How do I embed a graphic into a SharePoint Designer workflow?

Many of our customers want the ability to "pretty up" the emails that get sent out from workflows.  One thing that will help enhance the readability of emails is to embed graphics inside the email.

Within SharePoint Designer, you cannot technically "embed" an image.  However, you can embed a link which points to an image.  That being said, the typical approach is to save an image to your SharePoint site, typically a "Site Pictures" picture library.  Once you have the image you want to embed into your email on your SharePoint Site, simply copy the URL to the image use it within a workflow variable in your "Send an email" workflow action.  To do this, create a "Local Variable" called "ULINC Image", then add an action to "Set Workflow Variable".

Use the following value for your variable, swapping out the URL to your specific URL:
<img src="http://ulinc/Site%20Pictures/ULINCNotification.jpg"/>

Next, add a "Send an Email" action, or select one that already exists.  Open the "Define E-mail Message" window and select to "Add or Change Lookup".  Select the workflow variable for which you just assigned a value.

When you are done, your email should look something like this (note the [%Variable: ULINC Image%] tag):

Once this is complete, finish defining the contents of your workflow email and publish the workflow.  It's that easy ... well it's easy once you know how, and now you do!