A Communication is a set of confirmation messages for screen, email, and SMS, which are displayed/sent at specific points in the donation flow. For a full description of Communications, see Introduction: Communication.
Note: When creating a new Communication, you should carefully consider its placement in the hierarchy. A Communication can inherit content from the level above – for example, 1.2 will inherit from 1.0, 1.2.2 will inherit from 1.2, and so on.
The advantage of inheritance is that you do not have to create all the content from scratch – and that updates are automatically inherited.
Our recommendation is to inherit as much content as possible.
How to create and edit a new Communication
In this example, I am creating a Christmas campaign, where I want to create a special thank-you email for those who make a one-off donation. Here’s how to do it:
Navigate to the Communication module
Click on “New communication” in the top-right corner.
Give your new Communication a descriptive name. It’s a good idea to establish a clear naming convention from the start – it will make it easier to see which Communications can be reused or archived.
Select the Parent communication this one should inherit from.
In this example, I need a special confirmation message for all new donors who donate via the Christmas campaign. For the rest of the flow, I want to use the confirmation messages from my “Campaigns” Communication, so I set that as the parent.Your new Communication will now open. By default, it inherits everything from its parent – including the website thank-you message, the email receipt, and retention notifications. Here, I only want to change the message for one-off donors, so I click on Single payment complete.
Click “Edit” on the receipt email.
Click OK to create a special template for this Communication – this will remove inheritance from the parent.
You can now edit the receipt email.
Read more here: How to edit an email in Communication.Finally, make sure the new confirmation message is active.