Formaloo gives you a complete email automation system built right into your forms and databases. Whether you need a simple "got your submission" confirmation for respondents, an instant alert for your team, or a fully conditional follow-up that fires only when specific criteria are met – all of it lives in one place.
This guide covers the whole picture: enabling basic notifications, setting up logic-based conditional automations, creating custom branded templates, personalizing with answer piping, attaching generated documents, and building multi-step follow-up sequences.
Two ways to trigger email notifications
Formaloo gives you two trigger mechanisms, which you can use independently or together:
➔ Notifications for all new submissions:
Fire unconditionally on every new submission or record creation. You enable them in the Notify tab of the form editor, and they go out the moment a form is submitted.
➔ Conditional notifications
Are set up in the form's advanced logic, as part of an On Submit or On Update rule. These only fire when specific conditions you define are met – giving you fine-grained control over who gets what, and when.
Both types support custom email templates, answer piping, and document attachments.
How to set up notifications for all new submissions
Open your form in the editor and go to the Notify tab (top right). You’ll find two sections there:
➔ How to notify your team
Toggle on Receive email notifications:
Add a recipient email in the Recipient email field,
Optionally, add more addresses in the Forward email to field (separate multiple addresses with a space),
Choose an email template from the dropdown – or click Add new template to create one on the spot.
If you’re using the default email template, you can also toggle on Attach generated PDF and select a document template.
If you pick a custom email template, PDF attachment is configured directly inside that template instead.
➔ How to notify respondents
Toggle on Send email to respondents:
Select a template,
If using the default template – optionally toggle on Attach generated PDF.
With a custom template, PDF attachment is handled inside the template itself.
ℹ️ To send notifications to respondents, your form needs at least one Email field where respondents can enter their address. If your form has multiple email fields, the notification goes to the first one.
How to set up conditional notifications
Conditional notifications live in Advanced Logic.
From the Notify tab, you can get there by clicking Conditional emails > Set up custom email rules. There, you create rules with conditions that determine:
Whether and when an email fires,
What is sent,
And to whom.
➔ On Submit rules
An On Submit rule fires when a form is submitted and your conditions are met. This is the right trigger for responses that require a specific action based on what the person submitted.
👀 Examples:
If Role applied for is Product designer → send the design challenge briefing to the applicant’s Email field
If Inquiry type is Billing → send an internal alert to
[email protected]
➔ On Update rules
An On Update rule fires when an existing record is updated – not when it's first created. This is what makes status-change automations and reassignment alerts possible.
👀 Examples:
If "Status" changes to "Approved" → send an approval notification to the requester
If "Assigned to" changes → send a heads-up to the new assignee
Recipient options in Send email rules
In any Send email rule, the To field supports four types of recipients (depending on the fields you have on your form):
An Email field on the form – sends to the address the respondent entered in that field
A Profile field – sends to the email of the linked user profile
An Assignee field – sends to the assignee’s email address
A specific email address – type it in directly for a fixed recipient (useful for internal team alerts or for reaching external partners and clients)
Custom email templates
By default, Formaloo uses a default notification template (full submission summary table).
To create branded, personalized emails, go to the Emails menu in your Formaloo dashboard. You can also create a template on the fly from the Notify tab or directly from a logic rule – you'll find the +Create new template option at the bottom of the template dropdown.
From the Emails tab, you can review, edit, duplicate, or send test emails for any template.
ℹ️ Each template lets you configure:
Template name – for easy reference when connecting to logic rules
Sender name – the name recipients see in From
Subject – the email subject line
Reply-to email – where replies land; useful for making sure responses reach the right inbox on your end
Email server – Formaloo’s server by default, or your own custom SMTP for full white-labeling (available on Pro with the white-labeling add-on)
Email body – built with the rich text editor; add text, images, tables, links, and formatting however your brand calls for it
Personalizing emails with @ answer-piping
Answer piping lets you pull submission data directly into your email body, so each outgoing email is unique to that record or response.
Inside the template editor, open the answer piping menu (@) and select a form to see the fields available for it.
Click any field to insert it as a dynamic variable – it gets replaced with the actual submitted value when the email is sent.
➔ With answer piping you can:
Greet people by name: "Hi
@name, thanks for submitting!"Reference any field a user filled in or any variable the logic has calculated in the background: cost estimates, quiz scores, project statuses, dates, assignees, and many more
Include a full summary of the record in the body with
@answered_public
ℹ️ You can use answer piping in email subjects too, not just the body – so the subject line itself can reference the form data.
💡 For a full walkthrough of what’s possible, see How to dynamically pull form data into custom emails, PDFs, and AI prompts (supported variables for answer-piping).
Personalizing emails with AI content
In addition to answer piping, the email template editor includes an AI Content block.
➔ Add a prompt, and Formaloo will use the submission data and your prompt instructions to generate a unique, personalized message for each recipient (or a brief, clean summary for your team) whenever the Send email rule is triggered.
This is useful for generating tailored results, follow-up recommendations, or dynamic summaries based on exactly what someone submitted.
💡 For a full guide, see Generate personalized follow-ups with AI content.
Attaching custom-generated documents
Both unconditional notifications and conditional email rules support attaching a generated document.
When enabled, Formaloo generates a PDF from your selected document template and attaches it to the outgoing email automatically.
Document templates are built in the document builder (the Docs tab in your Formaloo dashboard) using either the rich text editor or the HTML editor – giving you full control over layout and design.
ℹ️ Answer piping works inside document templates too, so the generated file is populated with the right submission data.
➔ This is useful for:
Automatically emailing branded copies of submissions (receipts, order confirmations, booking summaries)
Sending custom branded documents (certificates of completion, personalized quotes built with form logic)
Generating internal reports or briefs (structured summaries for the team to review or sign-off)
💡 To set up document templates, see How to create custom PDF templates to turn your records into branded documents.
White-labeling your emails
Every custom template gives you full control over how your emails look and feel.
Inside the template editor you can add your company logo, set custom fonts and colors, and use the rich text editor to build a layout that matches your brand – so outgoing emails look like they came from you, not from a generic form tool.
💡 For teams that want to send from their own domain entirely, Formaloo also supports connecting a custom SMTP server. This is set up at the workspace level from the Emails tab (not inside an individual template).
Once it's configured, each custom template gives you the option to switch the email server from Formaloo's default to your own SMTP – so the email is delivered from your domain and appears in recipients' inboxes with your sender address.
Using your custom templates in notification settings or in logic
Once a template is built, it's available wherever Formaloo asks you to choose an email template:
In the Notify tab (for both team and respondent notifications),
In any logic rule that uses a Send email action.
A Send email rule in advanced logic follows this structure:
IF [condition]
THEN → Send email [action] → using [template] → to [recipient]
The conditions controls when the rule fires,
The email template controls what kind of email is being sent,
The recipient can be an email field on the form, a profile or assignee field, or a specific address typed in directly.
Building follow-up sequences with cascaded Wait logic
Formaloo’s logic engine lets you build timed, conditional follow-up sequences – where each step checks whether conditions are still met before the next email goes out.
👀 Here's one example – to show how the pieces connect.
A CRM lead follow-up sequence built around stage changes:
A lead record is created with Stage set to Demo suggested
An On Submit rule runs: wait 10 days after the record is created → if Stage is still Demo suggested → change Stage to Reschedule
An On Update rule fires as soon as Stage is changed to Reschedule: Send email using the reschedule template to the lead
That same On Update rule continues: wait 5 days after the record was updated → if Stage is still Reschedule → send a second follow-up email to the lead
The stages, timing, and templates are yours to adapt!
Each rule checks the current state of the record before firing. If the status has already changed, the follow-up doesn’t go out.
This way you can build lightweight, condition-aware drip sequences directly in Formaloo – without connecting a separate email tool.
Workflow examples
Here are a few common patterns to show what’s possible.
➔ Submission confirmation
A respondent fills out a contact or inquiry form. On Submit, trigger an email to the email field on the form using a branded confirmation template. Use answer piping to include their name, the topic they inquired about, and an expected response time.
➔ Status update notifications
A team member updates a request’s status field from “Received” to “Approved.” An On Update rule catches the change and sends an automatic email to the requester’s profile field: “Your request has been approved – here’s what happens next.”
➔ Task reassignment alert
A project tracker has an Assignee field. When a task gets reassigned, an On Update rule fires and sends the new assignee a heads-up email with the task details piped in directly from the record.
➔ Handoff notification
When all required steps in a workflow are marked complete and the status is set to “Ready for handoff,” an On Update rule sends the project admin an email confirming it’s ready – with a document template attached as a summary.
Bottom line
Between unconditional notifications, conditional rules, branded templates, answer piping, document attachments, and cascaded sequences – Formaloo’s email system covers the full communication lifecycle from first submission to final resolution.
You can start with a basic notification on day one and layer in more automation as your workflow grows.