How Merge Fields Work

Merge fields let you look up account, asset, contact, incident, opportunity, organization, community, or tracked link information, and insert it in the text. For example, you could insert a merge field for the first name field and have contacts’ first names appear in their mailing.

You could also insert a number of incident fields for documents that are sent as a result of an incident rule or in a campaign that uses an incident action. In the case where a merge field value does not exist, you can specify a default value. Additionally, you can add merge fields to a URL parameter. See Insert a Merge Field to a URL Parameter.

Another category of merge field includes those that do not logically align with any of the other categories. These merge fields are found in the Special Fields folder. Some let you insert merge fields related to certain configuration settings, such as the number of hours an incident set to Waiting stays open, or the amount of time in which an incident can be reopened after it is solved. There are also special fields that let you personalize the Subject field of the survey invitation message by displaying the survey expiration date or the number of days until the survey expires. Other special fields include interface name, generation time, SLA name, and merge fields related to community content. As with all merge fields, those found in the Special Fields folder are context-sensitive to the type of content you are creating.

There are two ways merge field content can be added: text and image. When you insert a text merge field, you insert the text from part of the record, such as a contact email address. See Insert a Text Merge Field. When you insert an image merge field, you insert the content from any text or text area custom field into an <img> tag within the HTML where it displays, such as a message template, mailing, survey, or answer. The custom field should contain the absolute or relative path to the image you want to display in the content. See Insert an Image Merge Field.