Services - Add Accept or Deny button to email template for volunteers scheduled to serve

[Livestock5]

Related Product
Services

Describe the question
How do I get the template, with Accept and Decline buttons, for schedule emails to send to unconfirmed people for a plan?

I can get the template via the endpoint:
https://api.planningcenteronline.com/services/v2/email_templates/{EMAIL_TEMPLATE_ID}/render. See screenshot of email that is sent:

However, this template doesn't include the accept and decline buttons. When I send the emails from the UI (see screenshot), then the accept and decline buttons are appended to the email. However, they aren't added if I send from the api.

This is the exact email I'd like to send from the API. This is what I want to send, but I can't. I can only send this by sending via the UI.

All my code is here

What have you tried that worked?
Nothing has worked so far.

What have you tried that didn't work?
Using the email_templates/{EMAIL_TEMPLATE_ID}/render.

I read this github issue #500 that describes almost the exact issue I'm dealing with. I'm already doing what the GitHub issue recommend. But its not good enough.

My desire is essentially to have a button in the email that a user can click to accept or deny a request. Is that possible somehow? Is there an link that I can add to a button to the template?

Additional context

Python 3.12.9

I have..

• Reviewed the documentation found at https://developer.planning.center/docs
• Searched for previous issues answering this question
• Removed all private information from this issue (credentials, tokens, emails, phone numbers, etc.)
• Reviewed my issue for completeness

[github-actions]

Potentially Related Issues

I found some existing issues that may be related to this one. Please check if any of them address your question before waiting for a response:

🟣 #1256 — Adding plan to service type from template, alternative endpoint? (Closed)

Summary: This issue discusses creating multiple plans with templates applied via the API. While it focuses on plan creation rather than email templates, it demonstrates the use of the create_plans action endpoint which might be relevant for understanding how templates work in the Services API workflow.

Key discussion points:

• The create_plans action endpoint allows creating multiple plans at once with templates applied
• Payload structure requires proper JSON-API format with data object containing type, attributes, and relationships
• Template relationships are order-dependent and map to the count attribute
• Only one template can be imported at a time per plan
• Maximum of 12 services per request (user requested 13)
• Templates can copy items, people, and notes but not times

Resolution: Resolved by providing the correct JSON payload format for the create_plans action endpoint. The endpoint successfully creates plans with templates applied, though with a limitation of 12 plans per request and only one template per plan.

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[kawikathomas]

Hey @Livestock5 You are correct those buttons get appended when the scheduling email is sent from Services and are not part of the template. Unfortunately, there's no supported way today to send scheduling emails with Accept/Decline buttons from the API.

I'm going to close this issue out, but please feel free to respond with a bit more about what you're building. That would really help us weigh adding API support for triggering scheduling emails in the future.

[Livestock5]

Currently, my church has to manually send out emails at the start of each week telling people it's their week to volunteer/serve and have them "Accept" or "Decline". By "manually", I mean we have to go into Services web app and click through the process of sending the reminder emails. I'd like to automate this. To me its inconvenient to do this EVERY Monday. It seems like something that should be automated. Because its not possible to automate this via Planning Center, I'm building a Python script to send the emails. My plan was to run it via Github Actions via a cron schedule. However, after implementing this, the email that I send automatically doesn't contain the "Accept" or "Decline" buttons. My email was an HTML template

[kawikathomas]

Ah, that's helpful, thanks! It sounds like what you're after already exists in Services. You can set up automated reminder emails that go out a set number of days before someone is scheduled to serve, and they include the Accept/Decline buttons. Here's the documentation: https://help.planningcenter.com/en/142894-set-up-reminder-emails.html