FormBuilder notifications

Clients ask for this all the time:

Can I get an email notification when someone submits this form?

Yes. In CiviCRM FormBuilder, you can. Most form tools make this obvious. In CiviCRM, the setup is possible, but not neccessarily intuitive to make it happen.

Here’s how I often use do it with the form logging an activity and adding CiviRule with:

1. Use an Activity is added trigger
2. Add an Activity Type = Program Proposal condition, as an example
3. Add a Send Email action using the Email API extension with a message template for that notification.

That gives the rule access to the contact and activity data and it’s custom fields from that submission. Some basic core tokens are

Date: {activity.activity_date_time}
Details: {activity.details}

Basic activity tokens can show the date and details, but most notifications need the custom fields from the form submission. Those tokens must come from the activity entity such as:

{activity.custom_126}

There is also a FormBuilder submission trigger in CiviRules, which operates similarly. That can be helpful for straightforward notifications because the first entity of each type is available as context, such as the first contact and activity registered.

For more advanced workflows that require Smarty logic, I still use the activity-based trigger.

Here’s the deal:

But this still feels more “assembly required” than it should. For each use case, you need a CiviRule, a message template, and the right entity tokens lined up.

I would expect this to evolve over the years to be more integrated into the form building workflow process, but for now, this will do what you need.