Email Automation

Link email templates to tasks so the right email is ready at the right point in the workflow. Task email automation can prepare an email for review, send an email automatically, schedule an email relative to a task due date, and include configured recipients or documents.

You're always in control — nothing sends on its own

Worried the system might email a client something you didn't want? It won't. By default, automations draft the email and hold it in your Review queue for one-click approve, edit, or skip — a client or agent never hears from DocJacket until you say so. Sending automatically is strictly opt-in, per email. You can also turn on an organization-wide safety switch so every automated email waits for review (see Review before sending below). This "draft-and-review" habit is how our most active coordinators send hundreds of emails with near-zero mistakes.

Most task email automation starts in a Playbook template, then becomes editable transaction-specific automation after the Playbook is applied. Use templates for repeatable workflows; use the transaction task drawer when a real deal needs an adjustment.

When a task email fires

An email linked to a task has two moments where it can fire. Understanding these two moments explains almost everything about task email behavior.

Moment	When it happens	What it does
Its date arrives	The email's own date — the task's due date (or auto-send date) plus any offset — is reached	Depends on the email's delivery mode: prepare the email, or just notify you
You complete the task	You check the task off	Prepares the email for your Review queue

The same linked email carries both. You don't choose one or the other — you configure the email once, and set its date and its delivery mode.

Can an email fire when a document arrives?

Yes, with an Automation Rule, but only when a document is filed under a document category, and the email is only ever prepared and held for your review. It never sends on its own.

A task email does not fire when a document arrives. It fires on its date or when you complete the task, and no setting completes a task when a file arrives. The document trigger belongs to Automation Rules:

1. Go to Settings > Automation Rules (in the Emails & Alerts group of the Settings menu) and click New Rule.
2. Under Trigger, choose When a document is filed, then pick the Document category, for example your closing or title category. Categories come from Settings > Transactions > Documents.
3. Add the recipients (contact roles, direct email addresses, or both) and pick one of your own email templates. DocJacket starter templates must be copied into your templates first.
4. Save the rule.

From then on, each time a document is filed under that category on a deal, DocJacket prepares the email for that deal and holds it in your Review queue. This rule is always held for review, even if your organization lets other automated emails send without review. You check it, edit it if needed, and send it yourself.

Good to know:

• The rule fires for documents filed after you create it. It does not go back over documents already on deals.
• It fires once per document filed under that category: a document uploaded with the category, or one given the category later.
• A document that arrives by email or import has no category until someone files it under one. Until then the rule does nothing for it.
• A document with no category, or filed under a different category, does not fire the rule.

If you would rather not use a rule, you can complete the task when you file the document (completing it prepares the linked email for your Review queue), or time the email to a date such as the task's due date or a key date.

For each linked email you can configure:

• Email template. Templates in the Reports category can't be used here, because they only work when DocJacket sends a generated report. DocJacket refuses with "Report templates only work when DocJacket sends a generated report. Pick a different email for this task."
• Offset and anchor — such as 3 days before the task due date, or on a Key Date like Closing
• Send time
• Weekend or holiday fallback rule
• Delivery mode — draft the email, or just notify you
• Whether it waits for review before sending
• Recipients
• Attached documents

Example:

• Task: Confirm closing appointment
• Due: Closing Date - 3 days
• Linked email: Send closing reminder 1 day before the task due date at 8:00 AM

Emails prepared this way send from the deal assignee's default connected Gmail or Outlook mailbox. See which mailbox an email sends from for what happens when the deal has no assignee or the assignee has no connected mailbox. Upcoming or held date-based emails appear in the Review queue's Scheduled tab, where they can be edited, sent now, or cancelled when supported.

Delivery mode

Every linked email has a When this fires setting that controls what happens when its date arrives:

• Draft email for review (the default) — DocJacket prepares the email and puts it in your Review queue to approve, edit, or skip. This is what most emails should be.
• Just notify me in-app — DocJacket posts an in-app notification telling you the milestone hit, and prepares no email at all. Nothing lands in your Review queue.

Choose Just notify me in-app when the date is only a heads-up for you — "the inspection deadline is coming up" — and you don't want a draft email to clear off your queue every time. Coordinators who review their whole pipeline each morning often prefer this for deadline milestones.

Notify mode only affects the date — completing the task still prepares your email

This is the part worth remembering. "Just notify me in-app" changes what happens on the email's date. It does not change what happens when you complete the task. Check the task off and the email is still prepared for your Review queue, ready to send — even if the notification already went out that morning.

So a task like "Title commitment received" can quietly notify you when the date passes, and still give you the email to send the moment you actually complete it.

Where to set it

You can set the delivery mode in two places:

• On a Playbook template — open the Playbook, expand the task's reminder, and use When this fires under the timing controls. Every deal created from that Playbook inherits your choice. Set it here when it should apply to all future deals.
• On a single deal — open the transaction, click the task, and use When this fires in the Task emails section of Task Details. This changes only that one deal.

Reading the status on a task

In the Task emails section, each linked email shows what has already happened to it:

• Sent {date} — the email was prepared and sent.
• Notified in-app {date} — not sent — this was a notify-mode email. You got the in-app heads-up on its date; no email was sent. You can still send it yourself with Review & send, and completing the task will prepare it too.
• Drafted {date} — waiting for your review, not sent — the draft is in your Review queue. Use Open review queue to go to it.
• Skipped — its send date had already passed when this task was added. Not sent. — the email's date was already behind you when the task was created, for example when a Playbook is applied to a deal that is already under way.
• Skipped — its send date had already passed when the key date it counts from was calculated. Not sent. — see below.
• Skipped when the task was completed — not sent — you chose Skip these when you completed the task.

The two "send date had already passed" skips keep the Review & send button, so you can still send the email yourself.

When a key date is filled in late

Say a task email counts from a key date, and that key date was blank. When you recalculate the deal's dates and DocJacket fills in that key date for the first time, the email's send date can land in the past. DocJacket skips the email rather than sending it late.

This only applies to dates that DocJacket itself fills in during a recalculation. A key date that someone types in, or that arrives from a contract, Follow Up Boss, or the API, counts as entered, and a task email counting from it is not skipped.

If an email has already been sent, its Review & send button goes away — there is nothing left to send. Notify-mode emails keep the button, because a notification isn't an email.

Configuring automation in a Playbook

Use Playbook templates when the same task should prepare or schedule the same email every time the workflow is applied.

1. Go to Templates → Playbooks
2. Open a Playbook in My Playbooks
3. Open the Tasks or Automations view
4. Select the task that should trigger the email
5. Add the email reminder
6. Choose the email template
7. Set the timing — offset, anchor date, and send time
8. Set When this fires — Draft email for review or Just notify me in-app
9. Set recipients and document attachments
10. Save the Playbook

Shared system Playbooks are read-only. Copy a shared Playbook before adding or changing email automations.

When the Playbook is applied, DocJacket copies those automation rules onto the transaction's tasks. The copied rules can then use that transaction's contacts, dates, documents, and smart-field data.

Adjusting automation on a transaction

Use the transaction task drawer when the automation exists only for one deal, or when a template-created rule needs a one-off change.

1. Open the transaction
2. Go to the Tasks tab
3. Click the task row to open Task Details
4. Open Task emails or Scheduled emails
5. Link an email template, or edit the copied automation
6. Confirm recipients, attachments, and date anchors
7. Confirm When this fires — the delivery mode for this deal
8. Save the task

Completing a task with review-required email automation prepares the email for the Review queue. Setting a date on the email means it can also fire on that date — see When a task email fires.

Changes made here apply to this deal only. To change how future deals behave, edit the Playbook template instead.

The email in Review & send shows old wording

Editing an email template changes the emails on deals you set up afterward. It does not change a deal that already has that email on a task. When a Playbook is applied, or you link an email template to a task, the deal gets its own copy of the template, so a later edit in Templates > Email Templates does not reach it. That is why a Review & send window can still show an old greeting after you fixed the template.

There are three places to edit, and each reaches a different set of emails:

Where you edit	What changes
Templates > Email Templates (or the Playbook)	Deals you set up from now on
Edit wording on the task: open the deal, go to the Tasks tab, click the task, and find the email under Task emails	The remaining emails of that template on this deal only, including later reminders in a chase
The subject and body inside the Review & send window	That one email only

Edit wording opens a window titled Edit this deal's wording. It says it changes this deal only and leaves your saved template and every other deal untouched.

The Review & send window builds the email when you open it, from the deal's copy of the template and the deal's current data. If the deal changed or you used Edit wording while the window was open, click Refresh (above the Subject line; hover text: "Refresh the transaction data in this email draft"), or close the window and open Review & send again. Refresh rebuilds the subject and body, so anything you typed into the window is replaced. The Review & send window opened from the main Tasks list does not have a Refresh button; close it and click Review & send again.

An email drafted from a template in the deal's Email tab has its own Refresh button too, which rebuilds the draft from the template as it is saved now. Older drafts whose signature is stored inside the message cannot refresh; start a new email from the template instead.

Recipients and documents

Task email automation can use:

• To, Cc, and Bcc recipient types
• Contact roles from the transaction
• Direct email addresses where supported
• Document categories or selected document attachments

The linked email template still controls the subject, body, smart fields, and any template-level auto-attachments.

Build and test the template in Templates > Email Templates first. The Playbook automation controls decide when the email is prepared or sent, while the email template controls the content, default recipient logic, and template-level document attachments.

Where recipients come from

Recipients can be set in two places, and they work together:

1. On the task's linked email — the recipients you set here always win for that email.
2. On the email template, under Recipients by Role — used as the fallback whenever the linked email has no To recipient of its own.

To send to whoever a task is assigned to, pick Task assignee as the recipient. See Assign a task to a buyer, seller or agent.

So if you set Recipients by Role on a template, every task using that template picks those recipients up automatically. You only need to set recipients on an individual task when that one task should go to someone different.

"Audience" is not a recipient setting

An email template also has an Audience field. That one is for search and filtering — it helps you find templates on the Templates page. It does not decide who the email goes to. Use Recipients by Role (or the task's own recipients) to set actual recipients.

Scheduled emails use the same fallback: a scheduled email with no To of its own uses the template's Recipients by Role (To, Cc, and Bcc). A scheduled email that names its own To keeps that To, and also takes the template's Cc and Bcc for whichever of those it left empty. Its own Cc or Bcc wins over the template's.

You can't save a scheduled email that has no To, either in a Playbook or on a deal. DocJacket asks you to add a To recipient first. A To set on the email template counts, so you only need one on the email itself when the template names none.

If no To recipient can be resolved — for example the role has no contact assigned on that deal — DocJacket does not send the email to the wrong person or drop it silently. It parks a card in your Review queue asking you to choose a recipient, and notifies you. Add the recipient on the card and it becomes sendable.

A scheduled email with no To is held on the deal's Scheduled tab instead, and you get one notification in the bell. This happens as soon as DocJacket sees the email, not on its send day. It is never sent with only Cc recipients. See When a scheduled email has no recipient.

Review before sending

You control whether an automated email waits for your approval or sends on its own, at two levels:

• Per email (the default). Every on-completion email has a Require review before sending switch, and it's on by default. While it's on, completing the task drafts the email into your Review queue instead of sending it. Uncheck it only when you want that specific email to send automatically.
• Organization-wide (the safety net). In Settings > Organization, turn on Review auto-emails before sending to force every automated email across your account to wait in the Review queue for one-click approve, edit, or skip — regardless of the per-email setting. This is the recommended setting if you're new to automation or simply never want an email leaving without a final human look. Drafts auto-expire after your retention window if you don't act on them.

Either way, the promise is the same: nothing reaches a client or agent until you approve it. Automation does the tedious part — picking the template, resolving recipients by role, filling smart fields, attaching documents — and leaves the send button to you.

Can I track a status like Ready to Draft, Draft Prepared, Sent for Review, Sent?

No. A task email has no workflow status of your own to move through, and there is no rule that flags an email as overdue the next business day. The closest things are:

• The Task emails section of Task Details, which shows what has happened to each email: Sent with a date, or Notified in-app with a date for notify-mode emails.
• The delivery mode When this fires: Draft email for review puts the email in your Review queue, Just notify me in-app only tells you.
• The Review queue: prepared emails wait under Ready for Review, and upcoming or held date-based emails sit under Scheduled.

Runtime review

When the Playbook is applied to a transaction, DocJacket creates the tasks and their email automation rules. Before sending or parking a draft for review, DocJacket renders smart fields against that transaction.

If data is missing or a placeholder is unrecognized, review the email before sending. Missing transaction data should be fixed on the transaction. Unrecognized placeholders should be fixed in the email template.

Review-required emails appear in the topbar Review queue under Ready for Review. Scheduled emails appear under Scheduled when they are waiting, held, or ready for schedule management. Nothing sends from the review-required path until a user approves, sends, skips, or dismisses the prepared email.

Tips

• Use Require review before sending for client-facing or high-risk emails.
• Use Just notify me in-app for date-based deadline heads-ups you don't want to clear off your queue — you'll still get the email when you complete the task.
• Use Draft email for review for anything that should actually reach a client or agent on its date.
• Set the delivery mode on the Playbook template so new deals inherit it, rather than fixing each deal one at a time.
• Set Recipients by Role on the email template once, instead of setting recipients on every task that uses it.
• Test the linked email template before attaching it to automation.
• Combine email automation with Playbooks to set up entire email workflows for a transaction type.

If an email didn't appear

If you completed a task and no email showed up in your Review queue, see Why didn't my task email appear? for the short list of causes.