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I've been trying to move from the classic Notifications to FME Server Automations for sending emails. In the past I had a Subscription and a Topic set up which I used to notify for sending emails.

 

Going forward, I want to use an Automation with a Trigger (based on my Topic) and an Email Action. The Trigger works fine and I've managed to map the JSON keys from my notification service to the relevant fields in the Email Action (some more documentation around this would have been helpful!).

 

What is missing is sending multiple attachments at once in a single email. This worked fine through a Subscription by creating a list within my notification (email_attachment{}). How can this be achieved with an Email Action? The manual selection appears to allow only for single files, too.

 

An additional note on this - I've noticed that (within the Email Action) sometimes the fields for attachment and email body are being cleared out when navigating away and back to the Automation screen (after saving the Automation). Is this intended? In my case, I had to create global keys for these fields in order to permanently force my values into the fields.

Hi @ekkischeffler​ ,

 

It is not currently possible to configure the Email action in Automations to send multiple attachments, please consider adding your vote to this idea and include any supporting comments for this enhancement request. As a workaround I'd suggest you zip up all the output files in your workflow, then you can attach a single zip file to the email that contains all the attachments you'd like to send.

 

Second, I've not heard any other reports of your issue with the email action fields not holding their values. What build of FME Server are you using? Can you identify the steps that you take to consistently reproduce this problem?


Thanks @hollyatsafe​ for the quick response. I'll zip my attachments in the meantime.

 

We're running FME Server build 20608. The steps I take to reproduce the issue are:

 

  1. Create a simple trigger with an Email Action:
  2. Set your email parameters and populate the fields, hit Apply
  3. Start the Automation
  4. View the email parameters - the attachment string is gone
  5. Stop the Automation
  6. View the email parameters again - attachment string is still gone

 

Step1&2:

Step 1Step 3 & 4:

Step 2Step 5 & 6:

Step 3 

Sometimes also the string in the Email Body field is cleared.


Thanks @hollyatsafe​ for the quick response. I'll zip my attachments in the meantime.

 

We're running FME Server build 20608. The steps I take to reproduce the issue are:

 

  1. Create a simple trigger with an Email Action:
  2. Set your email parameters and populate the fields, hit Apply
  3. Start the Automation
  4. View the email parameters - the attachment string is gone
  5. Stop the Automation
  6. View the email parameters again - attachment string is still gone

 

Step1&2:

Step 1Step 3 & 4:

Step 2Step 5 & 6:

Step 3 

Sometimes also the string in the Email Body field is cleared.

Hi @ekkischeffler​ ,

I have tested with FME Server b20608 and I have not been able to reproduce the issue as you have captured in your screenshots. The attachment field in the Email Action is designed to only accept certain values:

 

  • $(<FMESERVER_MACROS>)
  • \\\\<UNCPath>
  • {<event.key>}

 

This means if you were to specify a mapped drive, for example, then I would expect this to be cleared as soon as you select apply, however in your image since the 'attachment' is enclosed in {} it should be treated as an event key and not cleared. Also if you are seeing this with other fields something else must be at play as I'm not aware of any restrictions with the contents of the body. If this is a reoccurring problem for you I might suggest opening a case with Safe Support so that one of our Experts can take a deeper dive into your Server to see if they can identify what might be happening.

 

I have also filed an enhancement with our team, as I think if we are going to clear certain values this should be failing the validation tests so the user can correct the attachment, otherwise it is not noticed until the automation is run.


Update: as of FME Server 2022.1, it is now possible to attach multiple files when using the Email Action


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