Using Templating to Customize Notifications & Confirmation Emails

How it Works
Null or Blank Values
Where You Can Use Templates
Reformatting Dates & Times

Templating lets you personalize notification and confirmation messages by adding bracketed templates that are dynamically replaced with data and metadata specific to that entry. You could also think of templating as merge tags.

How it Works

Templates consist of two parts: the template and the parameter. In the example below, {entry:} is the template, which tells Wufoo to pull info from entry data, and Field5 is the parameter, which tells Wufoo what exactly to pull from the entry.

Here's a template you might add to your confirmation message:

Thanks for filling out my form, {entry:Field5}!

When someone completes your form, the bracketed template in the confirmation message is replaced with their entry to Field 5—in this case, the field where they entered their first name:

Thanks for filling out my form, Beyoncé!

Null or Blank Values

If there's no data to replace a template with—for example, if someone leaves a field blank—we'll just replace the bracketed template with a blank space.

Where You Can Use Templates

Templating requires an entry to be created before you can pull data about that entry into other areas. So you can't use templating within the form itself, but instead you can use templating in several places that you or respondents see after submitting an entry to your form.

The following areas support templating:

Confirmation Emails (Subject & Message Fields)
Notification Emails (Subject Field)
Integrations (Notes Field)
"Show Text" Confirmation Option
"Redirect to Website" Confirmation Option*

* We suggest only using the {entry:EntryId} template in redirect URLs. You may also use any of the other templates listed below, but we advise against it since we don’t provide a way to URL encode the URL. This means if you have an unacceptable character (non-ascii or control character like a slash) in your template output, the URL will break. In other words, depending on what characters the person filling out your form enters into their response, there's a chance that it might break the redirect URL.

Data Sources & Formatting Guide

You can pull information into templates from lots of different data sources—answers to fields in your form, entry metadata (information about the person's entry), form metadata (information about your form), or details about someone's payment.

Data Source	Template	Description
Field Data	{entry:Field#}	Inserts the respondent's answer to this field. Replace # with the API ID of the field. How to find the API ID for a field »
Entry Metadata	{entry:EntryId}	Inserts the entry number.
	{entry:DateCreated}	Inserts the date and time the entry was created.
	{entry:IP}	Inserts the IP address of the computer that submitted the entry.
Payment Info	{entry:TransactionId}	Inserts the unique ID of the payment transaction. This can only be used on payment forms using the Authorize.net or PayPal Payflow Pro merchants.
	{entry:PurchaseTotal}	Inserts the total amount paid (numerical value). Payment forms only.
Form Metadata	{form:FormId}	Inserts the unique ID of the form.
	{form:Name}	Inserts the Form Name.
	{form:Description}	Inserts the Form Description.

Reformatting Dates & Times

You can add an extra piece to your template to reformat dates and times to be clearer and more pleasant to look at.

For example, instead of displaying the answer to a Time field as 20:00:00 (the default format), you can display the time as 8:00 PM instead.

You can control the format of the date and time outputs from the following data sources:

Default Outputs
Syntax for Reformatting Dates & Times
To change the format of a date or time output, you can use the following syntax:
{entry:parameter|date_format:"format string"}
- Replace parameter with either the Field# that corresponds with a Date or Time question on your form, or DateCreated, which would reference the date & time the entry was created.
- Replace format string with your preferred Date/Time Formatting Characters », which are characters you can mix and match to display your date and time data in exactly the way you want. Any characters that you include in the format string that aren't included in the list linked above will appear as-is. For example, you can add colons (:) and slashes (/) inside the quotes so they'll appear between the pieces of data.

Example Date & Time Templates

Here are some popular examples of date and time templates you can use:

Data Source	Example Template	Example Output	Description
Time Field	{entry:Field#\|date_format:"H:i"}	20:00	24-hour clock, without seconds
	{entry:Field#\|date_format:"g:i A"}	8:00 PM	12-hour clock, including AM or PM
Date Field	{entry:Field#\|date_format:"m/d/Y"}	07/16/1969	MM/DD/YYYY format
	{entry:Field#\|date_format:"d/m/Y"}	16/07/1969	DD/MM/YYYY format
	{entry:Field#\|date_format:"D M d Y"}	Wed Jul 16 1969	The three-letter abbreviation of the day and month, followed by the numerical day and year.
Date & Time Created	{entry:DateCreated\|date_format:"M d Y g:iA"}	Jun 16 2016 8:00 PM	The date and time the entry was created, in a friendlier format.
	{entry:DateCreated\|date_format:"M d Y"}	Jun 16 2016	If you only want to include the date—not the time—you can enter a format string that accounts for the formatting of the date only. We'll exclude the time info.

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