The application sends various notifications by email, this document outlines how this works from a technical standpoint.
Emails that relate to user accounts are sent by GOV.UK Notify.
We use this gem to interact with the GOV.UK Notify service.
https://github.com/dxw/mail-notify
https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/services/15322373-3ee0-4c9c-aef7-be3e967f2f3e
BEIS owned so access can be granted by them.
You will need the API key in the NOTIFY_KEY environment variable. The key for each environment can be found here https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/services/15322373-3ee0-4c9c-aef7-be3e967f2f3e/api/keys
We use two templates to send email notifications:
- Welcome email
- View email
See the templates at https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/services/15322373-3ee0-4c9c-aef7-be3e967f2f3e/templates
The templates ids are supplied as environment variables:
- NOTIFY_WELCOME_EMAIL_TEMPLATE
- NOTIFY_VIEW_TEMPLATE
Confirm the Template ID in GOV.UK Notify and ensure you have the environment variables set.
The welcome email is sent to new users and takes a series of variables, changes to the content are made in the Notify service.
The Mail Notify gem allows us to assemble the entire body of the email in our code which gives us greater flexibility of the content, see https://github.com/dxw/mail-notify#with-a-view
All email notifications other than the welcome email are sent using this template.
Once setup, you can preview emails in your development environment:
http://localhost:3000/rails/mailers/report_mailer
We use a Redis backed Sidekiq worker to actually send the emails to notify.