Courier Concepts

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Audience

An Audience is a user collection that automatically adheres to a set of rules. These rules can be as simple as:

{
      "operator": "EQ",
      "path": "locale.city",
      "value": "San Francisco"
}

Which can also be extended to a complex set of operations. Audience rules can be defined in the Courier Web App or via the Audiences API.

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Automations

An automation is a fully managed orchestration service that makes it easy to design complex notification workflows with the API or via the Automations template designer.

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Brands

Brands let you apply a consistent look and feel to your email notifications. You can also use this feature to white-label email notifications you send on behalf of your customers to their end-user recipients or if you have multiple brands internally. Courier Brands are fully API enabled.

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Channels

Courier notifications can be configured to send to different notification types or channels: email, SMS, push and direct_message.

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Channel Routing

Courier’s channel routing rules let you prioritize which channels are used to send your notifications. Channels are arranged in a top-to-bottom hierarchy.

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Content Blocks

Content blocks are responsive and reusable content that can be used across channels inside a notification template.

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Conditions

Conditions in Courier let you apply conditionals to enable/disable content, channels, and notifications.

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Device Token

A device token is a unique key for the app-device combination issued by the Apple or Google push notification gateways. It allows gateways and push notification providers to route messages and ensure the notification is delivered only to the unique app-device combination for which it is intended. Courier’s Token Management API is used to store and track the status of user device tokens.

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Elemental

Courier Elemental is a powerful JSON based syntax for describing the content of your notification in a way that will work for email, push, chat, or any channel you use to notify users.

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Events

An event is a unique identifier that can be mapped to an individual Notification. These events can be defined by you, i.e. new-user or by an incoming event through Segment.

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Handlebars

Handlebars is a simple email templating language that generates HTML. Courier’s Notification Designer offers template blocks that use Handlebars or switch to the Handlebars editor and build your entire template in HTML and CSS.

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List

A list is a static group of users defined by you via the List API.

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Logs

Courier’s notification logs provide a timeline along with insights into the status of sent messages and automations.

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Notifications

Notifications are messages you send through channels via the delivery systems you integrate with Courier. Each notification has a unique identifier known as the notification_id which you can find in the notification settings.

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Override

Overrides can be used to change the request body that Courier sends to a provider. Overrides are useful when you want to pass additional values to the downstream provider.

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Profile

A profile is a JSON object that includes any key-value pairs required by external integrations.

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Provider

Providers are the downstream channel service providers (Twilio, Sendgrid, APN, etc,) you connect to Courier to send notifications.

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Transactional Emails

Many courier customers use us to build transactional email notification templates. Although Courier does not actually send emails (that’s done by the email service providers you integrate with Courier) you can add unsubscribe links to your Courier email templates. Understanding when an email notification is transactional or relationship is important and the CAN-SPAM act’s definition is a good place to start.

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White-labeling

White labeling is when you remove your brand and logo from notifications and instead use branding defined by your customer. In other words, white-label email notifications are sent by you on behalf of your customers to their end-users. This means end-users receiving email notifications you send see your customers’ branding on the email.