Before your shipment confirmation email goes to a customer, you can send a preview to yourself or someone else. The preview uses a real shipment, so you can review the email with actual order, customer, and product details.
Where to Find It
Open the shipment confirmation email editor from the Orders & Inventory settings screen, then choose the preview option. The preview asks for an existing shipment identifier, the template wording you want to test, and the email address that should receive the preview. You can test the template you have open, whether or not you have saved your latest changes.
Prerequisites
- An existing shipment to use for the preview. Open the shipment’s 360 page, then choose Copy ID to Clipboard from the options menu to copy its identifier.
- The email address that should receive the preview.
What the Preview Sends
The preview fills in the email with the shipment’s order, parties, and products, just like the real email would. It sends one copy to the address you enter. After the preview sends, the dialog confirms with Email preview sent successfully.
Warning
The preview accepts any destination address and sends that shipment’s real order and customer details there. Only send a preview to an address you trust with that order’s information.
Warning
A preview that looks correct does not guarantee every merge field will populate the same way in the emails Rhythm sends automatically. In some accounts, the purchase order number and line-item details have appeared correctly in the preview but arrived blank in the actual shipment confirmation email, including when a store’s override email was used. If a customer reports missing details that your preview showed correctly, check the email your account actually sent instead of assuming the preview is wrong.
Your browser remembers the shipment identifier and email address you used, so the next preview starts with the same values. This makes it faster to send several previews while you adjust the wording between each one.
Tip
Use a shipment that already includes the details you want to check, such as a specific product, number of lines, or address format. That way, the preview shows the exact wording and merge fields you are testing.
Why Preview Before Customers See It
This preview is the only setup step specific to the shipment confirmation email itself. You turn the email on or off and write its subject and body in your Orders & Inventory settings, then use the preview to check that wording against a real shipment before any customer receives it. This helps you catch a missing merge field or awkward line break while it is still easy to fix.
Shipment line items are a list, so the template needs a loop to show more than one. Open the template’s source with Tools > Source Code and wrap the line-item fields in an each block, for example {{#each shipment.line_items}} {{ product.name}}, {{quantity}} {{/each}}.
Validation and Errors
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The preview is refused because the shipment could not be found | The shipment identifier does not match an existing shipment | Check the identifier and try again |
| The request is refused before it is sent | The shipment identifier, template, or destination address is missing | Fill in all three fields |
Related
- Product Confirmation Emails: the equivalent preview for the email a specific product’s buyers receive.