Preview an Order Confirmation Email

On This Page

• Where to Find It
• Preview the Email
• Limitations
• Validation and Errors
• Related

Before customers receive your order confirmation email, you can preview it with a real order. Send the preview to yourself or a colleague to check the wording, merge fields, and layout before customers see it.

Rhythm sends the successful order confirmation as soon as an order is complete, even if a balance is still due. A customer can therefore receive the email before the order is paid in full.

Where to Find It

Prerequisites

• You need the commerce:admin:settings:edit permission because the preview button is on the settings screen.
• The Successful Order Confirmation Email switch must be on. The Preview button appears only while that card's editor is open.
• You need the identifier for an existing order. To copy it from Order 360, open the order's options menu and select Copy ID to Clipboard.

Tip

To notify an internal inbox whenever someone makes a purchase, add that address to the Successful Order Confirmation Email CC field in this editor. Every successful order sends a copy there, so use this for broad purchase notifications rather than separate per-order alerts.

Preview the Email

1. Go to Orders & Inventory › Setup › Settings.
2. Make sure Successful Order Confirmation Email is switched on.
3. In that card's email editor, press Preview beside the merge-field picker.
4. Enter the Order ID: for an existing order.
5. Enter the address that should receive the preview. The dialog remembers the last address you used in this browser, and it starts with your own sign-in address when nothing has been saved.
6. Press Send Preview.

Result

Email preview sent successfully. appears, and the dialog closes. The settings screen does not change, and the customer on the order does not receive anything. The preview uses the wording currently in the editor, even if you have not saved it yet.

Warning

The preview sends real order and customer data to the address you enter, including the bill-to contact, organization, and payment details shown in the default wording. Use an address you control.

Tip

Your browser remembers the Order ID: and address you enter, so both values appear the next time you open the dialog. This memory is shared with the product confirmation email preview dialog, so an order or address used in either dialog appears in the other.

Limitations

• If the order identifier does not exist in your Rhythm account, the preview fails instead of sending.
• The preview uses the wording currently in the editor, including unsaved changes. To check the email your customers are actually receiving, save your changes first, then preview it.
• This dialog previews only the successful order confirmation. For shipment, cancellation, and return confirmations, use the Preview button on each of those cards instead; see Customer Confirmation Emails.
• You cannot write conditional wording in the global order confirmation email that shows or hides text based on whether the order includes a specific product. If you need wording tied to one specific product, use that product's own confirmation email instead; see Product Confirmation Emails.
• The order.event_id merge field returns a value for an event registration order, but it stays blank for a course registration order.
• The layout in the settings editor or preview can differ from the delivered email. If important formatting needs to look a specific way, confirm it with a real order because a layout element that looks correct in preview is not guaranteed to render the same way after sending.
• Payment-detail fields, such as the last four digits, card type, or reference number, do not always fill in consistently in the default wording and can differ between card and check payments. Confirm these fields with a real order if your customers rely on them.
• The fields a confirmation fills in can vary based on what the order contains. An event registration order, or a group invoice covering several people, may leave some line-item or participant details blank instead of fully described.
• If the merge-field picker is missing an option you expect, the field can still be fully supported even though it does not appear in the dropdown. This can be a picker display issue rather than proof that the field is unavailable. If you know the field's exact name, add it to the wording directly and preview the email to confirm.
• If your account only has legacy orders available to preview against, the preview can fail without a clear explanation. If you do not have a suitable order yet, create a test order to preview with.
• If a preview is missing purchased-item details it used to show, such as the product name or quantity on each line, check whether someone edited the order confirmation's template source code by hand. Removing or breaking lines in a customized template can drop those details from every confirmation, including the preview. Resetting the template to its default version restores them.
• Only the order and shipment confirmation email editors offer a Reset to Default option. Cancellation and return confirmation emails do not, so preview those two carefully after any edit because there is no quick way back to the original wording if something goes wrong.
• Merge field support is specific to each email template. A field that works here in the successful order confirmation is not guaranteed to work in another order-related template, such as the Order Cancellation Confirmation Email; a field the merge-field picker does not offer for that template can still return no value even when you add it to the wording by hand.
• For an event registration order, CC recipients on this confirmation depend on the Successful Order Confirmation Email switch being on. If that switch is off, CC addresses receive nothing for event registrations. Turning the switch on restores the order confirmation, and its CC copy, for those orders; it does not change the event's own, separate registration confirmation.

Validation and Errors

What you see	Why	What to do
Unable to preview email	Rhythm could not find the order, or the send failed for another reason	Check the order identifier and try again
Preview does not appear	Successful Order Confirmation Email is switched off	Turn the switch on first

Related

• Customer Confirmation Emails: how to turn on the order confirmation email, write its wording, and preview the other three customer emails.
• Cancellation and Return Confirmation Emails: the return preview's known naming mismatch, if you're comparing it to this one.