Best Ways to Forward a SharePoint Form to Email

Understanding SharePoint Forms

• SharePoint forms are primarily used for data collection and can streamline business processes by facilitating input from users.

• Data entered via SharePoint forms into lists can be linked to other applications such as Excel, allowing for better data management and reporting.

• Integration with email notifications allows form owners and other potential interested parties to be alerted when new responses are submitted, ensuring timely action.

• Custom list forms, such as the ones generated by Infowise Ultimate Forms, can be created to enhance user interactions by displaying, editing, and adding list items.

• Default forms associated with SharePoint lists include DispForm.aspx, EditForm.aspx, and NewForm.aspx, which can be customized or replaced with new forms.

• Custom forms can be associated with specific content types, allowing different forms to display relevant fields according to the content type.

Setting Up a SharePoint List

There are multiple ways in which you can create and publish a SharePoint list (and its associated forms). For those of you who value thei time, I would suggest using the Form Generator feature of Ultimate Forms. It uses simple natural language prompts to suggest a list of most commonly occurring columns matching your requirements, which then can be adjusted further. It saves you the significant amount of time needed to set up all columns manually. It can also facilitates creation of column permissions, validation rules and dynamic rules, resulting in a smart dynamic form right off the bat.

Creating a Form in Form Designer

There are several ways in which you can create forms for SharePoint lists. As I already mentioned, every list comes with a basic set of forms already pre-configured. Those will include all the columns in the list, but not much more than that. These are really only suitable for simple lists that require no special logic.

You can customize the appearance of a SharePoint list form using Power Apps, which gives you additional capabilities, including customizable layout, additional column  configurations and conditional display of columns.

Using the Form Designer component of Ultimate Forms, you can create advanced forms, which include the widest possible array of features, including repeating sections, summaries, payment, electronic signatures and many more unique capabilities. You can easily create modern responsive forms, that can be filled both by internal users, as well as optionally by external visitors.

Adding Email Notifications Using Alerts and Actions

You can add alerts using the built-in alerts or Power Automate. With built-in alerts, you will only have a very limited set of customizations, making it usable only for some very basic scenarios. With Power Automate you have a much wider set of features, but it comes with a price of much steeper learning curve. With Power Automate you can configure your own templates, which will include column values of the SharePoint list item.

When using Ultimate Forms, you have several options to select from, when you want to convert SharePoint list item into an email:

• Alerts component
  • Customizable recipients, both internal and external. For example, you have the ability to easily set a column value of the item to be the recipient of the email (such as Assigned To column value).
  • Variety of triggers, such as events (when item is created or modified), timer (such as 2 days before Due date or 2 weeks after creation) or even all items based on certain conditions.
  • Flexible email content templates, allowing you to create both Subject and Body of the email in an interactive designer and include column values and even action buttons.
• Actions component - you can choose from 2 action types:
  • Send email - simple email sending within the organization, with customizable subject and body
  • Print list items - automate creation of documents in various formats (HTML, MS-Word, Excel or PDF) and delivery via email to a dynamic set of recipients. This action is capable of sending emails to anyone in the world. Make sure to first create a print template inside the Print module. A print template is required to create a print action. In your print template you can design how the result is going to look like. You can for example select which columns from the SharePoint list you want to appear there, as well as create you own custom header and footer. You can even create a shareable header/footer and re-use it across your print template. This makes it easy to ensure the correct branding is used consistently throughout your organization.

In both cases, it is possible to trigger the email based on a specific change in one or more column values, ensuring that only certain changes trigger the email, enhancing the relevance of the email. And with our "after change" conditions, it's easy to ensure the email only goes out when a particular change happens and not on any change. For example, Status after change equals Completed will ensure that only when someone actually changes the status to be Completed, the email goes out. It will not be triggered again, even if the SharePoint list item is modified again later.

Ultimate Forms combines the power of advanced no-code solution with ease of use of built-in alerts for a perfect balance of simplicity and flexibility.

Directly Sending Form Data to Email

You can create a Data connection in Ultimate Forms to allow users to send their submitted data directly via email. This way users can avoid SharePoint lists completely and directly send the form to email. The form based on the Data connection will be emailed upon submission without being first stored in SharePoint. Forms based on data connection can be placed on any SharePoint web part page. They looks and function identically to regular SharePoint forms.

You simply create a new data connection and select Email is your type. Define which columns you want it to include. It's very similar to create columns in SharePoint lists, we support the exact same column types here. Then create a new form, again, the process is identical to working with SharePoint lists. But unlike lists, the infomation submitted through the form of this type of data connection does not end up stored in any list. It is just sent out through an email, without leaving any trace in the system.

Customizing Email Content

When you generate email via Alerts and Actions, you have full control over all properties of the outgoing emails.

• Users can provide customized email subject and body and specify recipients based on values of SharePoint list item columns.

• It's possible to customize the recipient email addresses, email subject, and introductory text through static values or formulas.

• Dynamic content can be included in the email body and subject by referencing properties from the SharePoint list items.

• Email bodies can be modified to include details from SharePoint columns, such as owner information, by appending dynamic content during the email configuration process.

• Including specific values from the list item in the email body improves clarity and relevance for recipients.

• Recipient email addresses in automated flows can be dynamically assigned based on fields from SharePoint list items, ensuring that the correct individuals receive pertinent information.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is a wide variety of possibilities when it comes to sending emails out. They differ in their complexity and features. Try to experiment to find out which one serves your needs the best.