Communicating With Clients

Message a client about their form from the form itself, get an email when they write back, and let them answer from their client link or by replying to the email.

Every form in a Business workspace has its own Communication thread: a conversation between your team and the client filling in the form. Ask for a missing document, clarify an answer, or tell them what happens next, without leaving DS160.io or digging through your inbox for the right email.

Prerequisites. Communication is available in Business workspaces, and every member of the workspace can read and write in it, not only Owners and Admins. To reach the client by email, the form needs a client email (set when you create the form, or on the form’s overview page).

Where the conversation lives

For your team: open the form and click Communication on its overview page. A number on the button shows how many of the client’s messages nobody on the team has read yet. Opening the page marks them read for everyone.

For your client: the same thread appears as a Communication panel on their client link overview, under their form. It tells them the conversation is with your agency, which is preparing their application, and shows your messages under your agency’s name.

The thread belongs to the form, not to one link. If a link expires and you send a new one, the client still sees the whole conversation.

Sending a message

Your client is only emailed if the form has a client email. Set it in the Customer email field on the form’s overview page, or when you create the form. Without one, your messages are still saved in the thread, but the client isn’t told about them: they only see them the next time they open their client link.

Type in the box at the bottom of the thread and click Send. Your message appears immediately, and Seen appears under it once the client has read it.

About two minutes after you send, the client gets an email with your message:

  • Anything else you send in those two minutes goes in the same email, so a few quick messages don’t become a few emails.
  • If the client reads the message on their client link before then, no email is sent.
  • The email goes out the same way as your intake-link emails: through your white-label email (SMTP) if you’ve set it up, or from DS160.io on your behalf if not. It’s written in the language of the client link you last emailed them.
  • It includes a View and reply button that opens their client link, as long as the link you last emailed them is still valid. If it has expired, the email carries your message without a button, and the client answers by replying to it. No new link is created for them.
  • It goes to the address you last emailed a link to. If you’ve since changed the form’s client email, it goes to the new address instead, without the old link.

Replying by email

Clients don’t have to open their link to answer. They can reply to the email as they would to any other, and their reply appears in the thread within a minute or so, marked (by email).

  • Only the reply itself is kept. The quoted email underneath and a standard signature are left out.
  • The reply must come from the address the email was sent to. A reply forwarded from another address is not accepted.
  • Attachments are not kept. If a client attaches a document, the thread says so, and they should upload it through their client link instead (see Document storage).
  • Automatic replies, such as out-of-office messages, are ignored.

For replies to reach the thread, every email we send a client about a form (intake links, reminders and message notifications) uses a DS160.io reply address, such as reply+…@reply.ds160.io. This includes emails sent through your own SMTP server. Clients who reply to your intake-link email therefore land in the form’s Communication thread, not in your own inbox.

When the client writes to you

When a client sends a message, from their link or by email, the form’s assignee gets an email about two minutes later with what they wrote and a Reply button that opens the Communication page. If the assignee has left the workspace, the workspace owner gets it instead. As with your messages, nothing is sent if someone on your team has already read it.

Answer from the Communication page. Replying to that email does not reach the client.

Every email sent about a form, including these, is listed on the form’s Emails page.