Form notification emails

Misty Flowers

July 01, 2024 21:03

Form notification emails in Finalsite Forms alert designated recipients when a form is submitted and can optionally send a confirmation to the submitter. Admin notifications can be sent to any email address (even non-admins), can include submission details, and can be configured with conditional rules to trigger only under specific circumstances.

💡Quick answers

Can form notification emails be sent to people who are not Finalsite admin users? Yes; any email address can be added as a notification recipient, even if the person has no Finalsite account or constituent profile.
What does toggling "Include Submission Details" do in the admin notification? It includes the submitter's form responses directly in the notification email, so the recipient sees the data without needing to log into the Forms module.
Setting up a notification that only sends under specific conditions? Click the Star icon next to the recipient's email in the notification settings to add field-based or date-based conditional rules that determine when that person receives the notification.
What must be in place before a submitter confirmation email can be sent? An Email Address field must be added to the form; once saved, select it from the Recipient dropdown in the Send to Submitter settings.
Can the submitter confirmation email template be customized? Yes; go to Messages > Templates > System > Transactional Template to change the logo and header color. The admin notification email template cannot be customized.

When you Build a form, it's important to be able to designate who is notified whenever a form is submitted. You can customize what happens when a person clicks the Submit button.

This article will focus specifically on the settings that can be configured for notification emails to be sent by the system to whoever you specify in the form settings, as well as emails to the submitter to let them know that it was a successful submission! You can learn more about other settings that can be customized in the article, "Customize form Submit options".

This article refers to our newest product, Forms, which is available to you in your modules list. You may be a Legacy Forms Manager user which has a different set of help documentation.

Not sure? Please review "Which forms module do I have: New Forms or Legacy Forms Manager?"

Send notification emails to staff

Send notification emails to anyone who needs to act on or be aware of the data that was just received via a particular form.

Toggle Send to Admins to activate admin notifications.
Enter an email address in the Recipient(s) field.
Click the + icon to add additional recipients.
Change your mind? Delete a recipient using the trashcan icon next to their email address.

send to admins.png

Note on notification role and permissions

The term Admins in the Notification Emails section is a bit tricky! Your recipient(s) CAN be anyone with an email address, even if the person is NOT an admin user or constituent with a profile in your CMS.

However in order to Collect and manage form results, a person does need to be an admin user. Learn more about this in the article, "Collect and manage form results > Confirm permission level."

Set conditional notifications

In some cases, you may want to send a notification to an admin only if the form has been filled out in a certain way. If so, add the recipient as normal, then click the Star icon next to their email address. This will allow you to set conditional rules, either date-based and/or field-based, to determine when to trigger a notification to that admin. For more information about setting up conditional rules, please refer to our article Create conditional form fields.

Include submission details for your staff

Compose a Custom Message to the admin in the text element. Select the checkbox below the recipients field(s) to Include Submission Details in the notification email.

include submission details.png

This setting, as well as the message, cannot be customized per recipient. If the recipient is an admin with access to the form in Forms, they will also see a View Submission button to click and be redirected to the Forms module immediately where they can Collect and manage form results.

view submission button.png

Send successful submission emails to submitter

Toggle Send to Submitter to have the user receive a message when they have successfully submitted a form. This is a best practice so that the user has confirmation that their submission went through, as well as a “paper” trail in case they need to refer back to their submission for any reason.

send to submitter .png

Configure your reply-to address

Select a Reply-To address to receive replies from this confirmation.

Reply-to addresses are managed in Messages.
Go to Messages > Settings > Reply-To Addresses to add/remove email addresses. Learn more in the article, "Manage reply-to addresses."

⚠️ Important Note

If your Messages icon is greyed out, please contact Finalsite Support to have your reply-to addresses managed on your behalf. Learn more in the article, "Manage reply-to addresses."

Send to submitter best practices

Insert at least one Email Address field. Once added, save the form so that you may select this field from the dropdown as the email address to use for the notification.
Choose a Reply-To address OR the email will be sent with a "noreply@xxxx" address in the From field.
Compose a custom message to the recipient. Select the checkbox to have the user’s responses included in the email.
Only fields that have been completed or filled out in the form will be included in the submission details email.