Updating email template does not propagate down to email instance
For context, I am using the Single Send API to send transactional emails. These transactional emails have been created in Hubspot and are referencing several different templates that exist in the Design Manager.
I have found that when I change a template and re-publish it, the actual email instances have not picked up on the update, and when I send the email it still uses the older version of the template. In order to fully propagate my template change, I need to go into the email itself and click through and "republish" the email, even though I haven't changed anything.
The two main template updates I have been making are: modifying the "Additional markup" (updating some custom CSS), and modifying the underlying modules that are being used in the templates. In both cases the updates are not coming through unless I go and republish the email instance.
The template changes DO propagate correctly if I use the "send test email" feature after changing the template. However, sending the emails through the Single Send API does not pick up on these changes.
I guess my main question is, is this the intended behavior? In order to update an email template, I must first update and publish the template, then update and publish every email that uses the template? Or could this potentially be a bug?
Updating email template does not propagate down to email instance
I reached out to customer support on this topic since I haven't received any help on these forums.
tldr; this is the expected behavior.
After much discussion with our team, it looks as though the behaviour you're seeing is working as designed and you will indeed need to publish the specific email instance after making changes to your email template. We see similar behaviour in Workflows as well, where we also use automated emails.
The reason for this is that when we save an email for automation (for use in Workflows or API sends) we're saving a copy of your email when you update the email instance. When we make changes to the template, these do not get pushed to the saved copy of your automated email until you 'update' them by republishing the individual email following the steps.
