Send an Email

Send Email (SMTP) sends a message through an email:SmtpClient connection. It is the notification step most long-running processes need: the order shipped, the claim was approved, the document is ready.

The send is recorded like any other activity, which is what stops a restart from mailing the same person twice.

Fields

The activity returns nothing, so there is no result variable to name unless you clear Check Error: then Result names the variable that receives the error, or nil when the send succeeded.

Field	Required	Description
Connection	Yes	The email:SmtpClient to send through.
To	Yes	Recipient address, or a list of addresses.
Subject	Yes	Subject line.
From	Yes	Sender address.
Body	Yes	Plain-text body.
CC, BCC	No	Further recipients.
Reply To	No	Where replies should go.
Sender	No	Envelope sender, when it differs from From.
HTML Body	No	An HTML body sent alongside the plain-text one.
Content Type	No	MIME content type override, for example text/plain.
Email Headers	No	Additional mail headers.

The optional fields above sit under the advanced fields.

Approval Policy, Retry Policy, and Check Error work the same as for every prebuilt activity. See Prebuilt activities.

Set HTML Body as well when you want a formatted message. The plain-text Body is still sent, so clients that cannot render HTML have something to show.

A retried email is a second email

Mail cannot be recalled, and the send is not idempotent: if the message left the server but the activity reported a failure, Auto Retry sends it again. For customer-facing mail, prefer No Retry, or Human Review so a person decides whether to resend. See Error handling and review activities.

Notification or decision?

Use this activity to tell someone what happened. When the workflow needs an answer back, pause it with a human task instead and let the person decide from their inbox in the Control Plane.

Next steps

• Await human task — wait for a person's decision rather than notifying them.
• Call REST API — reach a notification service over HTTP instead of SMTP.
• Activities — write your own activity when a template or attachment is involved.