ChronoForms v3.

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#3 Adding emails to a form in ChronoForms

CHRONO
E N G I N E
www.chronoengine.com
Adding emails to a form in ChronoForms

With most web forms we want to either save the results in a database or send them in an email - or both.
This tutorial shows how we can add email capability to a ChronoForms form.

Here we have the ChronoForms Forms Manager open, the form is the one created in the previous tutorial.
Notice that over to the right the Emails block says "Enabled:0 Disabled:0" - that is we have no emails set for this form.
Click on the Form name to open the form for editing.

Adding emails to a form in ChronoForms - 1 Tutorial by GreyHead ~ www.greyhead.net

Open the Email wizard

When the form is open for editing you can see the second tab is "Setup Emails". Click this tab to open it.

Adding emails to a form in ChronoForms - 2 Tutorial by GreyHead ~ www.greyhead.net

Add a new email

The two icons to the top left allow us to add (and delete) email containers.
Once a container is open we can drag email elements into it from the list on the right.

Adding emails to a form in ChronoForms - 3 Tutorial by GreyHead ~ www.greyhead.net

Working with the Email container

Notice that when the container opens it is coloured red.

This means that ChronoForms doesn't yet have all the information it needs to complete the email.
The Email Properties box has also opened at the bottom right and you can see that the 'Enabled?' option is greyed out.
When we hover over one of the email elements a Tooltip opens up to give us some information about the element.
In this case I've chosen the first element 'To'. This will give a fixed email address - probably that of a site administrator or owner.

Adding emails to a form in ChronoForms - 4 Tutorial by GreyHead ~ www.greyhead.net

Adding email elements

Here I've added the 'To' element and typed in a valid email address; and I've added a Subject and typed in a value.
(This values will be fixed. You can set a 'To address' or a 'Subject' that uses fields from your form by using the 'Dynamic To' and 'Dynamic Subject'
elements.)
Notice that the Email continier is still red so we haven't yet added all the required elements.

Adding emails to a form in ChronoForms - 5 Tutorial by GreyHead ~ www.greyhead.net

Completing the Email

I need to add two more elements 'From Name' and 'From Email' before the container turns green.
I've typed values in these two fields too. If you leave any of these fields empty the email probably won't work correctly.
The Enabled? drop-down is then open and I can set it to yes.
Lastly I need to click 'Apply' to save this Email setup.

Notes:
1) Use different email addresses in the To and From fields. Some ISPs may drop emails where both fields are the same.
2) The From email address may need to be from the same domain as your site, some ISP refuse to accept emails if the domains do not match.

Adding emails to a form in ChronoForms - 6 Tutorial by GreyHead ~ www.greyhead.net

Enable emailing the form results

One important step left is to turn on 'Email the results?' in the General tab.

Adding emails to a form in ChronoForms - 7 Tutorial by GreyHead ~ www.greyhead.net

Testing the email

To test an email you can turn 'Debug' On in the General tab; then 'Save' and use the link in the Forms Manager to open the form in a new window
or tab.
Complete and Submit the form and you will see some Debug information including a 'dummy' version of your email.
Here you can see that ChronoForms has created a simple template from our form and the email headers include the information that we entered
into the Email Container.

Note: in the General tab you should now see that the Emails entry says Enabled:1 Disabled: 0

Adding emails to a form in ChronoForms - 8 Tutorial by GreyHead ~ www.greyhead.net