Constellation RTE — Add Insert Property Toolbar Option to Support Dynamic Property References in Letter Templates
Priority: Medium
Current Behavior (Problem Statement)
When a user with appropriate privilege opens the letter template editing lifecycle in a Constellation view, the Rich Text Editor does not provide an Insert Property button ({}) in the toolbar. There is no supported mechanism within the Constellation RTE to browse and embed property references (e.g., .Customer.FullName, .pyID) directly into the template body at authoring time.
This gap exists because the Insert Property functionality is implemented as a Pega-custom plugin (pzpega_ckeditor_pegaPlugins) and is only available when the RTE is operating in Classic (iframe-rendered) mode. The Lightweight/Inline RTE — which is the default rendering mode in Constellation — does not support this plugin by design.
Business Impact
The requirement is to allow privileged users to edit letter templates and make changes to property references. Users must currently work outside of Constellation or resort to workarounds to embed property references into letter template content, which adds friction to the template authoring and maintenance lifecycle.
Expected / Requested Behavior
Expose the Insert Property toolbar button — or an equivalent mechanism — within the Constellation RTE component, allowing privileged users to browse and embed property references at the cursor position during template editing. The embedded property references should resolve to their correct runtime values when the associated letter is selected from the dropdown and the completed template is displayed to the end user on the next screen.
Supporting Context
The Classic (Traditional UI) RTE supports Insert Property, Insert Rule, and SmartInfo plugins, as well as granular toolbar configuration. Parity between Classic and Constellation RTE has been a recurring gap reported.
Workaround in place: We are manually handling the replacement of property references using the replace all function in a data transform invoked prior to loading the content into RTE. The enhancement is required specifically to unblock the template editing experience for privileged users — the workaround does not address the authoring lifecycle.
Acceptance Criteria
[ ] A privileged user in a Constellation view can open the letter template editor in edit mode and insert a property reference using an Insert Property toolbar button or equivalent UX control.
[ ] The inserted property reference resolves to the correct value when the associated letter is selected from the dropdown and the template is displayed to the end user on the next screen.
[ ] The Insert Property capability is available within the Lightweight/Inline (div-rendered) RTE — the default Constellation rendering mode — without requiring a switch to Classic (iframe-rendered) mode.
In Constellation RTE, enable an Insert Property option in the toolbar so privileged users can directly pick and insert property references like .Customer.FullName while editing letter templates. This option should be available in the default inline editor without switching to Classic mode. When a property is inserted, it must be stored as a dynamic reference in the template. At runtime, the system should automatically resolve these references to their actual values based on the selected letter context. This ensures users can author templates directly in Constellation without manual workarounds.
It would require your own DX Component to enable additional items. Example of a Rich Text DX Component.
I am not aware of plans to bring this in, i would suggest posting on What DX Components Are You Missing in Constellation? as this is being monitored by our product team (i’ll repost this). I am aware of some asks for it (EPIC-87842) but not sure there are plans in the future roadmap.
add a property in an RTE does not feel typical of a back-office end user application - Few user are able to edit an email template and understand which property to pick - this is more an authoring experience using the email template rule - Is this enhancement request more about being able to delegate and edit some email template ruleform for some specific users like an admin persona? For example a CSR should never have to pick a field from a picker (there will be so many properties on the case) - instead you can use tokens like <<CUSTOMER_NAME>> or other known token that can be manually entered by the CSR and converted to the actual values before sending the email.
When you said “The Insert Property capability is available within the Lightweight/Inline (div-rendered) RTE — the default Constellation rendering mode — without requiring a switch to Classic (iframe-rendered) mode.” - there is no lightweight mode in Constellation - the RTE always renders in to an iframe - What you are likely doing is switching to a traditional case type or application to perform this action - A better approach is likely to use a DX Component for this use case or use known tokens (simpler and easier to maintain)
yes, its not every user but ability to edit templates is a common ask. Even in '23 I was helping scenarios where they wanted to edit the email template. We had two choices:
I still feel this the only path forward for editing templates today. I have seen a full RTE, with insert property, being discussed for the '26 roadmap.
Looking forward for the availability of full RTE with insert property, this helps in building an entire process around editing templates and associating a journey / workflow specific to client needs.
