Each time a form is submitted, Beacon can automatically send both an email acknowledgement to the person who filled out the form, and a notification email to someone at your organisation that a new form has been completed.
Tip: Looking for notifications for things other than form submissions? See our related guide here.
Acknowledgements
The acknowledgement setting is on by default, but you can toggle it on or off for each form.
You will need to set which user the email is marked as coming from (it defaults to whoever created the form originally), and you can then customise the text of the email that will be sent.
You can add new fields in your template by clicking the button on the right of your text:
Depending on the form, you may have just one email template or you may have several to cover the various options in the form. For example Signup forms have just one template, but Membership forms have five or more!
Tip: Any replies to acknowledgement emails will go to the person chosen in the 'Acknowledgement email from' drop-down.
Notifications
The notifications work in much the same way as acknowledgements, aside from who gets notified.
You can add any number of people to notify including team members (start typing their name and you can select them) or by directly entering email addresses (hit enter after each one to add it).
Styling notifications and acknowledgements
As well as adding a logo and banner and button colour, there are a few other ways you can add styling to your form. You also have the option to bold, italicise, or hyperlink the text in email acknowledgements, notifications or the 'Description' of any form section.
Simply highlight the text you want to add styling to, and the options will appear:
Beacon forms also support emoji - so feel free to add some of these for an extra personal touch.
That's it! Your form notifications and acknowledgement emails now have some additional styling!
Frequently asked questions
Can I use a generic email address, such as [email protected], for form acknowledgements?
Acknowledgements can only come from users of your Beacon account, so if you'd like to use a generic mailbox for your acknowledgements you can invite it to your account as a read-only user - it will then be available to be set as the acknowledger!
Is there a merge tag for whether someone gave a Gift Aid declaration?
Yes! You can include {{{gift_aid_declaration_ticked}}} in your acknowledgements or notifications to see whether the donor gave a Gift Aid declaration on that form.
The merge tag will display either Yes or No depending on whether they chose to give a declaration or not.
Can I add images to my emails?
Yes. Whilst you can't upload a picture file directly to your emails, you can add an image by using a link to the image, but that image will need to exist somewhere on the internet already.
For example, we're going to use this picture in our email. We add a link to it by using the following format:
