Configure form notifications

By default, PlatoForms sends email notifications to your team when a form is submitted and a PDF is generated. You can easily personalize this email notification to suit your needs.

Access Notification settings

1. On the Dashboard, hover over the desired form.

2. Click the Settings (gear) button on the top left corner, and then select Notification.

   

   You’ll open the Notifications panel.

Explore notification settings

In the Notifications panel, you can customize the following settings:

Email From

Here are the sender details, which include the sender’s Display Name (sender name) and Email From Address (sender email address). The default Display Name is Mailer, and the default Email From Address is mailer@platoforms.com.

To customize these sender details:

1. Upgrade to a premium plan.

2. Go to the Notifications panel, and enter your custom Display Name and Email From Address.

3. Click This Email Only.

   

   You’ll receive a verification email at the address you entered.

4. Check your email inbox for the verification message and follow the instructions to complete the process.

   Once verification is successful, you can use the customized sender details to send invitations.

   Note

   You can also verify the entire email domain to use any email address under it. Refer to the Send email with custom domain section for more details.

Email To

You have three options for setting up recipient email addresses, and you can choose one or more of them:

• Send to these addresses: Enter a list of email addresses, separated by commas. These email addresses don’t need to be registered with PlatoForms.

• Send to the email filled in the form: Select up to 10 form fields. If a valid email address is filled out in any of these fields, a notification will be sent to that address.

• Send to team members: This sends emails to your team members who can see the submissions for this form. By default, all your team members can view form submissions. You can modify this list in the Permission window.

Email Content

You can personalize both the Email Subject and Email Body for:

• External emails (Email Content tab): For people on your mailing lists or those who enter their emails in the form.

• Internal emails (Email Content to Team Members tab): For your team members.

This is handy when you want different messages for customers (external) and colleagues (internal).

Use the rich text editor to style your email body with ease. You can add styles, links, images, and even variables. For advanced users, switch to Advanced mode to use HTML tags and insert variables directly.

Use variables in Email Body

In your Email Body, find variables by using the Search Variables dropdown.

These variables let you include dynamic information like form text, links to shared PDFs or uploaded files, and specify whether this email should be attached to generated PDF or CSV formatted form data. This adds flexibility to your emails, going beyond static content. In Advanced mode, you can add variables in {{variable_name}} format.

For more variable details, check the Available variables section.

Available variables

The variable formats below all follow their formatting {{ }} in Advanced mode.

Form information

Variables	Description
{{form_name}}	The name you set for your online form.
{{form_id}}	A unique set of numbers and letters that identifies the form.

Form submission info and data

Variables	Description
{{submission_id}}	A code generated when someone submits a response to your form.
{{data.fidXX}}	To include specific submission data, like “Full Name” with a field ID of “3”, simply add {{data.fid3}} to your email body.

Shared links

Variables	Description
{{shared_editor_link}}	This link lets both you and respondents open and edit a submitted form. Respondents can use it to make changes and resubmit, and you’ll receive an updated PDF automatically.
{{shared_attachment_link}}	Use this link to download file attachments uploaded from the File Upload field.
{{shared_pdf_link}}	For the PDF link of the submitted data, include this custom field in your email body.

Attachments and fields

Variables	Description
{{attach_pdf_file}}	Include this variable to attach a PDF file with all the collected data to your email notification.
{{attach_csv_data}}	Add this variable to attach the CSV data file, containing all the submitted data from a specific form, to your email notifications.

Customize file links and attachments

By default, variables like {{shared_attachment_link}}, {{shared_pdf_link}} and {{attach_pdf_file}} include all files. However, you can also be specific about which files you want to share or attach in the email.

• {{shared_attachment_link}}: If your form has multiple fields for file uploads, you can add the field ID to the link to only include files uploaded through that specific field. For example, {{shared_attachment_link.fid4}} gives you the link(s) to file(s) uploaded via field #4.

• {{shared_pdf_link}} and {{attach_pdf_file}}: With a Master form, there can be several PDF files. If you only want to share or attach certain PDF files, you can specify a PDF ID like {{shared_pdf_link.frums9j3bya}} or {{attach_pdf_file.frums9j3bya}}. You’ll find this PDF ID in the “Name” section by clicking on the form menu on the PDF cover of that particular linked PDF.

Tracking and revisions

Variables	Description
{{tracking_code}}	A numeric identifier for searching respondents’ submission details on the Submission page.
{{revision}}	This variable indicates the revision number, starting at 1 and increasing with each edit. It helps you track the number of times the online form has been revised.
{{revision logic block}}	To access the submission number after it has been re-edited with a revision greater than 1, use this variable. Using it in Email Body: Using it in Email Subject or Body in Advance mode:

{%if revision > 1 %} Revision {{revision}} {% endif %}

Certificate and Checksum

Variables	Description
{{attach_sign_cert_pdf}}	This variable allows you to attach a Signature Certificate PDF to your email notifications. It helps verify if the signature has been altered. To receive the Signature Certificate, you must enable it in the Invitation settings.
{{sign_cert_checksum}}	When using signature certificate feature, it includes the SHA256 checksum of the generated signature certificate PDF. This checksum helps confirm the authenticity of both the certificate and the document.
{{checksum logic block}}	If you use signature certificate and want to include the logical operation of the Signature Certificate in your email notification, you can use this custom field.

Workflow

If this form is part of a larger workflow, you can use these variables:

For instance, you can apply {% if %}...{% else %}...{% endif %} to display specific information depending on whether the submission is part of the workflow or not.

{% if is_workflow %}
    This submission is the {{step_ordinal_index}} step of the workflow {{workflow_name}}.
    {% if next_step_link %}
        You can continue the next step of this workflow by clicking this link: {{next_step_link}}
    {% else %}
        This is the final step in this workflow. No further action is required.
    {% endif %}
{% endif %}

Reference previous workflow steps

When composing emails, you can refer to variables from previous steps using “stepN.” format. Here, “N” represents the step number, starting from 1. For example, in a 3-step workflow, during the third step, you can use {{step1.data.fid3}} to access the value from the field fid3 in the first step.

It’s not just form values that can use this format like {{stepN.data.fidXX}}, any variable can follow this “stepN.” pattern. For instance, {{step2.shared_attachment_link}} points to files uploaded in step 2, and {{step2.next_step_link}} leads to the link for opening the blank form in step 3.