Download the PHP package netresearch/universal-messenger without Composer

Universal Messenger

A TYPO3 extension that provides a TYPO3 backend module to send TYPO3 pages as newsletters using the Universal Messenger API.

• Installation
• Setup
  • Update database structure
  • Webservice
    • API endpoint
  • Extension configuration
    • General
    • Webservice
    • API logging
    • Expert
    • Test-/Live channels
  • Backend user configuration
  • TypoScript
  • Scheduler-Task
• Usage
• Creating newsletters
  • Content elements
    • Control structure
• Development
  • Testing

Installation

The extension should be installed via composer:

composer require netresearch/universal-messenger

Setup

Update database structure

Use the "Analyze Database Structure" in the "Maintenance" Admin Tools section to update the database structure.

Webservice

API endpoint

To access the Universal Messenger API, store the corresponding configuration in the file additional.php within the global structure "TYPO3_CONF_VARS" under "EXTENSIONS" and "universal_messenger" (note the spelling) of your TYPO3 installation.

Extension configuration

Open the "Settings" page under the "Admin Tools" section and switch to the "Extension Configuration". Open the configuration section of the extension "universal_messenger".

General

Fig. 1: Extension Configuration Tab "General"

Webservice

Fig. 2: Extension Configuration Tab "Webservice"

API logging

To enable the request/response logging of the Universal Messenger, enable the extension configuration "Enable logging" and add a log writer configuration to your ext_localconf.php:

Expert

Fig. 3: Extension Configuration Tab "Expert"

Test-/Live channels

To enable test operation, a separate channel can be set up as a test channel for a newsletter in Universal Messenger and, for example, given a suffix.

Test operation

• Channel: Newsletter_TEST
• Recipient: Defined recipient list for validating the newsletter before it is actually sent to customers.

Live operation

• Channel: Newsletter_LIVE
• Recipient: Recipient list with customer addresses

Using the setting "newsletter" => "testChannelSuffix" and "liveChannelSuffix", this suffix can be adapted to the setting in Universal Messenger.

Backend user configuration

Use the backend user setting in the "Universal Messenger" tab to allow individual backend users specific rights for sending via individual newsletter channels.

Fig. 4: Backend user configuration

TypoScript

Go to the "TypoScript" page, select "Edit TypoScript Record" and then click "Edit the whole TypoScript record". On the page that opens, go to the "Advanced Options" tab and add the static TypoScript "Universal Messenger: Fluid Content Elements" to the list of selected TypoScript configurations.

When creating a newsletter, the CSS is finally read from an external CSS file and the information is added as inline style attributes to the respective HTML elements.

By setting the "inlineCssFiles" setting, additional CSS can be passed to the newsletter container. By default, the CSS of the "Foundation for Emails 2" framework is already included (https://get.foundation/emails.html, https://github.com/foundation/foundation-emails).

Scheduler-Task

The extension provides a console command universal-messenger:newsletter-channels:import for importing the Universal Messenger newsletter channels. This command can be configured as a scheduler task to automatically load the newsletter channels into TYPO3 once a day, for example.

Usage

Basic

The newsletter channels are imported into TYPO3 as generic channels, i.e. the configured suffixes for the test or live channels are cut off (regardless of the spelling, i.e. an upper and lower case is ignored).

A newsletter page is always assigned only the generic channel name, and the separation after a TEST or LIVE dispatch only takes place in the dispatch module.

Each newsletter channel can also be configured with additional settings (a new import does not overwrite these settings):

These settings are sent to the Universal Messenger API when the newsletter page is submitted.

Creating newsletters

To create a new newsletter, simply create a new page in the TYPO3 backend. To do this, use the new shortcut "Newsletter" in the page tree or create a new standard page.

Then open the page properties. For a standard page, select the new page type "Newsletter".

The page will then reload and the selection for the Universal Messenger newsletter channel will appear below the selection for the page type. Select the appropriate channel for sending the newsletter here.

Create your newsletter with the usual TYPO3 content elements. If necessary, use a container framework such as https://extensions.typo3.org/extension/container_elements to group elements more easily into columns and rows.

The Universal Messenger Extension already provides some ViewHelpers to group and arrange elements according to the "Foundation for Emails 2" framework (See https://get.foundation/emails.html how to create newsletters using this framework).

Content elements

The extension also provides content elements for use with the Universal Messenger API.

Control structure

In the settings of the content element, you enter the corresponding control structure (e.g. personalized salutation) of the Universal Messenger. You also specify the alternative that is displayed if the newsletter is displayed in the web view, for examp le, and personalization is not available.

Both the control structure and the alternative can be formatted using the RTE editor and thus adapted to the layout of the newsletter.

View helpers

Initialization

To use the ViewHelpers provided by the extension, they must be made known within the HTML using the namespace xmlns:um="http://typo3.org/ns/Netresearch/UniversalMessenger/ViewHelpers".

View helper "format.placeholder"

To pass additional placeholders within URLs, e.g. the unsubscribe link for newsletters, to the Universal Messenger, the view helper um:format.placeholder can be used to mark a value as a placeholder using curly brackets.

This results in an URL like https://newsletter.example.org/unsubscribe?identifier={identifier}.

Backend module

To open the backend module, click on the new entry "Universal Messenger" below the "Netresearch" group on the left side navigation.

In the view that now opens, you have the option of selecting the corresponding newsletter page and, assuming you have the appropriate access rights, you can see a preview of the respective newsletter as it would be transferred to the Universal Messenger and sent.

A language switcher will appear above the preview if there are multiple versions of a newsletter in different languages.

Below the preview there are two buttons for testing the sending and for the final LIVE sending. The actual LIVE sending must be confirmed again in a dialog.

Development

Testing