Workflow notifications

Notifications are the emails Droplet sends as a submission moves through your workflow. They tell the right person that something needs their attention, confirm an outcome, or keep a stakeholder in the loop. This guide covers how to add a notification to a step, choose who receives it, write the message, personalize it with form data, and send it only when it matters.

How notifications work

Every notification belongs to a single workflow step, and each step can send more than one. A notification has four parts: who receives it, when it sends, what the email says, and an optional condition that decides whether it goes out at all.

There are three moments a step can send email:

• Send to Assignee. The email that goes to whoever the step is assigned to, letting them know they have something to do. This is the most common notification and the one most steps need.

• Send When Step Begins. Extra emails sent the moment the step starts, to people other than the assignee. Use this to notify a manager or a shared inbox that a review has begun.

• Send When Step Finishes. Emails sent once the step is completed.

Where to find notifications

1

Open the workflow

Open your form and switch to the Workflow tab at the top of the builder. You will see your steps laid out on the canvas.

2

Open a step

Hover the step you want to edit and click Edit Step. The envelope icon on the step shows how many notifications it already has.

3

Go to the Notifications tab

Inside the step, select the Notifications tab. The left column lists the three send times, and the right side is where you write the email.

Notify the assignee

Start with the most common case: emailing the person the step is assigned to. Select Send to Assignee in the left column, then write the message on the right.

Add other recipients

To email someone besides the assignee, use Send When Step Begins or Send When Step Finishes and click + Add, then Add Recipient. You can choose one of three recipient types.

Add as many recipients as a notification needs. Each send time keeps its own list, so the people notified when a step begins can differ from the people notified when it finishes.

Write the email

Each notification has a subject line and a rich-text body. Type the subject at the top, then write the body in the editor below. The toolbar gives you bold, italic, underline, font and size controls, alignment, lists, and a link tool, so you can format the message and add a clear call to action.

Personalize with dynamic fields

To drop live submission data into the email, place your cursor where you want it and click Add Dynamic Field. Droplet inserts a labeled chip that is replaced with the real value when the email sends. You can use dynamic fields in both the subject and the body.

Your own form fields appear in this menu (such as a request title or amount), and so do a set of built-in values about the submission, the assignee, and the person who started it:

The same menu also holds the links that send recipients back into Droplet (Submission URL, Notification URL, and Link), covered next.

Link recipients to the submission

Most notifications should give the recipient a way to get back into Droplet. The Add Dynamic Field menu offers three link options, and choosing the right one for your audience matters.

To add one, place your cursor (or select a button such as a Review & Confirm button), then choose the link from Add Dynamic Field. The recipient gets a working link that opens the right submission.

Send only when conditions are met

Sometimes a notification should go out only in certain cases, like emailing a finance approver only when an amount is over a threshold. Click Add Send Rule? on the notification to open the Notification Send Rule editor.

Attach a PDF of the submission

To include a full PDF copy of the submission with the email, turn on the Attach PDF of Submission toggle at the top right of the notification. This is handy for recipients who want a record on file or who are not Droplet users.

The toggle attaches a standard PDF, the same copy a recipient would get from a basic export. To control exactly what that PDF includes, such as embedding uploaded files or adding the activity log, configure the attachment in code. See Control what the attached PDF includes below.

Advanced: edit notifications in code

Implementation Managers and builders working in the Code Builder can author notifications directly. Each step's notifications live under an onEnter key, which can hold a single notification or an array of them.

{
  "managerReview": {
    "onEnter": [
      {
        "type": "assignment",
        "template": {
          "subject": "Approval needed: ##requestTitle##",
          "body": "<p>Hi ##recipientFirstName##, ##submittedByName## has submitted a request that needs your approval.</p><p><a href='##assignmentUrl##'>Review & Confirm</a></p>"
        }
      },
      {
        "template": {
          "subject": "Large request flagged for finance",
          "body": "<p>A request over threshold was submitted. <a href='##submissionUrl##'>View it</a>.</p>"
        },
        "recipients": [
          { "type": "static", "name": "Finance", "email": "finance@example.org" }
        ],
        "if": "isGreaterThan(parseFloat(requestedAmount), 75000)"
      }
    ]
  }
}

The interpolation tokens map directly to the dynamic fields above:

Control what the attached PDF includes

The Attach PDF of Submission toggle attaches a standard PDF. In code, that toggle is the attachSubmissionPdf flag, a sibling of template on the notification. To tune what the PDF contains, add a pdfOptions object alongside it. Each key mirrors a checkbox from the manual Export to PDF dialog, so a notification can attach the same fuller PDF an admin would build by hand.

{
  "onEnter": {
    "type": "assignment",
    "template": {
      "subject": "Approval needed: ##requestTitle##",
      "body": "..."
    },
    "attachSubmissionPdf": true,
    "pdfOptions": {
      "uploadsInPdf": true,
      "privateUploads": true,
      "activityLog": true
    }
  }
}

Every option is a boolean that defaults to false, so list only the ones you want to turn on.

Design the email with HTML

The body accepts HTML, so you can move past plain text to a branded, personalized email with a logo, a clean details panel, and a clear button. Use table-based markup for the widest email-client support. When you place the markup in the body, write it as a single-line string and use single quotes around the HTML attributes so it stays valid inside the JSON.

Get the code block for a notification

An assignment notification does not show up in the code editor until it has been customized in some way. To get a correctly formatted block to paste your HTML into:

The same approach works for custom notifications: set them up in the builder first, then refine the HTML in the code editor.

A starter HTML template

Here is a layout some Droplet forms use: a centered card with a logo, a heading, a grey details panel, and a single call-to-action button. Replace the logo URL, heading, copy, and dynamic fields, and point the button at ##assignmentUrl## (or ##submissionUrl## for a view-only link).

<table width='100%' border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0' align='center' style='max-width: 600px; margin: auto; background-color: #ffffff; padding: 20px;'>

  <!-- Logo -->
  <tr><td align='center' style='padding-bottom: 20px;'>
    <img src='YOUR_LOGO_URL' alt='Logo' style='display: block; max-width: 200px; height: auto;'>
  </td></tr>

  <!-- Heading -->
  <tr><td align='center' style='padding-bottom: 20px;'>
    <h1 style='font-size: 26px; color: #000235; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; font-family: sans-serif;'>Action needed</h1>
  </td></tr>

  <!-- Details card -->
  <tr><td align='center' style='padding-bottom: 20px;'>
    <table width='100%' border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='20' style='border: 1px solid #e0e0e0; border-radius: 10px; background-color: #f9f9f9;'>
      <tr><td align='left'>
        <p style='font-size: 16px; color: #555555; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0; font-family: sans-serif;'>
          Hi ##recipientFirstName##,<br /><br />
          ##submittedByName## has submitted a request that needs your review.<br /><br />
          <b>Item:</b> ##requestTitle##<br />
          <b>Submitted by:</b> ##submittedByName## (##submittedByEmail##)
        </p>
      </td></tr>
    </table>
  </td></tr>

  <!-- Call to action -->
  <tr><td align='center'>
    <a href='##assignmentUrl##' style='display: inline-block; padding: 12px 24px; font-size: 16px; color: #ffffff; background-color: #000235; border-radius: 6px; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; font-family: sans-serif;'>Review Now</a>
  </td></tr>

</table>

Tips for reliable notifications

• Test by publishing, not previewing. Notifications do not send from Preview. To test them, publish the form and run a real submission through the workflow with a few internal people, then confirm the right person got the right email with the values filled in.

• One job per email. A clear subject, a short body, and a single obvious link outperform a long message with several asks.