Release Wave 1, Dynamics 365 Marketing received an overhaul of its email designer last month. The new designer gives a more modern look and feel in addition to new features. With the changes, users may find it a bit jarring when opening an email record for the first time. However the new layout should feel overall more streamlined after getting better acquainted.
The new designer layout
The layout of the new designer is the same basic setup of canvas on the left, toolbox on the right, and function bar on top. Most noticeably different are the toolbox and header sections of the designer. The toolbox has updated visuals for the elements and has removed he extraneous elements that were no longer useable. There is also a General Styles tab which can be used to adjust the width of the email, general font family and size, and the color of the background and text. The text can still all be reformatted individually by clicking into one of the text boxes.
The function bar previously contained many different tabs and drop downs to switch between views and edit things like the email record name in Marketing, the subject, sender email and name, and so on. These functions have been moved around and work more easily together. The email header information can be opened by clicking on the header at the top. This will bring in a pane where the toolbox normally is to quickly input each piece of header information.
The email name in marketing can be quickly changed by clicking on the name at the top left, which is now a text box. The preview feature is still accessed through a tab at the top left. With these updates, it is a more reliable preview of what will be displayed and each of the different screen size options.
The HTML editor is also more reliable and easy to view, and is now accessed by clicking the HTML button at the top right. The editing space for the HTML larger and easier to work in without needing an external application. The Format Document button at the top helps to put the code into a much more friendly state.
Previously, the toolbar for text elements was somewhat clunky. Now, when working in a text element, the tool bar will appear above the header area. From here, changes can be made to the formatting of the text, emojis can be added, links created, and dynamics content inserted via the {} Personalization button.
Also, when working in a text field, the toolbox pane on the right will allow for the spacing between letters to be increased.
The new accessibility checker
A new feature added to the designer is the accessibility checker. Similar to the error checker, this feature will look through the email to ensure the content is accessible to as many readers as possible. Images that don’t have alt text for screen readers will be flagged to have the text added, unless the image had alt text marked as not needed. By clicking on the checker’s notification, the text can be directly added.
This checker can also determine if the background and text colors do not have enough contrast to be easily distinguished. The accessibility checker, along with the spam and error checkers, can be found at the top right.
Clicking the Check content button runs the standard error checker for things like missing subject or other missing fields. The dropdown arrow to the right gives access to the accessibility and spam checkers.
Copies of emails can also be quickly created using the Save As feature. This is available from the dropdown arrow next to the save function arrow at the top right. This can be great for running A/B testing on customer journeys.