How can I embed an HTML file from a document library into an outgoing email?

Question

We are trying to leverage Sharepoint 2010 as an internal newsletter mailer within our company. So far we have a document library set up where HTML files are uploaded and then a site page where the files can be browsed at the user's leisure.

There is a workflow in place so that everytime a new HTML file is uploaded to the library, Sharepoint will send out an email to all users in our company with a link to the new news item for viewing.

We would like to use the HTML content as the actual body of the email. So far I have done some digging and haven't found any examples of how to do this. SPD 2010 doesn't seem to have a "document body" or "document content" lookup field in its workflow designer.

Does anyone have an idea of how to accomplish this?

Answer 1

I ended up solving this issue by creating an event receiver and leveraging C# and the .NET framework to send the email. I threw away the workflow I created earlier.

The receiver's ItemAdded method looked similar to this:

public override void ItemAdded(SPItemEventProperties properties)
{
    base.ItemAdded(properties);

    string html = "";
    using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(properties.ListItem.File.OpenBinaryStream()))
    {
        html = sr.ReadToEnd();
    }

    MailMessage message = new MailMessage();
    message.To.Add(new MailAddress("[email protected]", "Recipient"));
    message.From = new MailAddress("[email protected]", "Sharepoint Test Emailer");
    message.Subject = "[Sharepoint Emailer Test]: " + properties.ListItem.Title;

    AlternateView htmlView = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(html, null, MediaTypeNames.Text.Html);

    message.AlternateViews.Add(htmlView);

    SmtpClient client = new SmtpClient("mail.example.com");
    client.Send(message);
}

Answer 2

For me, it iss not obvious that internal Emails are really internal. I know a lot of companies using GMail as internal Emails. Or that they are anyway will be opened inside Sharepoint. And HTML of Sharepoint is hardly rendered outside of Sharepoint

I recently dumb followed InfoPath 2010 Lesson 1 - Creating a Basic Form video on youtube in a remote (over RDP) testing machine (which is a virtual machine) of my client.
A simple form was created and after publishing, filling this form and pressing its "Submit your order" button, I entered my GMail address to which box I've got a Email with form (and its XML data).

Here is screenshot of this Email in a web-browser of a machine outside of connection to Sharepoint (and AD):