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Workflow Action: Send Email

Action: Send Email

Use this action to automatically send a personalized email tied to a submission — a confirmation, a request for more information, a notification that a decision was made, and so on.

This can be added to a rule's Then step or its optional Otherwise step; configuration works identically in either place.

Configuring it

Step 1: Write the email. Click + Create Email to open the email composer, where you'll write the subject and message. Until you do this, the action shows "No email yet — write the message this action will send," and the rule can't be saved as complete.

Step 2: Choose Recipients. You need to pick at least one recipient source — everyone you add via any of the three methods below receives the email:

  • By role: Built-in program roles for this program (e.g., Nominator, Nominee, Applicant). Choose from the dropdown.
  • From a form field: An email address that was collected as an answer on the submission's form. Click + Add Fields to select which field(s) to pull from.
  • Specific addresses:  Type any email address and press Enter to add it. Useful for looping in a specific staff member or shared inbox.

You can combine all three, for example sending to the Nominee role and a specific staff email at the same time.

Step 3: Optional CC and BCC. Add any additional recipients who should be copied. BCC recipients are hidden from everyone else on the email, including other BCC'd addresses.

Step 4: Decide on "Send only once per submission." This toggle is on by default, and for most workflows, you'll want to leave it that way:

  • On: If this workflow has already emailed a given submission, it skips sending again on a re-run — so manually re-running the workflow (or it firing again) won't spam the same person repeatedly. If a send previously failed, it will still retry.
  • Off: The email will send every time the action's conditions are met, even for a submission that's already received it. Only turn this off if you genuinely want a repeating, reminder-style email.

Common use cases

  • Send an automatic confirmation email to the applicant once their submission is tagged "Eligible."
  • Notify an internal admin address whenever a submission meets a high-priority condition.
  • Send a "missing information" request to the applicant as an Otherwise action, for submissions that don't meet eligibility conditions.

Things to watch for

  • An email address field that's blank on a submission causes that submission to be skipped for the Send Email action — it won't error the whole workflow, but that particular submission won't receive the email. This is logged as a warning, so check the execution log if you expect an email that didn't go out.
  • Double-check your recipient combination before saving — it's easy to accidentally send to a role and a form field email that both resolve to the same person, resulting in two copies of the same email. Since role- and field-based recipients are evaluated independently, "Send only once per submission" governs re-sends across workflow runs, not duplicate recipients within a single send.

What's next