SendGrid connector

The SendGrid connector allows you to quickly and easily send emails from your BPMN processes.

Prerequisites

To use the SendGrid connector a SendGrip API key is needed. Please follow these steps in case you do not have a SendGrid account or API key secret configured in your cluster.

SendGrid connector

The SendGrid connector comes with two options:

1. SendGrid Email Connector allows sending simple emails (i.e. text/plain, text/html).
2. SendGrid Email Template Connector supports SendGrid Dynamic Templates.

SendGrid Email Connector

Create a SendGrid Email Connector Task

To use this connector, follow the steps below:

1. Open Web Modeler and create a new BPMN diagram.
2. Add a Task and an EndEvent.
3. Click on the Task, click on the wrench icon, and select SendGrid Email Connector. You can also use the search field and type Sendgrid.

Alternatively, you can directly create a SendGrid Email Connector by using the append menu:

Make your SendGrid Email Connector executable

To make the SendGrid Email Connector executable, you need to fill out all the mandatory fields highlighted in red in the properties panel:

1. Set SendGrid API Key to secrets.SEND_GRID_API_KEY.
2. Set Sender Name to Jane Doe (or the sender identity you configured above).
3. Set Sender Email to jane-doe@camunda.com (or the sender identity you configured above).
4. Set Receiver Name to Your Name.
5. Set Receiver Email to Your email address.
6. Set Email Content Subject.
7. Leave Content Type to text/plain (or alternatively to text/html if you intend to provide an HTML body to your email).
8. Provide a text (or HTML) Body for your email.

note

Now you can simply deploy and start a new instance of your process. As with all connectors the run-time is available out of the box in Camunda 8 SaaS.

SendGrid Email Template Connector

Send an email via SendGrid Dynamic Template and use the Handlebars templating language to pass dynamic values to your connector.

Configure a Dynamic Template

1. Open the Dynamic Transactional Templates page and click Create Template.
2. Add a unique template name and click Save.
3. To begin editing your new template, click Add Version.
4. Select an editor and click Continue.
5. Design your template. For more information on using Handlebars, click here.

In our example template we will use the following subject and body:

Subject:
Your Camunda Weather Report for {{location}}

Body:
Hi {{name}},

Thanks for using Camunda Connectors to check your current weather report.
Your current weather in Berlin is {{weather}} with {{actual-temp}}°C and feels like {{feel-temp}}°C

The Camunda Team

In our example template, we will use the following Handlebars:

{{name}} - the name of the user requesting the weather report

{{location}} - the location used for the weather report

{{weather}} - the current weather condition

{{actual-temp}} - the measured temperature

{{feel-temp}} - how the temperature feels like in reality

While you are editing your template you can test how your email would look by switching to Preview mode, choosing {} Show Test Data, and then providing the necessary data:

Create a SendGrid Email template Connector task

To use this connector, follow the steps below:

1. Open Web Modeler and create a new BPMN Diagram.
2. Add a Task and an EndEvent.
3. Click on the Task, click the wrench icon, and select SendGrid Email Template Connector. You can also use the search field and type Sendgrid.

Alternatively, you can directly create a SendGrid Email Template Connector by using the append menu:

Make your SendGrid Email Template Connector executable

To make the SendGrid Email Template Connector executable, fill out all the mandatory fields highlighted in red in the properties panel:

1. Set SendGrid API Key to secrets.SEND_GRID_API_KEY.
2. Set Sender Name to Jane Doe (or the sender identity you configured above).
3. Set Sender Email to jane-doe@camunda.com (or the sender identity you configured above).
4. Set Receiver Name to Your Name.
5. Set Receiver Email to Your email address.
6. Log in to your SendGrid account and navigate to the Dynamic Template you created.
7. Copy the id of the template and paste it in the Template ID field.

8. Provide the test data in the Template Data field as a FEEL context expression:

= {
  name: "Jane",
  location: "Berlin",
  weather: "Clear",
  actual-temp: 30,
  feel-temp: 3
}

If you want to provide dynamic content in the email via process variables, you can set them in the Template Data field as well:

= {
  name: nameVariable,
  location: locationVariable,
  weather: weatherVariable,
  actual-temp: temerature,
  feel-temp: windChill
}

note

Now you can simply deploy and start a new instance of your process. As with all connectors the run-time is available out of the box in Camunda 8 SaaS.

Appendix

Create a SendGrid account

To use the SendGrid connector, create a free account in SendGrid if you do not have one yet.

1. Go to https://signup.sendgrid.com/.
2. Set up the account with your email and choose a password.

3. Click Create Account.
4. Provide further information required by SendGrid.

5. Click Get Started.

Create a sender identity

Before sending your first email, you'll need to create a sender identity and verify it.

1. Click Settings > Sender Authentication or click here.
2. Choose Verify a Single Sender for demo purposes (or alternatively Authenticate Your Domain for a production setup.)
3. Provide the details requested by SendGrid in the form and click Create.

4. Go to your email inbox and open the email sent to you by SendGrid.
5. Click Verify Single Sender.

Create an API key

To create an API key in SendGrid, take the following steps:

1. Log in to your new account.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Click API Keys > Create API Key.
4. Give your key a name (i.e. my-camunda-connector-key).
5. Click Create Key.
6. Copy the API Key and move on to the next step for creating a connector Secret.

Create a new connector Secret

We advise you to keep your API key safe and avoid exposing it in the BPMN xml file by creating a Secret:

1. Follow our guide for creating Secrets.
2. Name your Secret SEND_GRID_API_KEY so you can easily reference it later in our connector.