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Lettercrest: setup and user guide

What Lettercrest does

Lettercrest edits the email template Zendesk wraps around every email it sends: the logo, colours, header and footer around the message. You design it visually (or in HTML), see it with a sample message on desktop and phone, and apply it to Zendesk once the checks pass. Every version is kept in your Zendesk account, so you can roll back in one click.

It does not change what your triggers and automations say: that text arrives in the template's {{content}} placeholder.

Install

  1. In the Zendesk Marketplace, open Lettercrest and choose Install with the Standard plan ($79 a month per Zendesk account). The 14-day trial starts and Zendesk asks for a card. Billing starts when the trial ends unless you uninstall.
  2. Restrict the app to admins: Admin Center > Apps and integrations > Zendesk Support apps > Lettercrest > Role restrictions. Zendesk lets admins, and custom roles with the "Manage extensions and channels" permission, change the email template.
  3. Optional setting on the same page: Versions to keep, default 100.

Lettercrest creates one custom object at install, "Lettercrest version", which holds the versions. Custom objects are part of every Zendesk Suite plan and of Support Enterprise. On accounts with custom roles, give the roles that use Lettercrest access to this object (Admin Center > Objects and rules > Custom objects > Lettercrest version > Permissions).

Zendesk turns email template editing off on trial accounts and some others. If yours is one of them, Lettercrest shows a yellow notice and keeps Apply off: ask Zendesk Customer Support to enable email template editing, with your subdomain, your company website and the change you want to make. You can design and preview in the meantime.

The first time you open it

Open Lettercrest from the left navigation bar. It reads your current HTML and plain-text templates. A template that was not made in Lettercrest opens in the HTML tab as it is; the Design tab offers to start a visual design from a layout. Nothing changes in Zendesk until you click Apply to Zendesk.

Design tab

  • Start from a layout: Classic (close to Zendesk's own), Card (a white card on a soft background) or Banner (a coloured strip with your name). Choosing one replaces the design you are editing.
  • Colours and type: background, card, text, accent (links and buttons), text on the accent, footer text; font (mail-safe fonts only, because most mail apps cannot load web fonts), text size, width, padding, corners and a card border. Type a colour as #1f73b7 or use the picker.
  • Above the message and Below the message: add blocks, move them up or down, remove them.
    • Logo: an image address starting with https://, alt text, width, optional link, alignment. Use brand logo fills in the logo uploaded to the brand in Zendesk. Under the address Lettercrest shows whether the image loads and its size.
    • Banner: text on a colour, optionally with a logo.
    • Text: **bold**, [link text](https://...) and line breaks. Small text uses the footer colour.
    • Button: text and link, in the accent colour.
    • Links row: several links in one line.
    • Divider and Space.
    • Zendesk footer line: the "This email is a service from ..." line ({{footer}}, which also lists ticket details in emails to agents) and "Delivered by Zendesk" ({{footer_link}}).
    • Custom HTML: your own HTML with inline styles.
  • Every email: the "Please type your reply above this line" delimiter, and the earlier conversation below the message ({{quoted_content}}).

A design per brand

Zendesk has one email template per account. If you have more than one brand, choose a brand under Own design for a brand: it starts as a copy of the default design with that brand's logo, and you change what should differ. Switch between designs with Design for.

How Zendesk picks the design: every email carries the line "This email is a service from ." Lettercrest puts each brand's parts in the one template behind a check for that brand name (the field Brand name in Zendesk's footer line, which starts as the brand's name). Longer names are checked first, so "Harbor Bikes Pro" is never mistaken for "Harbor Bikes". Emails for any other brand get the default design.

Help center notifications (for example community post updates) are sent without this brand check. Lettercrest builds the template so those emails show the default design, without other brands' parts and without any template code. Use the preview's Help center notification option to see them.

If you rename a brand in Zendesk, update its name in Lettercrest and apply again.

Preview

The preview shows a made-up ticket update (no ticket of yours is read) inside your template:

  • Desktop or Phone (375 pixels wide).
  • Brand: which brand's footer line the sample email carries.
  • Customer email, Agent notification (with the longer agent footer) or Help center notification.

Images load from their addresses, as in a mail app. Many mail apps block images until the reader allows them, so keep alt text on logos.

HTML tab

For a visual design, the HTML tab shows the HTML Lettercrest writes; Edit as code switches that template to hand editing (earlier versions keep their designs in History). For a code template, edit the HTML with Insert buttons for each placeholder, the same preview and the same checks. You can start a visual design from the HTML tab as well.

Plain text tab

The plain-text template is what readers with HTML turned off see. It needs {{content}}; {{footer}} and {{quoted_content}} are optional.

Checks

Above the preview Lettercrest lists what it found:

  • Fix before applying (Apply stays off): no {{content}}, {{content}} more than once, no {{delimiter}} while your account uses the reply delimiter, unclosed {{ or {%, unbalanced {% if %} and {% endif %}, <script>, an empty plain-text template, a template over 250,000 characters, two brands with the same name text.
  • Worth a look: missing {{styles}} or {{attributes}} (Zendesk uses them for right-to-left languages), placeholders Zendesk does not fill in the template (such as {{ticket.id}}, which works in trigger messages, not here), images without alt text, http, SVG or relative image addresses, external stylesheets, forms and video, unclosed table tags, and templates large enough that Gmail may clip the email.

Apply

Write a short note in What changed (it appears in History) and click Apply to Zendesk. Lettercrest then:

  1. reads the live template again. If it changed since you opened Lettercrest (someone saved in Admin Center, or another admin applied), it stops and asks; Apply anyway replaces that change, which is saved as a version first;
  2. saves the live template as a version if it is not in History yet (the first time, this is "Template in Zendesk before Lettercrest");
  3. saves the new version;
  4. writes the templates to Zendesk and reads them back.

If Zendesk refuses the template, the new version is removed again and the live template stays as it was. The change applies to every email Zendesk sends from then on.

History and rollback

History lists every version, newest first, with who applied it, when, its note and size. The live one is marked. For each version:

  • Preview it, with the same device, brand and recipient options.
  • Compare with live: the lines that differ, live in red and the version in green.
  • Open in editor: loads it into the editor (its visual design, or its HTML) to change and apply as a new version.
  • Roll back to this: makes it the live template at once, as a new version "Rolled back to version N". Nothing is lost; the version that was live stays in History.
  • Delete a version you no longer need (never the live one). Delete N older removes versions beyond the newest number set in Versions to keep. The records count toward your account's custom object records.

Each version is stored compressed, in one or more records (Zendesk limits a record to 32 KB).

Limits

  • One HTML and one plain-text template per account, as in Zendesk; brand designs live inside it.
  • The text of each email comes from your triggers, automations and macros; Lettercrest changes the template around it.
  • Side conversation emails do not use the email template (a Zendesk rule).
  • Sell email templates are a different feature and are not edited.
  • The preview approximates mail apps; for a final check, apply and send yourself a test ticket update.

Uninstall

Your email template stays exactly as it is. Zendesk keeps the "Lettercrest version" object and its records, so a reinstall still has your history. To remove them, delete the object in Admin Center > Objects and rules > Custom objects.

Data

Lettercrest runs in your browser inside Zendesk, calls only your Zendesk account as you, reads your email templates and brand names and logos (never tickets or customers), and keeps nothing outside Zendesk. See the privacy policy: https://greatwork.company/apps/lettercrest/privacy.

Help

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