Beefree SDK Spotlight Session: Using the HTML Importer API
Learn more about integrating the HTML Importer API into your application, and empowering your end users to upload their email HTML templates into the Beefree SDK builder.
Catch the on-demand recording of our 30-minute webinar, now available whenever you’re ready. In this session, we walk you through the new HTML Importer API—showing you step by step how to integrate an “Import” button into your custom Beefree SDK setup and embed it seamlessly within your interface. You’ll also learn to leverage the Brand Style Management endpoint, empowering your users to update templates instantly with their latest brand guidelines. Stick around until the end for our lively, open Q&A—where our team answers your most pressing questions!
Chapters:
The following text includes the complete transcript for this video.
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Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening,
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depending on where you're joining
us from around the world. Welcome
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to this session of the spotlight series
from Beefree, specifically Beefree SDK.
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Today, I'm Lawrence, your host
and Senior Developer Advocate.
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I'm here with my friend Luca,
Senior Fullstack Developer and
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Technical Presenter. Our topic for
the day is the HTML Importer API.
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As you're all coming in, feel free to hop into
the chat and leave your name and location.
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It's always nice to give a shout-out to our
visitors, all of our users, future users,
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and even fellow employees. We love to hear where
you're from and shout out your hometown because we
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have not only a global workforce but also a global
user base. We definitely love to shout you out!
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Speaking of global, Luca, you and I are
both settling in from a pretty exciting
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event last week. We had a week-long retreat
on the sunny beaches of Spain. I just kept
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thinking, "They're working me too hard!
They're working me way too hard!" Luca,
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let me hear your feedback. How
are you feeling after last week?
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It went great! I got a lot of stuff done, and
I spent an amazing time with our colleagues,
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getting to know new colleagues better
and getting in touch with old friends
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and colleagues that I already met at
previous retreats. What about you,
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Lawrence? This was your first
experience with us at our retreat.
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Listen, I just kept thinking to myself,
"For real, best first month ever!" Get
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hired in one month, get flown to Europe
for the next month for an entire week,
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all expenses paid. That was incredible! But you
know, it's interesting, prior to the retreat,
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I had never seen a single co-worker in
person—not even my boss, not HR, no one.
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So, all of a sudden, I get to see the majority of
the company all together, collaborate with them,
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have sessions, have breakout sessions, get
their feedback on some things that I thought,
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and get some good positive responses for some
and some gentle corrections for others. But it
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was all great because we were in person,
and getting that feedback, and of course,
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the pool time and beach time, helped as well. So,
I'm excited. We have some amazing initiatives that
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I heard talked about just last week, so it's
going to be a really exciting year for Beefree.
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I agree! That being said, we have a lot of people
in the comments. Thanks all for checking in with
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us. We have Sam from Clearwater, Florida.
Definitely glad to have her for multiple
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reasons. Good to see you, Sam! We have Stu
from Kick, London, using Beefree SDK. Thank
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you for that, definitely appreciate it.
Mark checking in from Lincoln, Nebraska,
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just above me. I'm in the Memphis, Tennessee, area
here in the States. We have Philip from Germany,
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Krishna from India. This is fantastic! We
have David also calling in from Palm Coast,
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Yash from India, and Aaron Bird from the
UK. And Adrian is typing as well. So,
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thank you all for joining us,
thank you for participating.
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As you'll notice, all of you, down on the bottom
there, we have the chat that you're engaging in
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right now. Feel free to continue to chat all
throughout the session today. Just make friends
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with each other; you never know what kind of
collaborations and opportunities might arise. Any
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specific questions you have, please click on the
"Questions" tab. That way, it'll be a lot easier
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for us to find those toward the end of today's
session. And once again, hello to Aaron from the
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UK and Adrian from sunny Ireland, and Alfred from
Engine Mailer—I think I'm butchering that, I'm so
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sorry. I was going to say hello to Alfred, we're
glad to have you, and I'm glad you're having a
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sunny day in Ireland, Adrian. Here in the Memphis,
Tennessee, area, we have had three days of rain.
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I got back home, and we were forecasted to have
three more days of rain, so I wish I had your sun.
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That being said, it's a couple of minutes after
this is scheduled for being a 30-minute session,
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and I'm all about efficiency.
Luca, shall we jump into it?
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Let's go!
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Fantastic! So, I'm going to share my screen
real quick here. We'll share the window,
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and that looks a little weird, so
hold on just a second. I didn't like
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how that looked. I'm going to share the
window, that one there we go. And Luca,
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if you'd just be so kind to let me
know if that is coming through okay.
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Okay, I can see that.
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Fantastic! All right, so today, folks, we are
talking about the HTML Importer API. Again,
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I'm here with my friend Luca, who
is a Senior Fullstack Developer,
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and I'm Lawrence Lockhart, Senior Developer
Advocate—let me get my own name correct!
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So, the first thing we have is our agenda.
Naturally, we're going to talk about what is the
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HTML Importer API and why does it even matter.
Then, you're going to see some amazing demos,
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Part One and Part Two, from Luca.
Then, we'll wrap up with a Q&A.
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What is the HTML Importer API?
But the first question is, "What the
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heck is this thing? What is an HTML Importer API,
all those strange words and letters, and why does
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it even matter?" You all ask great questions on
a Tuesday; I'm happy to help you out with that.
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So, the HTML Importer API is a new API;
it's one of our latest features within
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the Beefree SDK environment. What it allows
you to do is to take an existing HTML email
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template and have it converted to the Beefree
proprietary JSON for use in the editor itself,
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which I think is an absolute game-changer.
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Now, I do recognize in the audience we probably
have some new folks, so just a little bit of
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background. First of all, when it comes to
Beefree, we have this amazing visual editor,
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the Beefree app, that allows you to build email
landing pages, pop-ups, with simply using drag
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and drop. But we also have the SDK, and that tends
to be where my focus is. Our Software Development
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Kit lets you get that same type of power and
embed it within your own application. It can be
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your SaaS application so your users can have that
text to making great emails, or for you to make
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great emails yourself using our editor power. You
can embed our editor in your application, and the
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power behind it, the data structure underneath all
of it, is our proprietary JSON. So, this feature,
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this API, takes your HTML and converts it to
our JSON so you can then use it in the editor.
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Who Needs the HTML Importer API?
Who would need something like this? Another
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great question! Well, if you're a new user,
you've just come over to the Beefree ecosystem,
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but you've already been doing emails, you already
have this entire library of HTML, you can now,
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case by case, convert those to Beefree JSON and
then make further iterations within the editor.
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You don't want to have all that work go to
waste. So, that works whether you're a new
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customer or even if you're an older customer,
you've been using us for a while, but you have
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some templates that you would love to use from
back in the day, but they don't convert naturally,
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and the man-hour to go into that is not something
you want to invest. We have the tool for you;
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it's called the HTML Importer API, and
you will be able to take that HTML code,
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have it converted to our JSON, import it to
the editor, and then you just drag and drop.
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You can literally pass it over to your marketing
team; they can make beautiful emails from there.
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Now, regarding the billing, we looked at
it, we did the requisite research. Again,
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those man-hours can be tremendous, and
so it's going to only be a $2 charge
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per successful API call, and you'll see
that at the end of your monthly usage.
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From there, it's time for the live demo, and
as I told you, our technical presenter today is
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Luca. So Luca, I'm going to stop sharing and pass
over control to you as soon as I find my window.
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Thank you, Lawrence! Absolutely. Stop
sharing. There we go. That's great. I'm
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going to stop sharing my screen now.
Do you see that, Lawrence? Am I good?
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Hold on a second, I am still on
the wrong window. You are great.
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Thank you. So, let's jump into these hands-on.
Let's look at the HTML importer and how you can
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make the most out of it, combining it with
the Brand Style Management API. More on
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that later. We'll walk through both features
and how to enable them in the SDK console by
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generating scope-specific API keys, and we'll
plug them into a real-world integration setup.
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Our first stop is the SDK console. In order to
enable the HTML Importer API, you need to go into
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the details section of the application you want
to use. Then, reach for the HTML Importer API tab.
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And as you can see, I already have a key, but I
will remove that just for the purpose of this demo
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to show you how to enable one. Bonus point:
you can see now how to disable that as well.
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So, when you don't have a key, the card will
look like this. If you hit "Enable and Get
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the API Key," this modal will pop up where it
requires you to check this box to acknowledge the
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additional fees for the service, and then you can
hit "Create Key." Once you do this and wait just
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a couple of seconds, you'll be able to see your
newly created key where the previous one was. From
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the same card, as you saw, you can also disable
and revoke the key and regenerate it as well.
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Now, I'll move on to the IDE to show you how
to implement the HTML Importer inside a simple
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integration. It's nothing special, nothing
fancy. You can customize your integration
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however you'd like. Probably, if you're
already a customer, you already have your
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integration well customized. If you're not,
take this as a simple example to start from.
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What I did in this simple integration is I've
added a simple button in the top toolbar that
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opens a modal. Here, you can see the code for
the modal. I've kept everything simple, just bare
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bone to make it work with little customization,
just to make it good enough to see. And here,
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the customer can paste the HTML code for the
email they want to import, and after doing that,
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they can hit "Import" and trigger the actual
API call to the HTML Importer endpoint.
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Now, I'll move over to the code for the call.
As you can see, this is a POST call done to
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this endpoint that you can see on the screen
and that you can find in our documentation. All
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it requires in the body is an html field that
contains the HTML that you want to import into
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the builder. For the authorization, you need the
key that we created before in the SDK console,
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and the way to pass it to the service is by
this authorization header. Just a heads-up,
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I advise you to keep your keys inside a .env file
and not version them, just not to risk exposing
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your credentials. The HTML that you pass to the
service has some limitations. In particular,
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we cannot parse dynamic content yet. The
service is optimized to handle emails,
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so it's not yet optimized to handle the import of
HTML pages. The HTML should be valid. That means
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it should include a doctype declaration,
valid HTML and body elements, and also
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the meta charset UTF-8 tag in the head section.
Furthermore, you need to ensure that all images
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and resources contained in the email you want to
import are publicly available on the internet,
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and be aware that we currently don't support
all HTML tags. For more information on this
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specification, you can look at our documentation.
In this section, you can also handle the errors
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from the service. There's nothing specific to
speak about the errors, so the usual stuff.
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Now, I'll quickly jump over to the demo
environment I've created, which code you were just
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seeing, and show you how it actually works. As
you see, here is the button I talked about before,
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and when we click on this, you see the "Import
HTML" form. What I need now is an HTML to pass
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in here to move on with the import. What I can do
is visit Really Good Emails and look for an email
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that I like and I want to take inspiration
from. For example, let's pick the first one,
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view more about this email, get to the
code—that is what we need—and copy and
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paste this code inside our demo environment and
hit "Import." It will take just a few seconds,
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not days like when you have to do this manually,
and you can see that we have pretty much a close
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recreation of the email. I'll quickly
show you the original one here in RGE,
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and you can see the importer did pretty well.
But do not expect always a one-to-one recreation.
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The job of the importer is not to import
an exact copy of the email inside Beefree,
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but to facilitate the recreation of the email
inside the builder. The idea is that we get
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80% to 90% of your job done, depending on
the template and the quality of the HTML,
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and you just have to put the final tweaks to have
the result you desired. One more important thing:
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the import process is deterministic. So, no matter
how many times you import a specific HTML, you'll
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always get the same result. And this is important
because you will pay all the calls you make, so be
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careful. Don't think that different iterations
of the import can generate different results.
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So, let's go back to the tweaking we were talking
about. One thing that the Brand Style Management
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API is great for after you have imported your
HTML is applying your brand style to the email you
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took inspiration from. So, let's say this is the
email that you loved, you love the style, you love
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the structure, but of course it doesn't fit your
brand style, and you want to improve that. Well,
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the Brand Style Management API is there for you.
What you need to do to use that API is once again
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go back to the Beefree SDK console and once again
activate another API key. Every API key is scoped
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for a specific context. In this case, what you
need is the Content Services API. Once again, I
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already have one, but for the scope of this demo,
I'm going to disable and revoke the key and once
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again hit the "Enable and Get the API Key" button,
just like we did for the HTML Importer. This time,
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the fees are already mentioned to you in the
terms of service when you sign up for the plugin,
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so you don't have to check any boxes, and
you can create a key. A couple of seconds,
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and you'll see that, just like with the
importer, we have the Content Services
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API key right here. And once again, you can
regenerate the key or disable and revoke the key.
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Once you have your key, it's time to get back
into the IDE to see how you can implement the API
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endpoint inside the integration. Once again, all
you need for this is a simple button or whatever
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you choose to trigger the call to the Brand Style
Management API. The Brand Style Management API is
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once again a POST call made to this endpoint that
you can find in our documentation. And this time,
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the body requires two fields: styles, which is
basically a JSON object structured in a similar
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manner to this (for more information, you can
check our documentation) where you define the
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styles—in this example, for the buttons, such
as color, font size, and all the stuff that is
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according to your brand style management. Once
you have your style, you simply need to pass the
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template you want that style to be applied to. In
our case, it's the template we generated through
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the HTML Importer. Once again, to make this
call, you need to use the key that we created
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before through this authorization header. And once
again, I advise you, keep the same behavior as I
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told you about before with the .env file, just to
be sure not to expose your credentials. One thing
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that needs specific mention for the Brand Style
Management, though, is their error handling. The
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error that needs a specific mention is the status
code 422: "Unprocessable Entity." This one doesn't
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mean that you did something wrong on your side,
but it simply means that the styles you were
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trying to apply to the template you were trying to
apply them to weren't compatible. What does this
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mean? In our example, we saw that we defined
styles just for the button element. Let's say
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we have a template that has no button elements;
in that case, there is no compatibility between
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the style and the template because there's no
style you can apply to the template at hand. In
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this case, the service will reply with a 422
error that simply means no changes were made
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to this template. You can decide what to do with
that. You can bubble up the message to your user,
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maybe through a toast message telling them nothing
happened because the style wasn't applicable,
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or you can simply reload the template. The
behavior of the integration is up to you.
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And once again, we can go back to the demo
environment to show you the brand style
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management in action. I've already shown you
the template that we imported. I want you to
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pay attention specifically to the button because,
as you saw, that's the style we defined in our
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JSON. And once I hit "Apply Brand Style," the
template is processed, and you can see the email
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is pretty much the same, except for the button
that now has the style we have defined inside
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our Brand Style Management API, specifically
in the JSON that we passed to the endpoint.
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So, before moving on to the Q&A session of this
spotlight, I'd like to quickly recap what we
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saw today. We learned how to enable the HTML
Importer for your application by creating an
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API key and how you can manage it inside your
application details, and specifically the HTML
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Importer API card. We saw a simple implementation
of the endpoint in an integration of our builder,
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and then we moved to how to maximize the impact
of the HTML Importer by combining it with the
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Brand Style Management. To do that, we
enabled the Content Services API key,
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just like we did for the HTML Importer,
by using the dedicated card. And then we
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saw an easy implementation of the Brand
Style Management API endpoint into the
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same integration we used prior to show you
the functionality of the HTML Importer.
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Now, it's time for a Q&A session where we'll
get all your questions and hopefully give
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you all your answers. And I don't know
if any came up during the explanation,
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we'll start with them and
then move on to the live ones.
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First of all, Luca, fantastic explanation! You
went through a ton of content in a miraculously
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short amount of time, so great job on
that. Thank you for those explanations.
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We do have a robust set of questions,
so I'm going to go to the first one,
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which is from David Cohen. I believe he was
also from the Palm Coast. And his question is,
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"Is there an ability to test the HTML
importer for free coming in the future?"
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So, this is more of a product question,
so I'm not the right guy to ask it to. But
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I'll check with my colleagues, and I'll get
back to you with an answer after the spotlight.
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Awesome, appreciate that. Let's go on to the next
one that is from Stu. "If there are unsupported
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HTML tags in the imported file, will you either
get an error or accept the file and strip them
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out?" And they're trying to figure out how they
need to handle validation, if they need to handle
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it on their side or just parse the responses.
So, what happens with unsupported HTML tags?
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The unsupported HTML tags won't break
the endpoint, as long as the HTML is
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correctly structured. That's the only
thing that will break the endpoint:
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an HTML that doesn't have the right structure.
Unsupported HTML tags won't behave predictably,
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so you might not get the best result from
your import, but you don't have to validate
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on your side which tags you are passing to
the importer and which you need to sanitize.
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Fantastic, thank you for that. Let's
see here, we have one from... oh okay,
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so Samantha shared one, I guess it was
shared over in the chat, from Provo. "How
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do you import email templates from the client's
Beefree account to their Beefree SDK editor?"
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Okay, interesting workflow there. So,
their client has the HTML template,
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but the provider wants to import it to their SDK
editor. Yeah, so assuming you want to use the
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tools that we are highlighting in this spotlight,
the thing you can do is have your customer export
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the HTML for the specific template and then
import it to the HTML importer. But since your
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customer is using the Beefree account and
the Beefree SDK, I'd say get in touch with
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the CSM that's following you and maybe see if
there's any other solution that we can work on.
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Fantastic, thank you for that. I'm just
clicking a bunch of buttons here. There's
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a lot going on in the chat, but yes,
excellent answer, excellent answer.
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I believe the next one here is from Vishnu.
"Can they apply external CSS to their HTML?"
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Okay, so I'll split this question into two since
I don't have the full context. If you are saying,
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"Can I apply an external CSS to the
HTML you are importing?" I'd say no,
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unless the CSS is publicly available online, but I
can't guarantee that because we never tested that,
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so that's something we should try on our
end, and maybe we can let you know. The best,
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though, is to have the styling
incorporated in the HTML. That way,
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we are certain that the importer can handle
it correctly. If you want to apply CSS after
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you have imported the template, you can do
that through the Brand Style Management API,
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as we saw in the second part of the demo,
simply by defining an appropriate style JSON.
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Awesome. You're just handling these
rapid fire, so I'm going to keep going,
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Luca. The next one is from Stu, interesting
question regarding dynamic content: "If we
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want to import dynamic content, can we"—I think
he means—"can we import it with two different
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rows for the content and then drag it
into dynamic content inside the editor?"
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So, the only thing that's stopping you from using
dynamic content is the actual import step. Once
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the template is inside the builder, you can
handle dynamic content as you're used to. So,
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let me read the question once again. "If you want
to import dynamic content, can we import it with
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two different rows for the content and then drag
it into dynamic content inside the editor?" So,
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the way you're suggesting won't work because the
HTML Importer isn't coded to work like that. But
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you can simply fix the dynamic content after you
have imported the HTML. As I told you before,
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don't think of this as a
way to go from zero to 100,
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but hopefully from zero to 80% to 90%. There
are some cases where you might get 100%;
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I'm not saying it won't happen, but you don't
have to think like that's the solution for this.
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Awesome. All right, we have one
from Kristen, a short question:
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"Does the HTML Importer API support merge tags?"
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I'll need to double check on this, but
I don't think so, as once again, you can
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add them after you have imported
the HTML in the template, though.
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Got it, okay. And we have one regarding
the users using the importer: "If we
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embed this and give users access, can we
put a limit on how many times it's used,
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like 10 credits or something like that?"
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Yeah, that is totally up to you. The integration
of the endpoint into your version of our builder
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is completely up to you. You can limit
the usage per user, you can even create
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tiers where each tier has a different number of
usages for the service. You can price each call
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like we do. It's up to you. You can do the
implementation you think suits you better.
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Awesome. And just for clarity, would
that limitation or those tiers be done
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within the editor feature, or
that would be done externally?
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I'd say a little bit of both because you have to
keep track of the limits your user is hitting.
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One simple implementation that comes to the top
of my mind is based on the UID of your user,
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keep track of how many calls they do
to those endpoints and keep a counter,
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for example, in a database, and once
the counter reaches the maximum,
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you stop them from making the call, either
monthly or with the recurrence you prefer.
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Awesome, appreciate that. We have one from
Sam Lewis: "Are there additional improvements
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being made to the Import API to improve
the conversion? We consistently see added
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empty columns to the imported templates
and unaccessible background colors."
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Yes, I don't have a roadmap since
we follow the shape methodology,
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but be sure that we'll keep
improving the HTML Importer.
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Awesome. Gideon asks, "How does this
work with save rows?" So he's using one
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of our other very popular features, save
rows. How does this work with save rows?
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Okay, so what do you mean by that?
Of course, it won't use your save
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rows because it doesn't have access while
it's creating the template to the save
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rows, but you can use the save row
after you have imported the email.
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Fantastic. All right. Gideon asked
a similar question to earlier:
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"Any plans to offer a cheaper alternative?"
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Once again, I'm not the right guy
to ask these kind of questions to,
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but I will bring the question to our
product colleagues and let you know.
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Absolutely. And at the end, we're going
to also supply a support email that all
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of our users can reach out to for deeper
questions like that. Let's see here,
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here's one from Aaron Bird. And
again, for anyone who has questions,
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put them in the question section of the
window there. We'll be able to see them a
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lot easier. But thanks for sharing this, Sam,
from Aaron Bird. "When importing with images,
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are the images stored on our image editor,
or is it from the original source?"
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So, this is an interesting question, and we can
check on the fly. So, by the looks of it, it's
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the original source. Sorry, wrong combination.
Yep, it's the original source, and that can also
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be tested by changing the image and seeing that
there's no image uploaded to the file manager.
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That's the reason why we specifically said before
that any resource you are using in the HTML you
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want to import needs to be publicly available on
the internet; otherwise, this image won't show.
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Awesome, thank you for that. The next one is a
product question again, so I'm going to go to
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this one from Yash: "When creating email content
from within the builder, adds a ton of additional
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information for MS and other browser vendors,
Microsoft or other browser vendors. Simple HTML
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created without any fuss. When imported via
HTML, will the fuss be added automatically?"
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Okay, that's a lot. Let me digest that one
again. Okay, okay, so, oh, okay, I got you.
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Go ahead. I think the question is, "Will all
the improvements that Beefree makes to the
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HTML to guarantee the compatibility with all
the email clients be available if I import
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the email?" And the answer is yes, yes. Once
you have imported the email, you're working
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with our proprietary JSON. When you want to
get the HTML back from our proprietary JSON,
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you go through our parser, so the end
result will be what you usually get when
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you parse an email, you export the HTML from
Beefree, either Beefree or the Beefree SDK.
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Fantastic. And we're down to our last
two questions. You are killing these,
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Luca, so here we go. One from Sudhir: "I'm
building an HTML template using the AI,
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and it is using inline CSS. Can it
be applied when I import the HTML?
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Can be applied, will the inline CSS
be converted to the JSON properly?"
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Yeah, so you are building an HTML using AI, and
then you want to import the HTML you built with
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AI into the builder. If I get this right, I think
they're asking specifically about the inline CSS,
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if that's going to be applied correctly. Yeah,
as long as it is formatted correctly, I'd say
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so. We go back to the limitation about the HTML
being formatted correctly with those specifics
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we said earlier about the doctype, the html,
the body, etc. And if you want more clarity on
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the specification, you can look at the
documentation, but overall, I'd say yes.
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Fantastic. And finally, one from Bombsy here, who
asks, "I have a plan—I have plain HTML. Can you
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add colors for that by using HTML Importer
API based on header text? Can I get related
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images?" Sounds like two questions. You figure
that one out. "Plan," perhaps that's plain HTML.
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Yeah, I think it means plain. "I have plain
HTML. Can you add colors for that by using the
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HTML Importer?" So, the HTML Importer doesn't add
anything; it simply reads the HTML and converts
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it to the JSON proprietary for Beefree so that
you can use it in the template. What you can do
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if you want to add colors is use the Brand Style
Management API, but then again, the Brand Style
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Management for now doesn't work in addition; it
simply merges the style you are defining with the
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style already present inside the templates, so
you cannot add the styles with the Brand Style
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Management, but simply modify those that already
exist. I hope this answered your first question.
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Awesome. And by the way, our teammate Samantha
offered this for the last question as well,
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that our simple schema, that there
was a spotlight session for recently,
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that might also be a great option for the
use in that AI case. So also check schema.
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Don't want to go through the HTML to do the AI.
The AI generation, you can use simple schema,
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and it will be converted into our full schema
using the endpoint we made available recently.
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Absolutely. The other question was about
images. This is the last one I have here. "Okay,
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if we are onboarding a client and they provide us
their existing emails to import, I assume there
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is no quick route to just import the EML files.
We need to convert that to plain HTML first."
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Yes, for now, yes, we just handle plain HTML.
So, you can develop something on your side if
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you import customers often and you want to
speed up this process. You can implement
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some pre-processing that converts the EML
into plain HTML, and you can also implement
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bulk imports on your side. So, you have
plenty, this tool is very multifaceted,
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and it can be used in many ways
on your side of the integration.
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Fantastic. All right, that is all the
questions. You filled those very well,
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Luca. I want to go ahead and put the
support email up here. Thanks again
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for all of you for joining us today for
this spotlight session about the all-new
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HTML Importer API. The docs are listed
there in the chat, and for any additional
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questions you have, definitely reach out to
[email protected]. Any final thoughts, Luca?
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Well, I just hope you found this spotlight
interesting and that you are going to be trying
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out the HTML Importer and see how you can maximize
the result with the Brand Style Management.
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Fantastic. Thank you all for
joining and have a great day!PreviousBuild QA Tools into Your App with the Beefree SDK Check API and Frontend CommandsNextBeefree SDK Spotlight Session: Simple Schema
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