Email Actions

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An email action emails each submission’s files to the people you choose, as soon as the submission is ready: its PDF, and a Word template’s Word document and OpenDocument file. It can send to fixed addresses, such as your team’s, to the address someone typed into one of the template’s fields, and to an address in the submission’s metadata. Each email has your subject and message, and attaches the files or links to them. It can send for every submission, or only for the submissions that meet its conditions.

Add an email action to one template, or to your account to send it for every template, or the templates and folders you choose.

Email actions email anyone on a paid plan (Starter or higher). On the Developer plan or during a free trial, you can set them up and try them out, but they only email your team: Send a test, and test submissions’ emails to your team members. Live submissions’ emails aren’t sent until the account has a paid plan.

Adding an email action

In the template editor, click Settings, open the Emails tab and click Add email action. A template can have several, such as one for the person who filled in the form and one for your records.

To, Cc and Bcc: addresses, and the addresses each submission gives: pick a text or email field, or type metadata. and a key. An email can have up to 10 recipients, counting each field and metadata value as one.
From name: the sender’s name. Leave it blank to use your account’s name.
From address: an address at one of your verified email domains. Leave it blank to send from DocSpring’s address.
Reply-To: where replies go, a team member’s address or one at your verified email domains. It starts as your own address.
Subject and Message: the email’s text, with variables. Leave them blank for a short default that names the template.
File name: the attached files’ name, with variables, such as Lease {{ data.unit }}. Each file gets its own extension: .pdf, .docx or .odt. Leave it blank for the name in the submission’s pdf_filename metadata, or the template’s name. A download link’s files keep the names their other downloads have.
Format: on a Word template, which of the submission’s files to send (see below).
Delivery: attach the files, or Send a download link (see below).
Submissions: live submissions, test submissions, or both. Test submissions only email your team members’ addresses, so you can try the action out without emailing anyone else.
Conditions: Every submission, or only the submissions that meet these conditions.

Email actions belong to the template’s draft and take effect when you save them. Publishing a version doesn’t change them.

Send a test emails the action’s email to you only. It shows each field’s value as the field’s name in brackets, and each metadata value as [metadata.key], so no submission’s data goes anywhere. When the action attaches its files and the template is a PDF template, the test attaches the template’s blank PDF. Otherwise the test has no attachment, and says what the real emails have. Without a paid plan, it needs your email address to be confirmed.

Email actions for every template

To send the same email for many templates, add it to your account: open Integrations in the sidebar, click Set up email actions on the Email card, then Add email action. It has the same settings as a template’s email action, and:

Sends for: Every template, or Chosen templates and folders: the templates you pick (type a name or an ID to find one) and the templates in the folders you pick, including the folders inside them. You can pick up to 500 templates and 500 folders. To send for more templates than that, put them in a folder and send for the folder.
In To, Cc and Bcc, type a field’s name to send to its value. A template without the field skips it, a {{ data.field_name }} variable for a field that a template doesn’t have prints nothing, and a condition on one reads it as blank.
Use {{ template.name }} in the subject or message to say which template the files are from.
Format can choose Word documents or OpenDocument files. Only Word templates make them, so the action sends no email for the other templates’ submissions.

Send a test sends the email as it would go for the template it sends for that you changed most recently.

Changing one for a template

A template’s Emails tab lists your account’s email actions that send for it, under From your account:

The switch turns one off or on for this template only. One that’s off for your account shows Off, and is off for every template.
Customize changes its settings for this template only. The settings you don’t change follow your account’s email action, so later changes to them there apply here too. Each changed setting is marked Changed for this template: Reset to the account’s setting undoes one, and Reset all undoes every change.
Edit it for every template opens your account’s email actions.

Deleting one of your account’s email actions also deletes its changes on every template.

Addresses from the submission

To, Cc and Bcc can each send to an address that every submission gives:

A field: pick one of the template’s text or email fields. Each submission’s value gets the email. For a field in a list, every row’s address gets it.
Metadata: type metadata. and the key, such as metadata.agent_email, or metadata.agent.email for a value inside an object (up to 5 levels deep). Submissions get their metadata from the API or a web form link’s metadata parameters.

A field or metadata value left blank, or without a valid address, is skipped for that submission, and the submission page says why. A field that a conditional logic rule hides gets no email: the PDF doesn’t show it either.

To send to an address the PDF shouldn’t print, such as the agent who sent the form, either put it in the submission’s metadata, or add an email field and check Hidden in its settings. A hidden field is on the online form and in the API, but not on the PDF, and its value still gets the email. Fill it in with the API, or hide it on the form too with a web form link’s hidden_fields and data parameters.

With the API, these are tags in to, cc and bcc: {{ data.client_email }}, {{ data["client email"] }}, {{ data["tenants/~/email"] }} for a field in a list, or {{ metadata.agent_email }}.

Sending only some submissions’ emails

Choose Only the submissions that meet these conditions under Conditions, then add the conditions, as in a conditional logic rule: a field, a condition (such as Equals, Is one of or Greater) and a value. With more than one, choose whether all of them or any of them must match. An email action can have up to 20 conditions.

Conditions read the values the PDF shows: formulas are worked out, and a field that a rule hides counts as blank. Number comparisons need a number field, and conditions can’t check a field in a list. A submission that doesn’t meet them sends no email, and its page shows Skipped with Conditions not met. A test email always sends, and says that the action has conditions.

With the API, set send_when to { "match": "all", "conditions": [...] }, with conditions in the format of a template’s conditional logic rules.

Variables

The subject, message and file name can include these variables:

Variable	Value
`{{ data.field_name }}`	A field’s value, as the PDF shows it
`{{ data["field name"] }}`	The value of a field whose name has spaces
`{{ metadata.key }}`	A value in the submission’s metadata
`{{ template.name }}` and `{{ template.id }}`	The template’s name and ID
`{{ submission.id }}`	The submission’s ID
`{{ account.name }}`	Your account’s name

The if, unless and case tags work too:

Hi {{ data.first_name }},

Your signed lease for {{ data.address }} is attached.
{% if data.pet_deposit != blank %}
Your pet deposit is {{ data.pet_deposit }}.
{% endif %}

Insert a field puts a field’s variable where your cursor is. A variable that isn’t one of these, or a field that isn’t on the template, is an error when you save. A field you remove later prints nothing.

Word templates

A Word template’s submissions make Word documents, OpenDocument files (.odt) or PDFs, as its Output setting chooses, or the formats an API request asks for (see Output Format). Choose which of them an email action sends under Format:

All files (the default): every file the submission made.
Word document (.docx), OpenDocument file (.odt) or PDF: only that file.

A submission that didn’t make the chosen file sends no email, and its page shows Skipped, with No Word document to send for example. A file the submission makes later, such as a PDF made from its Word document, isn’t emailed. With the API, set file_formats to docx, odt, pdf or all.

Attachment or download link

Attach the PDF (or Attach the files) attaches the submission’s files, with the audit trail when the template merges it into the PDF. Files over the action’s attachment size limit, together, go as a download link instead.
Send a download link sends a link to a DocSpring page with a button to download each file. Each link works for 7 days. After that, the page lets anyone the email went to ask for a new link, which is emailed to them. Links stop working once the submission’s files are deleted (see Expire Submissions).

Accounts that have signed a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with us start with download links.

Attachment size limit

Emailing a file makes it about 38% larger, and many company mail servers refuse emails over 10 MB. So when an action attaches its files, files over 7 MB together go as a download link instead: 7 MB of files makes an email of about 9.6 MB.

If everyone the action emails accepts larger emails, such as Microsoft 365 (up to 36 MB) or Gmail (50 MB), raise the limit with the slider under Delivery, up to 25 MB. A template can change it for its own emails. With the API, set max_attachment_mb. 1 MB is 1,000,000 bytes. See Email Attachment Size Limits for the limits of each mail service.

On DocSpring Enterprise, emails go through your install’s own email service, so its limit applies too: Postmark, for example, accepts emails up to 10 MB, which fits about 7 MB of files.

Sending from your own domain

Emails come from DocSpring’s address with your account’s name, and replies go to the action’s Reply-To address:

From: Acme Inc via DocSpring <[email protected]>

To send from your own address instead, verify your domain:

Open Email domains in the sidebar and click Add domain. Use the domain you’ll send from, such as example.com, or a subdomain such as mail.example.com.
Add the DNS records it shows where you manage your domain’s DNS (your domain registrar or DNS host):
- three DKIM CNAME records, which sign the emails (required),
- a MAIL FROM MX and TXT record, which let SPF pass for your domain too (recommended),
- a DMARC TXT record, if your domain doesn’t have one yet (required).
DocSpring checks for the records every few minutes, and the domain is verified once its DKIM and DMARC records are found. DNS changes can take a few hours to show. Click Check again to check now.

Then choose an address at the domain in an email action’s From address. Keep the records in your DNS: we check them every day, and email actions can’t send from a domain whose records are gone.

If the DKIM records aren’t found within 3 days, the domain needs new ones: click Check again to get them, then replace the three CNAME records.

Enterprise installs send email actions through the email service they’re set up with, and have no Email domains page.

Failures and the submission page

The Integrations tab of a submission’s page lists each email’s recipients and what happened to their email: Sent, Delivered, Not delivered (the recipient’s mail server kept refusing it, for example because the mailbox was full), Bounced, Marked as spam, or why it wasn’t sent (a field left blank, an address that isn’t valid, a test submission, or an address listed twice, which gets one email).

Some failures mean the action’s settings need fixing: the From address’s domain is no longer verified, or a field it sends to was renamed or removed from the template (the Emails tab shows Field missing). When an action’s emails keep failing, the account owner gets an email (unless you turn off Email the account owner when its emails fail), and again a day later. After 3 days of failures the action turns itself off. Fix the problem, then turn Send emails back on.

Without a paid plan, live submissions’ emails aren’t sent. The submission page says why, and they don’t count as failures.

A fixed address (in To, Cc or Bcc) that bounces or marks an email as spam turns the action off straight away, since every later email to it would fail too, and the account owner gets an email. When a template’s changes to one of your account’s email actions added that address, only that template’s email turns off.

Problems with an address that came from a submission’s field or metadata (left blank, not an address, or bounced) are shown on the submission but don’t turn the action off.

API

Email actions and email domains have API endpoints, and the API clients have methods for them. A template’s email actions include your account’s email actions that send for it, with the template’s customization of each, which you change or remove with its own endpoints. Your account’s email actions are at /email_actions. A submission’s actions include its email actions’ emails.

An AI assistant connected to the MCP server with full access can set up and change email actions too.

Email Actions API

Email Domains API