Sending Attachments in Emails via Transactional API

Question

We have been sending emails and SMSes from Service Cloud through marketing Cloud.We are just using SFMC as a gateway and using its Transactional API to send the emails and SMSes.We are building the content/body in service cloud and sending in the payload to Transactional API. Now we want to send Attachments in the email/SMSes .Is it possible to do it via transactional API. How can i send attachments from Service cloud in the payload? Any immediate help is much appreciated. This is how we are preparing the payload in SFDC.

                    'to' => em.recipient,
                    'contactKey' => em.contactKey,
                    'attributes' => new Map<String, Object> {
                            'HTMLContent' => em.content,
                            'Subject' => em.subject
                    }   
            };
            recipients.add(recipient);
        }
        Map<String, Object> requestBody = new Map<String, Object>{
                'definitionKey' => sendDefinition,
                'recipients' => recipients
        };
        return requestBody

Answer 1

There is no support for attaching files in the endpoints for neither the classic Triggered Send nor for the new Transactional Messaging API. Hence you will need to use Ampscript within the email itself to request the file and attach it. As outlined in this and numerous other threads on file attachments in Marketing Cloud, you can use the AttachFile function in Ampscript. This goes across both transactional and marketing emails. Here is an example:

%%=AttachFile('HTTP','http://example.com/catalog.pdf','newFileName.pdf',true,'http://example.com/catalog.pdf','Click here to download your catalog',4)=%%

The challenge in your case is, assuming, exposing the file in Service Cloud in a way, so it can be fetched over HTTP. You can start by ensuring Public Links are enabled in your Org. Once a file is publicly accessible, you can attach it using above function.

Keep me posted on how you will implement the file attachment in your SMS messages, I'm quite curious here.