Personalize workflows and templates in Novu using context

Contexts let you personalize how notifications are rendered and delivered by making contextual data available inside template editors, step conditions, and the <Inbox /> component.

How to use context

Once a context is created either through the Novu dashboard or API, its data becomes available for use in your templates editors, step conditions, and for customizing the <Inbox /> component.

Using context data in the template editor

Use the {{context}} Handlebars helper to access context data in any template editor. The context key you provide while creating the context (for example, tenant, region) becomes the accessor.

For example, if a context with this data is created:

context: {
  tenant: {
    id: 'acme-corp',
    data: {
      name: 'Acme Corporation',
      plan: 'enterprise'
    }
  }
}

You can access the name and plan in your in-app, email, SMS, or push template like this:

<p>Welcome, new user from {{context.tenant.data.name}}!</p>
<p>Your account is on the {{context.tenant.data.plan}} plan.</p>

Or

Welcome, new user from {{context.tenant.data.name}}!
Your account is on the {{context.tenant.data.plan}} plan.

Using context in step conditions

You can use context variables in the Step conditions tab of a workflow step to add conditional logic to your notifications. For example, only send a "Feature X is now enabled" email if context.tenant.data.plan is enterprise.

To learn how contexts are structured or how to define them, refer to the Managing Contexts documentation.

Viewing and debugging contexts

Once you start using contexts in your workflows, Novu provides full observability so you can monitor and debug your context usage after a workflow has been triggered.

Searching for workflow runs

You can filter your workflow runs to find all executions associated with a specific context.

1. Navigate to the Activity Feed in your Novu dashboard.
2. Select the Workflow Runs tab.
3. In the search bar, click Context and enter the context type and id using the format type:id.

Verifying the resolved context

To confirm that Novu received and processed your context data correctly, you can inspect the API traces for a specific run.

1. From the Activity Feed, select the relevant workflow run from the list in the Requests tab.
2. In the workflow run details, go to the API Traces tab.

Here, you will see the full context object that was resolved and attached to that specific workflow execution.