How to add cross-object fields as merge fields in Lightning Email Template

Lightning Email Templates for sure are superior to their old counterpart, Classic Email Templates, however, they too come with certain limitations – like every other thing in Salesforce. In Lightning Email Templates, you can easily add the fields of a single object as merge fields. These merge fields are then replaced with the values stored in the individual record utilized in the email-sending process. The limitation is that we can’t use cross-object fields as merge fields in Lightning Email Templates.

At the moment of this writing, there is no standard way of adding cross-object fields as merge fields in Lightning Email Templates. But there is a workaround that we will discuss in this blog post.

Table of Contents

Problem

Unable to add cross-object fields as merge fields in Lightning Email Templates.

For Example:

{{{Account.Contact}}} will be a valid merge field but {{{Account.Contact.FirstName}}} won’t be accessible or considered valid.

Solution

Following is the workaround I implemented in Salesforce to add cross-object fields as merge fields.

Create a Formula Field

The simplest way to get the cross-object level value to the object level is to create a formula field on the sObject that we will use as the primary source in the Lightning Email Template For example, if we want to access a field on the third level of object crossing, we can achieve this with the cross-object formula.

CustomObject1__r.CustomObject2__r.CustomObject3__c.CustomField__c

Use Formula Field as Merge Field

Now once, we have created the formula field to access cross-object fields, we can simply use this field as a merge field in the Lightning Email Template.

For example, if we create a cross-object formula field in the Contact object, we can access it in the Lightning Email Template via the following syntax.

{{{ Contact.CustomCrossObjectFormulaField__c }}}

cross-object fields as merge fields in Lightning Email Templates — *_{Usage of Cross-Object Formula field in Lightning Email Template}*

And that will be enough to solve your problem. However, I do want to discuss an alternative approach.

Alternative Approach

This approach doesn’t add cross-object fields as merge fields in Lightning Email Templates, however, it is a way of getting dynamic cross-object fields without the usage of merge fields.

For this, I will create an email template and will include my own custom tags, let’s say #CASE_ID, #PROJECT_NUMBER, etc. I always make the tags in all caps and start them with ‘#’ so that it is different from the rest of the email template’s body.

Once the template is done, I get that template body in Apex and individually replace all of the custom tags or custom merge fields with the values I desire them to be. These values are fetched from SOQL easily, without creating various formula fields.

This is just another way when I solve the merge field problem in Salesforce Lightning Email Templates. Whenever a lot of cross-object fields are required, instead of creating separate formula fields, I use this alternate approach that utilizes Email Template, SOQL, and Apex/Flow (for String replacement).

How would you solve the problem of cross-object fields as merge fields in Lightning Email Template? Let’s discuss the comments.

There is a very important article I wrote related to implementing Grid System in Visualforce that can come in handy when designing PDFs, so check it out as well.

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