Sending a Link to a Record in an Email template

Sending a Link to a Record in an Email template

I recently introduced CRM Blueprints for the Deals module in my organization, and since our sales process involves several people from different departments, I created a few email templates to be used in the Email Notifications of some of the transitions, to let a user or group know that they need to take action or just be informed of a status change for that deal.

Even though everything was working as expected, shortly after setting this up, some users came up to me asking if the notification email could include a link to that specific deal, so that they didn't need to manually open the CRM and search for that Deal.

This, of course, made complete sense to me. But after taking some more time exploring the email template creation tool, I soon found out that there is no way to do this, since the "Create Link" button only allows for a fixed URL. I even opened a request here, but the answer was that it was not possible.

So after some thought, I finally figured out a workaround to do this...
  1. First, I added a text field in the email template with part of my company's Zoho CRM URL. Something like "https://crm.zoho.com/crm/<org ID>/tab/Potentials/"
  2. Then, right after this text, I added the link to the deal ID, using the "#" key and selecting Deals - Deal ID
This creates a single text line that looks like this "https://crm.zoho.com/crm/<org ID>/tab/Potentials/<deal ID>", that email apps interpret as a valid URL link. 

It's now working perfectly and users are happy again!
And it even works with Smartphones with the Zoho CRM app installed. When you click on the link included in the email on your smartphone, it opens up the Zoho CRM app, right on your Deal!

Hope this helps someone struggling with the same problem.
And if you know of an easier way to do this, please share.

Be safe!
Bruno