I work for a small not for profit historical society and manage their website. I have a contact page which works fine but I was wondering if there is an email plug-in or stack that will allow an email to be sent to a specific person? An example would be if someone went to our contact page and found a list of names with a checkbox next to that name, could they check the box of that person, write their email and it would then go to that person’s personal email. I have tried setting up a personal email for each of the people in our group name@historicalsociety.org but none of these people know anything about how to set up their email to receive email other than their personal .aol, .yahoo, .gmail. Don’t ask. While it’s not a big deal for me to forward emails to those being queried I thought maybe there was something out there that would allow the email to go directly to them. Formloom 3 does allow me to set up a check box so I know who the email should go to but does not allow for an email to go directly to the person.
Does your host support email forwarding? I always setup forms to go a host email account and set up that account to forward to their personal account.
It does support email forwarding but given what I’m asking seems, upon reflection, not possible. I don’t see how I can separate out each person and have the mail forwarded to their personal account. To do that I would have to set up a separate contact page for each person.
Don’t know if any form stack offers that feature. Should be doable. Greg @barchard has a vary flexible form stack
https://www.chillidogsoftware.com/chillidog-software-rapidweaver-stacks/formsplus/
I don’t think it does what you want but Greg maybe interested in adding that feature.
Are you positive you can’t do what you want with FormLoom? (i.e. have you asked Yabdab)
I know what you want is possible, but I’m not sure what RW specific products will do it.
I use a form-based product called MachForms. If I remember correctly it allows me to do exactly what you want. It has a very nice “conditional” engine. At any rate it’s worth looking into:
https://www.machform.com
I’ve never had to do what you want, but I do remember running across this capability in some product I’ve used.
Hmm. This would not be possible in FormPlus right out of the box. I have a feature request for Subject line parsing. In theory, when this feature is added, create an email filter at your web host that said:
If subject contained X, forward to person X.
Greg
Yes, MachForm does have this. More here:
https://www.machform.com/features-logic-processing#dynamic-emails
That would be very useful for me, and, I suspect, for many others, @barchard.
@barchard that would be very useful.
I can think of a couple days this could be done. Any chance you are using Total CMS?
Are you trying to send a form to a specific person or just a “free form” email?
If you just want to email a specific person, put a mailto link on their name.
@swilliam That is an excellent idea. I will give that a try and see what I can come up with.
@BrandonCorlett No I’m not using total CMS.
@Mathew The first thing I did was to write to Yabdab and got an immediate response telling me it couldn’t be done in Formloom.
Then depending on how important this feature, MachForm may be your best friend in the world!
Forms created can be inserted in a RW page (in a couple different ways) or you can provided a link to a dedicated page. One of the very nice things is that all responses to a particular form get stored in a database so they are easily retrievable, easy to create reports, and so on. In addition you don’t need to be the only one creating forms: others in the group can create, edit, or visit the results of form responses.
Bummer, that would provide a solution that would require no coding and you would be able to add/edit people and their contact info.
The alternate solution is to use a select box to set a javaScript variable that is used to define the email address that the form will submit to.
You could use check boxes instead but that would require a little more work. Would a select box work for you?
Also, what are you using to build your forms? I.e. Foundation, Foundry, formloom, ect.
No coding needed with Machform. I believe @dave has used just this feature: one form and then the message/results get sent to different people depending on stated parameters. He may be able to add some detail that I can’t since I don’t use that particular feature. But I’ve certainly found none of the features hard to use.
Yes, @Mathew is correct, Machform handles this with unbelievable ease. As an example, I have a Contact Us page where a person must select if their comment/question deals with a billing issue (yes or no). Another question asks which location they are asking about (a drop down lists all twenty five locations). Based on their answers, the email goes to someone in the main billing office, or iit goes to the manager of the location mentioned.
This is easily determined using the LOGIC button in the control panel.
Another fantastic feature of Machform is that you (or the client) can add/delete fields (questions) at anytime without touching the database. Machform handles adding new database fields for you. I don’t know of any other form software that can do that.
Machform also makes it super easy to display databases online, should you want to. So, if the owner of the site wanted an easy way to view all submissions (or just specific fields), you can publish them to a hidden page (further, restrict it with robots.txt or lock it down).
I have have over 50 installations of Machform running- all on my cluent’s servers. I can’t speak highly enough of it.
They also offer cloud hosting, but personally, I far prefer my own hosting. And, I believe Yuniar (the owner) will even create and set up your MySQL database (for free!) if you are not comfortable doing so.
If you have any other questions, please let me know. I’m happy to help!
Best,
Dave
Ps- hope you’re doing well, Mathew!
@BrandonCorlett A select box would work and Formloom has that option which is just fine for me as I know nothing about coding. Teaching an old dog a new language is very problematic in my case. The Formloom check box allows the persons name to appear in the email. That email then gets forwarded to that person after it is received. We do not get very many emails from people so I do not have a real pressing problem. I thought if there was something out there I could use it. I do like the mailto: idea. I can create the individual links in the header or footer of Formloom. Not very elegant but functional. I also want to say how wonderful this forum is as well as those that take the time to answer the myriad questions that get thrown at you.
@dave Really appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into addressing my query. Although Machform sounds like a solution I believe it is a bit over the top for my needs and maybe out of my comfort zone. Easy for so many of you is not always easy for me. A stack or plugin with a simple coding tweek supplied by you guys is the reason I love RW.