How to trigger a send based on Email ID?

Question

I would like to create a simple cloud page that our brand teams can use to trigger their own test sends. I'd like to do this without having to setup 100+ triggered sends. My goal would look like this

• Step 1 -- I provide brand team with emailID # and tell them it is ready for testing.
• Step 2 -- Brand team navigates to the cloud page and submits a form with 3 fields: EmailAddress, SubscriberKey, EmailID
• Step 3 -- SFMC receives form submission in DE, send is triggered based on the "EmailID" value passed from the form.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

Yes, but not as simply as it sounds.

Basically, you would have to use the REST API to send an email test send based off subscriber data.

So to do this, you would need to either have a default 'test data' DE that you use, or you would have to have this as a field in your form for the Brand team to add in.

See this article from my blog for detailed info on testing/preview via REST API.

The endpoint we would be looking at is: POST: /guide/v1/emails/preview/send.

This API Endpoint would require the following payload:

{
  "dataSource": {
    "id": "{{deid}}",
    "row": {{row}},
    "type": "DataExtension"
  },
  "emailID": "{{emailid}}",
  "isMultipart": true,
  "options": {
    "EnableETURLs": "true"
  },
  "recipients": [
    "{{insertYourEmailHere}}"
  ],
  "sendManagement": {
    "sendClassificationID": "{{sendClassificationID}}",
    "deliveryProfileID": "{{deliveryProfileID}}",
    "senderProfileID": "{{senderProfileID}}"
  },
  "subjectPrefix": "[Test]:",
  "suppressTracking": true,
  "trackLinks": true
}

So you would need:

• Data Extension ID (deid)
• Row Number (row) [Optional]
• Email ID (emailid)
• Recipient email address list
• sendClassificationID (sendClassificationID)
• deliveryProfileID (deliveryProfileID) [Optional]
• senderProfileID (senderProfileID) [Optional]

The sendClassificationID would need to be gathered via SOAP API to get the value to add there.

So whatever way you are able to create your process to allow for the above, you can then create an automated test send page that is not reliant on User-Initiated Sends (Automation Studio Sends) or Triggered Send Definitions.