What you'll build
By the end of this guide, you'll have an AI-powered email collection workflow attached to a Formaloo form. When you CC a unique Formaloo email address in any email thread, the agent reads the conversation, extracts the relevant information, fills in the connected form fields, and automatically sends follow-up emails asking for anything that's still missing, all without you doing any manual data entry.
💡 New to Formaloo forms? Start here first: How to create a form.
When to use CC Formaloo?
You're already emailing a client or vendor and need to collect structured information from that thread without asking them to fill a separate form
Your team manually copies information from email replies into a spreadsheet or CRM and wants to eliminate that step
You're collecting intake information over multiple back-and-forth emails and losing track of what's still missing
You need follow-up to happen automatically when a contact doesn't provide all the required fields in one email
Your workflow involves concierge onboarding, vendor intake, sales qualification, or any high-touch process driven by email
What is CC Formaloo?
CC Formaloo is the first entry point for Formaloo's AI email collection agent. Instead of sending a form link and waiting for someone to fill it, you CC a unique Formaloo email address in an existing conversation. From that point, the agent takes over.
The agent reads the email thread, understands what information is needed based on the fields in your connected form, extracts whatever the contact has already shared, and fills the corresponding record in Formaloo. If required fields are still empty after reading the thread, it composes and sends a follow-up email asking only for what's missing, not the full list again. This is powered by the same AI layer described in What is Formaloo AI.
This loop continues, extract, fill, follow up, until the record is complete or the workflow times out.
ℹ️ CC Formaloo and Send Email are two entry points for the same agent. If you want the agent to initiate the first outreach rather than joining an existing thread, that's handled by the Send Email workflow. Both entry points share the same extraction, fill, and follow-up logic. Learn more in Generate personalized follow-ups with AI Email Assistant.
How to set up CC Formaloo
📋 Step-by-step guide
1. Open or create a form
From your Formaloo workspace, click + New project and select Form, or open an existing project with the form you want to use.
Make sure your form includes all the fields you need, such as company name, contact name, email, project scope, budget, and timeline. Mark critical ones as Required, the agent uses these to decide what to follow up on. Hidden or admin-only fields will be ignored by the agent.
💡 The more clearly your fields are named, the better the agent extracts the right data. A field called "Project budget" is easier for the agent to match against email content than a field called "Field 4".
2. Hit the AI button in the tool island
Inside the form editor, look for the tool island at the top of the canvas. Click the AI button there to open the agent panel. This is where you configure everything related to the agent for this form.
3. Select CC Formaloo in the Integrations tab
Inside the agent panel, open the Integrations tab and click CC Formaloo to activate this entry point.
⚠️ Before activating CC Formaloo, make sure Autosave responses is enabled on your form. The agent writes data to your form as it extracts it from the email thread. Autosave is what makes continuous record-updating possible. See How to auto-save incomplete responses and let users resume later for the full setup.
4. Describe the context for your agent
The agent already knows your form fields and what data it needs to collect. This step is your chance to give it additional context about your business and how you want it to behave.
You can use this field to shape the agent's tone, communication style, and collection strategy. Some examples of what you can tell it:
Tone and identity: "We're a boutique creative agency. Be warm and conversational, not corporate."
Collection strategy: "Try to collect all the missing information in a single follow-up email to reduce back and forth."
Question style: "Ask each follow-up question with a brief explanation of why we need it." or "Keep follow-up questions short and direct."
Business context: "We're collecting vendor onboarding information. The contact may not be familiar with our process, so be patient and clear."
💡 This field is optional. If you skip it, the agent will still work. It will use the form schema alone to guide the conversation. But adding context makes follow-up emails sound like they came from your team, not a generic bot.
5. Copy your unique agent email address and use it in the CC
Once CC Formaloo is activated, Formaloo generates a unique email address tied to this specific agent and form, for example: [email protected].
Copy this address. From now on, whenever you want the agent to observe and process an email thread, just add this address to the CC field when composing or replying to an email. You can do this at any point in a conversation, even after several emails have already been exchanged. The agent will read the full thread history and extract whatever has already been shared.
ℹ️ Each agent has its own unique address. Keep it saved somewhere your whole team can access it. Everyone can use the same address to activate the same agent on different threads.
Once CC'd, the agent runs automatically: it reads the thread, identifies the contact by email address, creates or matches a record in your Formaloo table, and fills in whatever fields it can extract. If required fields are still missing, it sends a follow-up email to the contact, and you are CC'd on every email it sends so you always stay in the loop. For more on how Formaloo handles email communication around form submissions, see How to send and receive email notifications.
ℹ️ Want the agent to only record data, not send any emails? Enable No follow-up emails in the agent settings. With this option on, the agent will still observe the thread, extract information, and update the record, but it will never send a reply or follow-up to the contact. Useful when you want silent data capture from ongoing threads without any automated outreach.
🎬 Watch it in action
Use cases
Course feedback collection
A training team wraps up a course and follows up with participants over email. Instead of chasing responses to a feedback form, they CC Formaloo in the follow-up thread. The agent extracts ratings, comments, and suggestions directly from each reply, fills the feedback record, and follows up automatically if key fields like overall satisfaction score or improvement suggestions are still blank.
Course enrolment
An education team is enrolling students over email, answering questions, confirming eligibility, and gathering details. By CC'ing Formaloo, the agent extracts enrolment information, name, course preference, contact details, payment intent, as the conversation unfolds. Required fields that haven't been mentioned yet trigger a targeted follow-up, so no enrolment slips through incomplete.
Event RSVP and attendee details
An events team is coordinating attendance over email, sending invites, fielding questions, and confirming spots. They CC Formaloo to capture RSVP status, dietary requirements, session preferences, and attendee names directly from the thread. No one has to fill a separate form. The agent handles the extraction and follows up on anyone who replied but left required fields empty.
Client onboarding
A services team kicks off a new client relationship over email, covering introductions, scoping, and logistics. They CC Formaloo to populate the onboarding form in the background: company details, key contacts, goals, billing info, and project scope. By the time the onboarding call happens, the record is already mostly filled. The agent followed up on anything the client hadn't mentioned yet.
Product research and customer interviews
A product team reaches out to customers for research interviews over email. They CC Formaloo to capture structured responses, use case, pain points, current tools, willingness to participate, without making customers fill a form before the conversation even starts. The agent extracts what's shared naturally and follows up with a short nudge if key research fields are still empty.
What you now have
You've turned a regular email thread into a structured data collection workflow. Your form fields fill automatically as the conversation progresses, required information gets followed up on without manual intervention, and every contact gets a single clean record in your Formaloo table, not a pile of disconnected email threads you have to sort through later.
The work that used to involve copying from email to spreadsheet, sending reminder emails, and chasing missing info now runs on its own. You stay CC'd on everything, so you're always in control, and you only need to step in when the record is complete and it's time to act.