How can I preview a template for a specific event?

Question

Is there any way to preview an email template for a specified event, not just one of the most recent 10 events?
Sometimes when we're building email templates, we're looking to cover specific use cases that don't happen very frequently. Only being able to preview one of the last 10 events is limiting, because the example events that I'm looking for often happened well in the past, or the rate at which we're receiving events means that they age out quickly.
Within the email template editor/preview, I'd love to be able to specify an event ID as the preview data source, as well as have the associated event and profile properties display in the sidebar.
I have been accomplishing this on my own computer by using Proxyman scripting. For the call to https://www.klaviyo.com/template/*/preview, I rewrite the event_id parameter of the request body to the activity ID (Activity Id: 7xRY7x2dxzX) from an event that I've identified.
However this is only a local solution, and I’d like a way for others to be able to accomplish this using the Klaviyo UI.

Thanks,
Joanna

bluesnapper · Accepted Answer

Hi ​@joanna at thumaI agree: the preview of just the most recent 10 profiles that triggered an eventis a frustrating limitation (templates & flows) and is something I hope Klaviyo will address. I’d like to be able to grab any profile from an event’s activity feed in metrics and preview that event as that profile.A workaround is to trigger the event using a test account which will bump that profile to into the event’s 10 for preview. Not ideal as that’s additional effort, and the clock starts ticking; if you have a lot of events firing, and if the time to test is lengthy, your test profile will quickly get pushed out of the 10.I appreciate this approach won’t work well for your team review, but it may help others on thisforum.Sorry that I don’t have a better solution!@GabbyEspositoanything to add from Klaviyo’s side?RegardsAndy

MANSIR2094 · Answer

Hi,@bluesnapper, have spoken well!​@joanna at thuma, I completely get where you are coming from. The current preview tool is great for testing recent activity, but it becomes frustrating when you are trying to build or troubleshoot an email for a rare event that happened weeks or months ago. At the moment, klaviyo doesn't have a way in the UI to manually enter an event ID or choose any historical event as the preview source. The preview is limited to the recent events klaviyo makes available, so once an event drops out of that list, there's no built in way to bring it back into the template preview.Your proxyman workaround is actually a clever solution because you're simply replacing the event ID that klaviyo sends with the one you want. Unfortunately, as you mentioned, that's only practical forsomeone who knows how to intercept and edit requests locally. I think having a field where you could paste an event or activity ID and then have klaviyo load that event along with it's profile and event properties in the preview panel would make template testing much easier, especially for edge cases and seasonal flows. That would also make collaboration a lot smoother since the whole team could preview the exact same event without relying on browser tools or waiting for a new matching event to come through hopefully the product team considers adding something like this because it would solve a real pain point for anyone building more advanced templates.

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