When a manager gets an email about something happening in a learning journey, they often want to see right away which of their employees it concerns. Knowly gives you two ways to do that — employee name variables for notifications about one employee, and an Employees box that lists everyone the email is about. Which one you reach for depends on the notification.
When each option works
Notifications about a single employee. Some manager notifications are sent once per employee. In individual learning journeys, manager notifications follow each employee's own schedule, so they can use Employee first name or Employee full name. The same applies to other per-employee notifications, such as when a specific employee submits an assignment or hits a milestone. Each manager who receives the email sees their employee's name in place of the variable.
Notifications about several employees at once. In cohort journeys, scheduled manager notifications go to a manager as a single email — even when that manager has several employees in the journey. Knowly doesn't know up front whether the email will be about one employee or four, so a name variable can't carry the sentence around it. For these, use the Employees box: it lists the relevant employee names for each manager who receives the email, without forcing the surrounding copy to choose between singular and plural.
If you're not sure which kind of notification you're editing, the Personalize menu is a good check. If you see Employee first name or Employee full name in the variable list, the notification is sent per employee. If you don't see them, it's the kind that goes to one manager about several employees.
Use employee name variables
The variables live in the Personalize menu inside the notification's rich-text toolbar.
Open the notification you want to edit.
Place your cursor where the employee's name should appear.
Click Personalize in the toolbar.
Choose Employee first name or Employee full name from the list.
Knowly inserts the variable inline. When the email goes out, each manager sees their own employee's first or full name in that spot. Use Send test before publishing; Knowly asks for a Preview employee name so the test message can show a concrete example.
Use the Employees box
The Employees box is an email element you add to the notification, in the same place you add a text element or an image.
Open the notification you want to edit.
Use the + menu where you'd normally add a new row.
Choose Employees.
The box renders as a small section in the email. Each manager who receives the notification sees the names of the employees this particular email is about — one name if it's just one, several names if it's several.
Why this exists instead of a variable. A variable would need the surrounding sentence to make sense for both Anna Andersson and Anna Andersson, Erik Eriksson, and Sara Svensson. The Employees box sidesteps that by giving the names their own space, separate from your prose.
Write the rest of the email around it
A variable or a box only handles the names themselves. The rest of the sentence still needs to read naturally:
For per-employee notifications using a variable, write the sentence the way you'd write it to a single named person.
For scheduled notifications using the Employees box, keep the surrounding copy general — refer to "your employees" or "the people you support in this learning journey", and let the box carry the specific names.
Lastly, send a test before you publish, so you can check the exact email a manager will receive with the variable or box in place.