Open Outlook (aaplication or browser) and populate recipient field

Question

I'm a learning designer working in Articulate Storyline. I've asked this on their community site but its been suggested to ask here. In Articulate I have the option to add in Javascript under what they call triggers, this is the query I have.

When the button is clicked, I would like specifically Outlook to open and the recipient field to be populated with a certain email address. From what I have searched so far, I understand I can open Outlook's browser version using window.open("https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/"). When added to the trigger this works. However, I can't see where the mailto command would sit with this.

Is it even possible to open the compose mail window in a browser and or is there anyway to open the desktop application instead.

Thanks for any advice or help you can give me here.

Answer 1

Is it even possible to open the compose mail window in a browser and or is there anyway to open the desktop application instead.

Use the mailto protocol which opens a client's e-mail system and begins a new email message. For example:

<a href="mailto:[email protected]?
    subject=MessageTitle&amp;
    body=Message Content">
    Contact Us</a>

The following example shows how to use an HTML form to create an e-mail message.

<form action="mailto:[email protected]" method="get">
<input name="subject" type="hidden" value="Message Title">

Feedback:<br/>
<textarea name=body cols="40">
Please share your thoughts here
and then choose Send Feedback.
</textarea>

<input type="submit" value="Send Feedback">
</form>

For more information on the mailto protocol, see RFC2368: The mailto URL scheme.

Answer 2

Not knowing the specifics of Articulate Storyline, but if you can add HTML one option is to use a regular "a" tag for this. It will open in the e-mail client that is default on the users computer though, which may be Outlook or something else.

<a href="mailto:[email protected]">Email link</a>

You can read more here: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_address.asp