Sending provisioning emails to VMR and device owners

When bulk-provisioning VMRs and device aliases from Active Directory via LDAP, an email can be sent out to the VMR owner or device owner telling them the:

  • VMR properties, such as its aliases and security PINs
  • device alias properties, such as its associated username and password for registration purposes.

Email generation is specified on a per sync template basis. The content of the email is free-form and can be customized for each generated VMR or device alias by using variables — such as {{pin}} to include the Host PIN in VMR-related emails — that are substituted with the relevant value when each individual email is generated.

This topic covers:

Guidelines and limitations

When constructing your email template:

  • Ensure that the subject line of the generated email is a single line.
  • You can use HTML markup (UTF-8 characters only).

If Pexip Infinity experiences connectivity issues with the SMTP server, it will retry sending each individual email up to 3 times before moving onto the next email, and it will attempt to re-establish dropped SMTP server connections up to 100 times per bulk-send operation.

Note that an email is triggered when a synchronization process results in changes to the VMR's or device alias's properties, regardless of whether that property is available as an email variable, and whether that variable is actually used in an email template. Changes to the email template do not trigger the sending of an email.

If you want to update all VMRs, for example with a new layout, but do not want to trigger emails, then disable the Send emails option for the sync template, make the change to the template, synchronize, and when completed, turn Send emails back on again.

Configuring an LDAP sync template to generate emails

When configuring a sync template (Utilities > LDAP sync templates) you can specify the following email-related options:

Option Description
Email options
Send emails

When selected, the system generates and sends an email to the:

  • VMR owner when a synchronization creates a new VMR or modifies an existing VMR (when Sync VMRs is enabled for the template)
  • device owner when a synchronization creates a new device alias or modifies an existing device alias (when Sync devices is enabled for the template).

Separate emails are sent for VMR provisioning and for device provisioning when both Sync VMRs and Sync devices are enabled. Note that you can also manually send reminder emails.

VMR / device owner's email address

The email address of the owner of this VMR or device alias. The generated email(s) will be sent to this address.

This field is also used as the email address of the user records that are created when Sync users is enabled.

When using the VMR self-service portal, it determines which VMRs can be viewed and edited (the LDAP mail attribute of the user logged into the VMR portal must match the VMR owner's email address).

Example: {{mail}}

Allow email address to be manually overridden Allows the auto-generated email address to be manually overridden for each VMR or device alias.
SMTP server Select the SMTP server to use for sending provisioning emails (see Configuring SMTP servers).
VMR email options
VMR email subject A template for the subject line of the email to be sent when a VMR is created or updated.
VMR email template

A template for the body of the email to be sent when a VMR is created or updated.

See Constructing the VMR provisioning email below for more information on how complete this field.

Device email options
Device email subject A template for the subject line of the email to be sent when a device alias is created or updated.
Device email template

A template for the body of the email to be sent when a device alias is created or updated.

See Constructing the device alias provisioning email below for more information on how complete this field.

Constructing the VMR provisioning email

The VMR email subject template and VMR email body template fields contain the pattern for the email to be sent to the VMR owner when that VMR is first created (provisioned) or is updated.

The templates will typically contain a mixture of literal text and variables, and it can also contain control structures that allow you to vary the content of the email based upon certain conditions.

Supported variables

The VMR email subject template and VMR email body template fields support a different set of variables from the other synchronization template pattern fields (because it is based on the generated VMR properties, rather than the source data used to build those properties).

The following variables are available:

Variable name Description
primary_owner_email_address The email address of the owner of the VMR.
description The description of the VMR.
aliases

A list of tuples containing the VMR alias and its corresponding description e.g. [("alice", "The short alias"), ("meet.alice@example.com", "The alphanumeric URI alias"), ("123456", "The numeric alias")]

Thus, in your email template, aliases[0][0] will extract the first alias in the aliases list, aliases[0][1] extracts the description of the first alias in the list, and aliases[1][0] extracts the next alias in the list, and so on.

Note that:

  • The order of the aliases contained in the aliases variable may not reflect the order of the alias templates in the sync template, or the order that the aliases appear when viewing the VMR via the Administrator interface or via the management API i.e. the alias generated by VMR alias 1 pattern may not appear before the alias generated by VMR alias 2 pattern and so on.
  • As a VMR alias pattern template could generate a blank alias (which will be discarded when syncing) there is no guarantee that you will have 4 aliases configured even if a sync template has VMR alias 1, 2, 3 and 4 patterns configured.

Extracting a specific alias

There are several ways in which you can extract a specific alias from the aliases variable. Let's assume that aliases contains the following (in any order):

[("alice", "The short alias"), ("meet.alice@example.com", "The alphanumeric URI alias"), ("123456", "The numeric alias")]

To extract an alias with a particular description, you can use this jinja code and text in your VMR email template:

{% macro _aliases_with_description(description) -%}
{%for alias in aliases%}{%if alias[1]==description%}{{alias[0]}}{%endif%}{%endfor%}
{%- endmacro %}
The telephone number is {{_aliases_with_description("The numeric alias")}}
The alphanumeric URI is {{_aliases_with_description("The alphanumeric URI alias")}}

and this will result in an email containing:

The telephone number is 123456
The alphanumeric URI is meet.alice@example.com

Alternatively, if you want to look at a start and end pattern of the alias itself to see if it is the alias you want to use, you can use this jinja code and text in your VMR email template:

{% macro _aliases_with_start_and_end(aliasstart, aliasend) -%}
{%for alias in aliases%}{%if alias[0].startswith(aliasstart) and alias[0].endswith(aliasend)%}{{alias[0]}}{%endif%}{%endfor%}
{%- endmacro %}
The URI is {{_aliases_with_start_and_end("meet.", "@example.com")}}

which in this example only lists those aliases that start with meet. and end with @example.com i.e. it will result in an email containing:

The URI is meet.alice@example.com

Alternatively, you can use the system-generated uri_alias and numeric_alias variables as described below.

allow_guests

Whether to distinguish between Host and Guest participants:

  • true — the conference has two types of participants: Hosts and Guests.
  • false — all participants have Host privileges
pin The Host PIN.
guest_pin The Guest PIN.
max_callrate_in The maximum inbound call bandwidth (kbps).
max_callrate_out The maximum outbound call bandwidth (kbps).
participant_limit The maximum number of participants allowed to join this VMR.
tag The VMR's service tag.
Additional generated variables
action

Possible values are:

  • "created" — when the VMR has just been created
  • "updated" — when the existing VMR has been updated
  • "reminder" — when sending reminder emails.
uri_alias

Set to any one of the configured URI aliases of a VMR. For example, meet.alice@example.com is a possible URI alias, as is 123456@example.com. Thus if a VMR has both of those aliases then either might appear in the uri_alias variable. (Note that 123456 is not a URI alias.)

If your VMRs have several URI-style aliases, you may want to programmatically select the alias that meets your required pattern from the aliases variable as described above.

It is blank if there is no URI-style alias.

numeric_alias Set to any one of the VMR's all-numeric aliases i.e. an alias consisting entirely of digits 0-9. It is blank if there is no numeric alias.

For more information about how participants join conferences, see Creating preconfigured links to conferences via Connect app.

Example VMR email templates

Here are some example email body templates that you can use as the basis for your own emails.

For more details on constructing the URLs used for joining from a web browser, see Creating preconfigured links to launch conferences via Connect apps.

Constructing the device alias provisioning email

The Device email subject template and Device email body template fields contains the pattern for the email to be sent to the device owner when that device alias is first created (provisioned) or is updated.

The templates will typically contain a mixture of literal text and variables, and it can also contain control structures that allow you to vary the content of the email based upon certain conditions.

Supported variables

The Device email subject template and Device email body template fields support a different set of variables from the other synchronization template pattern fields (because it is based on the generated device properties, rather than the source data used to build those properties).

The following variable are available:

Variable name Description
primary_owner_email_address The email address of the owner of the device alias.
device_alias The alias of the device that can be registered to Pexip Infinity.
device_description The description of the device alias.
device_username The username associated with the device alias. This should be used in association with the device_password when registering the device_alias to Pexip Infinity.
device_password The password associated with the device alias.
device_tag The device alias's service tag.
Additional generated variables
action

Possible values are:

  • "created" — when the device alias has just been created
  • "updated" — when the existing device alias has been updated
  • "reminder" — when sending reminder emails.

Example device email templates

Here is an example email body template that you can use as the basis for your own emails. It is shown in plain text and in HTML format.

If you are provisioning Connect app users with their registration details, see Registering and provisioning the Connect desktop app for some more examples of provisioning email template content.

Sending reminder emails

You can manually send reminder emails for a specific VMR or device alias, or for all VMRs and devices associated with a specific sync template. Note that:

  • No status information is shown on the LDAP sync status page when sending email reminders (as the reminder process does not resync the content from the LDAP data source). However, all related activity is recorded in the administrator log as usual.
  • You can only resend emails for VMRs or device aliases that have been created by an LDAP sync template.

Sending a reminder email to a VMR owner

To send a reminder email to the owner of a VMR:

  1. Go to Services > Virtual Meeting Rooms.
  2. Select the Virtual Meeting Room(s) for which you want to send reminders (select the checkbox next to the VMR name).
  3. From the Action drop-down list, select Send reminder emails to VMR owners.
  4. Select Go.

    This will generate and send an email to the owner of each selected VMR.

To see or change the "owner" of a VMR, go into the VMR details page and show the Advanced options. The Owner's email address field is at the bottom of that section.

Sending a reminder email to a device owner

To send a reminder email to the owner of a device alias:

  1. Go to Users & Devices > Device aliases.
  2. Select the device aliases for which you want to send reminders (select the checkbox next to the device alias name).
  3. From the Action drop-down list, select Send reminder emails to device owners.
  4. Select Go.

    This will generate and send an email to the owner of each selected device.

To see or change the "owner" of a device, go into the device alias details page and review the Owner's email address field.

Sending reminder emails for VMRs and devices associated with a sync template

This option is useful if you have initially configured your system not to send emails — for example while you are ensuring that the VMRs and devices are being created as expected — and then want to send emails to all of those generated VMRs and devices associated with that template (as the synchronization process only automatically generates emails for an existing VMR or device if its configuration changes in some way).

To send reminder emails for all VMRs and devices associated with a specific sync template:

  1. Go to Utilities > LDAP sync templates.
  2. Select the sync template(s) for which you want to send reminders (select the checkbox next to the template name).
  3. From the Action drop-down list, select Send VMR and device reminder emails for selected LDAP sync templates.
  4. Select Go.

    This will generate and send an email to the owner of each VMR and device that is associated with that LDAP sync template.