Email Management
Templates and automated HR email communication.
A surprising amount of HR is email. Offer confirmations, payroll notices, leave decisions, attendance reminders — the messages themselves matter, and so does being able to say afterwards exactly what was sent, to whom and when. Email Management gives your organisation one place to define those messages, send them and keep the receipts.
The module is organised around three simple surfaces. Templates is a library of reusable messages, each with a name, a category, a subject line and a body, that you write once and reuse whenever the situation comes up. Email Log is the automatic history: every send attempt from a template creates a log entry recording the subject, category, recipient, date and whether it was sent or failed. Settings holds the sender configuration — provider preference, tracking and signature flags, and a maintained list of from addresses.
Sending is deliberately straightforward. Every template row carries a Send action; click it, enter a recipient's email address, and the message goes out with your organisation's sender display name attached. The dialog tells you immediately whether the send succeeded, and the attempt is written to the Email Log either way — success and failure are both part of the record.
The same delivery engine serves the rest of Nexa People, and the sender identity you configure here travels with the system's template-driven sends — template emails, scheduled report deliveries, employee credential emails and suggestion notifications. And because email settings shape how your organisation presents itself, the module as shipped sits with owners and system administrators: its permission keys live outside the default HR template until you choose to grant them.
How Email Management works
Build a library of reusable templates
The Templates screen lists every email template in your organisation, with its name, category, subject and status visible at a glance. Creating one is a short form: give it a name, pick a category — Onboarding, Payroll, Leave, Attendance or General — write the subject line and the body, and set it active. Templates can be edited or deleted at any time, and an inactive status lets you retire a message without losing it.
The category is more than a label. It travels with every email sent from the template into the Email Log, so the history can always answer questions like which payroll notices went out this month, separately from onboarding or leave traffic.
Send a template in two clicks
Each template row has a Send button. It opens a small dialog asking for one thing: the recipient's email address. Confirm, and the server renders the template — the stored subject, or the template name where no subject is set, over the body in both HTML and plain text — and hands it to the delivery engine.
The dialog reports the outcome on the spot: sent to the address you entered, or not sent — with the reason spelled out when email has not been configured yet, and a plain not-sent result when a configured send fails, backed by the failed status written to the log. There is no ambiguity about whether the message left the building, and no need to check a separate screen to find out.
A log entry for every attempt
Every send attempt writes a row to the Email Log automatically — not just the successes. Each entry records the subject, the category inherited from the template, the recipient address, the sent date and a sent or failed status, so the log is a complete, honest account of the organisation's template traffic.
The log lives as its own tab in the module's left rail, in the same list format as everything else in Nexa People: status badges make failures easy to spot, and entries appear the moment a send completes because the log refreshes as soon as the dialog reports back.
One sender identity, configured once
Who an email appears to come from is configured once, in the Organization module's Email Domain Setting — an email domain and a sender display name. Email Management reads that display name on every template send, so recipients see your organisation's name rather than a system default.
The same display name is applied to several of the platform's other sends — scheduled report deliveries, employee credential emails and suggestion notifications — so one setting keeps that whole family of messages consistent.
Module settings, kept simple
The Settings tab records the module's own configuration against your organisation. General Setting captures the sender preferences: a provider selection from SendGrid, SMTP or SES, a track-opens flag and a flag for appending a footer signature. A second tab maintains the list of from addresses your organisation recognises, added and removed one address at a time.
These values are stored in your organisation's configuration through the same settings API the rest of the platform uses, so they persist per organisation and never leak between tenants.
Safe when email is off, gated when it is on
Delivery is handled over SendGrid's HTTP API, and it is deliberately best-effort: a failed or unconfigured send never breaks the action that triggered it. When outgoing email has not been configured, sends are skipped cleanly — the dialog says so in plain words, and the attempt is still logged — so you can trial the module, and the whole platform, without a mail account connected.
Access follows the permission matrix. The Email Management route is granted through the same role templates as every other module, and its two forms — Email Settings and Email Setup — are the module's only permission forms, both excluded from the HR template by default. Out of the box that keeps the whole module with owners and system administrators; other roles see it once a key is granted.
Features
Reusable email templates
Write a message once — name, subject, body — and reuse it whenever the situation recurs. Templates are edited in place, carry an active or inactive status so retired messages are kept rather than deleted, and live in a single list the module's administrators work from.
Categories that mirror HR work
Every template is filed under Onboarding, Payroll, Leave, Attendance or General, and the category follows each send into the log. Your email history ends up organised the same way your HR workflows are, so answering what went out for payroll last month is a glance, not an investigation.
Two-click sending with instant feedback
A Send button on every template row opens a dialog, takes one recipient address and reports the result immediately — sent, or not sent, with the reason spelled out when email is not yet configured. No separate mail client, no copy-and-paste into a webmail tab, and no guessing about whether the message actually left.
An automatic, honest email log
Each attempt creates a log entry with subject, category, recipient, date and a sent or failed status. Failures are recorded as visibly as successes, so the log is evidence, not marketing.
One sender identity, set in one place
The sender display name set in the Organization module's Email Domain Setting is applied to template sends, scheduled report deliveries, credential emails and suggestion notifications. Configure it once and that family of messages speaks with one voice.
Sender preferences and from addresses
Module settings record a provider selection — SendGrid, SMTP or SES — alongside track-opens and footer-signature flags, plus a maintained list of from addresses. All of it is stored per organisation in the shared settings store.
Runs fine without email configured
When no delivery credentials are set, sends become clean no-ops: the dialog states that email is not configured, the attempt is logged, and nothing errors. You can evaluate the platform first and connect email later.
Administrator-gated configuration
Email Settings and Email Setup are the module's only permission forms in the role catalogue, and both are excluded from the default HR template — so as shipped, the module belongs to owners and system administrators. Access widens only when those keys are granted to other roles through the same matrix as every other route.
Used by: HR and system administrators.
Works with the rest of Nexa People
The delivery engine behind Email Management is the same one the whole platform uses. When a leave, attendance or expense request moves through an approval workflow, the affected employee receives an in-app notification and — where email is configured — an email at the address on their employee record. When someone submits a suggestion with email notification enabled, the organisation's owner, administrator and HR manager accounts are emailed automatically.
Scheduled Reports delivers its recurring report summaries to each schedule's recipients through this engine, Employee Management's Send Credentials emails new self-service logins to staff, and the dashboard's attendance panels can email an employee directly about a missing or absent entry. Of these, the scheduled report deliveries and credential emails carry the sender display name configured in the Organization module's Email Domain Setting — the same identity your template sends and suggestion notifications use — while the approval-decision and attendance-reminder emails go out without it.
Within the module, the pieces write to each other: every template send creates its own Email Log entry, categorised to match the template, so the Templates and Email Log tabs stay two views of one continuous story.
Frequently asked questions
What does an email template contain?
A template name, a category — Onboarding, Payroll, Leave, Attendance or General — a subject line, a message body and an active or inactive status. When a template is sent, the subject is used as stored, or the template name stands in where no subject was written, and the body goes out in both HTML and plain text.
How do I send a template, and to whom?
Every template row has a Send button. It opens a dialog asking for a single recipient email address; confirm and the message is sent with your organisation's sender display name. The dialog reports the outcome immediately — sent, or not sent, with the reason stated when email is not configured — and the attempt appears in the Email Log straight away.
What does the Email Log actually record?
One entry per send attempt: the subject, the category inherited from the template, the recipient address, the sent date and a sent or failed status. Both outcomes are logged, so the history reflects what really happened rather than only what worked.
Where does the sender name come from?
From the Organization module's Email Domain Setting, where administrators record an email domain and a sender display name. That display name is applied to template sends, scheduled report deliveries, credential emails and suggestion notifications, so one setting governs how that family of messages is signed. Email Management's own settings additionally keep a list of recognised from addresses.
What happens if outgoing email is not configured?
Nothing breaks. Sends become logged no-ops: the send dialog tells you plainly that email is not configured, the attempt is still written to the Email Log, and no workflow breaks. Delivery goes over SendGrid's HTTP API once credentials are in place, and every send is best-effort by design — a failed email never fails the action that triggered it.
Who can manage templates and email settings?
Access follows the permission matrix used across Nexa People. Email Settings and Email Setup are the module's only permission forms, and both are excluded from the default HR template — so by default the whole module, templates included, sits with owners and system administrators. Granting either key to another role through the matrix opens the route for that role too.
Do other modules send email through this system?
Yes. Approval workflow decisions email the affected employee, suggestion submissions can email administrator and HR-manager accounts, Scheduled Reports emails each schedule's recipients, Employee Management emails newly provisioned login credentials, and the dashboard can email attendance reminders for missing or absent entries. They all share the delivery engine, and the template sends, scheduled report deliveries, credential emails and suggestion notifications among them also carry the sender identity configured for your organisation.
Related modules
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