Email the responses on a schedule (Pro)
A form's responses can be emailed to whoever needs them, on a repeating schedule. The coordinator who runs the sign-ups, the bookkeeper who reconciles the registrations, the volunteer working the door - none of them need a login here, and nobody has to remember to press Export.
Setting it up
- Edit the form and open its Settings tab.
- Under Email the responses on a schedule, switch on Email these responses regularly.
- Fill in the addresses, separated by commas. Up to ten.
- Choose how often, what each email holds, and which format.
- Save the form.
The settings
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Send to | Up to ten addresses, comma separated. Anything that isn't a valid address is dropped when you save, so check the field afterwards if one disappears. |
| How often | Every day, week or month - measured from the last email, not pinned to a weekday. A schedule that starts on a Tuesday keeps arriving on Tuesdays. |
| Each email holds | Only what came in since the last one for a digest that reads as "what's new", or Every response, every time for a rolling backup. |
| Format | Any format the Export button offers, including the summary sheet and - on a multi-date event - the attendance list. |
| Send even when there is nothing new | Off by default: a quiet week sends no email. Turn it on if a missing email would look like a failure rather than a quiet week. |
When the first email arrives
One full period after you save. Switching on a weekly schedule today means the first email next week - it deliberately does not fire straight away, because a form with a long history would land in someone's inbox as one enormous attachment.
Send one now mails a copy immediately using the saved settings, so you can check the address works before trusting the schedule to it. It does not move the schedule along: the next scheduled email still covers everything it would have.
Notes
- Sending relies on WordPress cron, which runs when someone visits the site. On a very quiet site an email can be late by however long the site went unvisited. A real system cron fixes that.
- The email goes out from the same From address as the rest of LocalForm's email, set under LocalForm → Settings → Email.
- Save the form before using Send one now - it uses what is saved, not what is on screen.
- Duplicating a form copies the schedule, but starts the copy's own clock, so the duplicate's first email covers its own responses rather than replaying the original's.
- Deleting the form deletes the schedule with it.
- Attachments are written to a temporary file only for as long as it takes to hand the email over, then removed.