  {"id":15474,"date":"2020-09-04T07:38:17","date_gmt":"2020-09-04T11:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/?p=15474"},"modified":"2026-03-18T05:36:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T09:36:25","slug":"do-you-know-where-your-form-submissions-are-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/2020\/do-you-know-where-your-form-submissions-are-going\/","title":{"rendered":"Do you know where your form submissions are going??"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"w-screen px-6 cu-section cu-section--white ml-offset-center md:px-8 lg:px-14\">\n    <div class=\"space-y-6 cu-max-w-child-5xl  md:space-y-10 cu-prose-first-last\">\n\n            <div class=\"cu-textmedia flex flex-col lg:flex-row mx-auto gap-6 md:gap-10 my-6 md:my-12 first:mt-0 max-w-5xl\">\n        <div class=\"justify-start cu-textmedia-content cu-prose-first-last\" style=\"flex: 0 0 100%;\">\n            <header class=\"font-light prose-xl cu-pageheader md:prose-2xl cu-component-updated cu-prose-first-last\">\n                                    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] pb-5 after:w-10 text-cu-black-700 not-prose\">\n                        Do you know where your form submissions are going??\n                    <\/h1>\n                \n                                \n                            <\/header>\n\n                    <\/div>\n\n            <\/div>\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n<p>When working with forms, it is important to <strong>always<\/strong> replace the default <strong>Send to Email:<\/strong> and <strong>From Email:<\/strong> fields in the&nbsp;<strong>Notifications<\/strong> settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We use a third party forms plug-in called <strong>Gravity Forms<\/strong> for all our forms. For notifications telling you a form has a new submission you set up the form to send a notifications to your email address. If you don&#8217;t set this to be an email, Gravity forms reverts to its default, which is an empty field for these email settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gravity forms, like nature, abhors a vacuum. So when it sees an empty email setting it looks around and grasps wildly for the closest email address at hand. In this case, it is the registered email address of the web server administrator. It does this by placing in the empty space a variable called <span class=\"s2\">{admin_email}. Some people assume it is the email of whoever owns the form but nu-huh! It is the server administrator&#8217;s. This means your forms submissions are being sent to the Director of Enterprise Architecture in ITS!<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So yes, it is important to make sure you put in the email address you want your form entries to go to. Sometimes you might be gathering student info through this form so be careful!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span class=\"s1\">Instructions for checking email notifications on forms in your site&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><span class=\"s2\">Log into your website here: <a href=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/YOUR-SITE-NAME\/wp-admin\/\"><span class=\"s3\">https:\/\/carleton.ca\/YOUR-SITE-NAME\/wp-admin\/<\/span><\/a> and click on <b>Forms <\/b>on the left hand side.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span class=\"s2\">In your form, click on the <strong>N<\/strong><b>otifications<\/b> link. There may be several notifications. Click on each one in turn and execute the steps 2 to 4 for each.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span class=\"s2\">For each notification within a form remove any reference to {admin_email} (this is the variable but in ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´&#8217;s&nbsp; case places in the address <a href=\"mailto:web@carleton.ca\"><span class=\"s3\">web@carleton.ca<\/span><\/a> if the field is left blank &#8211; you don&#8217;t want this to happen!).<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span class=\"s2\">In its place the departmental or individual email address should be put in its place. In some cases this might mean pulling in the variable that refers to the student address in the form.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>That&#8217;s it. As a reminder to you, there is a big pink box at the top of your forms pages in the backend to remind you to do this.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1292\" height=\"910\" src=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-04-at-7.21.35-AM.png\" alt=\"A screenshot of a typical Gravity Forms form notification admin screen\" class=\"wp-image-15475\" srcset=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-04-at-7.21.35-AM.png 1292w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-04-at-7.21.35-AM-512x361.png 512w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-04-at-7.21.35-AM-1024x721.png 1024w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-04-at-7.21.35-AM-320x225.png 320w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-04-at-7.21.35-AM-768x541.png 768w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-04-at-7.21.35-AM-360x254.png 360w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/Screen-Shot-2020-09-04-at-7.21.35-AM-200x141.png 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1292px) 100vw, 1292px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When working with forms, it is important to always replace the default Send to Email: and From Email: fields in the&nbsp;Notifications settings. We use a third party forms plug-in called Gravity Forms for all our forms. For notifications telling you a form has a new submission you set up the form to send a notifications [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[390,391,276],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-keep","category-rewrite","category-tips-and-tricks"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20610,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15474\/revisions\/20610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}