Smart Recipient is designed for ongoing conversations around a WordPress post, such as a support ticket, task, request, or project item.
Instead of choosing the recipient from a fixed email address or a form answer, the plugin looks at who is submitting the current reply and routes the email to the other people involved in that conversation.
When to use Smart Recipient #
Use Smart Recipient when all of these are true:
- the conversation is connected to a WordPress post;
- there is a post author;
- there is an assigned WordPress user;
- replies are submitted by logged-in users;
- the email should go to the other participants rather than always going to the same address.
If recipients should change because of a form value such as department, category, or priority, use Conditional Recipients instead.
Before you start #
Open WordPress Admin → Nelx JFB Email Templates → Form Templates, then open the template used for the conversation form.
Smart Recipient needs three pieces of context:
- the current WordPress user submitting the form;
- the post connected to the conversation;
- the user ID of the assignee.
If any of that context is unavailable, Smart Recipient cannot determine the conversation route and the template continues through its normal recipient handling.
Enable Smart Recipient #
Find Smart Recipient and turn on:
Enable smart recipient logic (ticket-style conversations)
The Assignee ID field will appear.
Set the Assignee ID #
Assignee ID must resolve to the WordPress user ID of the person assigned to the post.
You can enter a user ID directly or use a form field placeholder such as:
{assigned_staff_id}
A common setup is to store the assigned user’s ID in post meta when the ticket or task is first assigned, then include that value in the reply form through a hidden field.
If you use Rotation to make the original assignment, see Round-Robin Rotation & Assignment Tracking for storing the rotated user ID.
How Smart Recipient routes replies #
The basic conversation has a post author and an assignee.
When the post author replies #
The email is sent to the assignee.
If other participants have previously joined the conversation, they can also remain part of the reply chain.
When the assignee replies #
The email is sent to the post author.
Previously recorded additional participants can also remain part of the conversation.
When another logged-in user replies #
If the current user is neither the post author nor the assignee, the plugin records that user as an additional conversation participant.
That reply is sent to the post author and the assignee, together with any other previously recorded participants, while avoiding sending the same reply back to the person who just submitted it.
This allows a conversation to grow beyond only two people without losing the original author-assignee relationship.
Example: support ticket conversation #
Suppose:
- the customer created the ticket and is the post author;
- Staff User 24 is the assignee;
- a manager later joins the conversation.
The routing behaves like this:
| Person submitting the reply | Recipients |
|---|---|
| Customer / post author | Assignee, plus any recorded additional participants |
| Assignee | Post author, plus any recorded additional participants |
| Manager / another logged-in user | Post author, assignee, and other recorded participants except the manager who just replied |
The additional participant is remembered against the post so they can remain in later replies.
How the plugin identifies the post #
Smart Recipient needs a valid post ID for the conversation.
The plugin can use the inserted post ID when available, and it can also use post-ID information available in the template or submitted form data.
In practice, your reply form should make the current post ID available reliably. If the plugin cannot identify the post, it cannot compare the current user with the post author.
Smart Recipient requires logged-in users #
The current participant is identified using the logged-in WordPress user.
If a guest submits the form, Smart Recipient does not have a WordPress user ID for that participant and cannot apply its conversation-routing logic.
For guest-facing forms, use a normal recipient setup or Conditional Recipients unless your workflow provides another suitable route.
Smart Recipient and Conditional Recipients cannot be used together #
A template cannot have both Smart Recipient and Conditional Recipients active at the same time.
The plugin shows a notice and disables the conflicting option.
The reason is simple:
- Conditional Recipients choose recipients from submitted form values.
- Smart Recipient chooses recipients from the participants in a post conversation.
Choose the one that matches the purpose of that template.
Smart Recipient and Rotation #
These features solve different stages of a workflow.
A common setup is:
- an earlier form uses Rotation to assign a staff user;
- the assigned user ID is stored against the post;
- a later reply form uses that stored ID as Assignee ID for Smart Recipient.
Smart Recipient itself is not a round-robin assignment feature. Its job is to route replies after an assignee already exists.
Personalizing conversation emails #
You can use the normal recipient and current-user placeholders in the subject and email content.
For example:
Hello recipient:first-name,
currentuser:displayname has replied to your ticket.
The dedicated Dynamic Content, Placeholders & Macros guide covers the available placeholders and where each one can be used.
Notifications #
If the Nelx Notification System integration is enabled for the template, Smart Recipient uses the participants selected by the conversation logic when the notification is created.
The notification setup itself is covered in Nelx Notification System Integration.
If Smart Recipient is not routing the email #
Check these points first:
- Make sure Smart Recipient is enabled.
- Make sure Assignee ID resolves to a numeric WordPress user ID.
- Make sure the person submitting the form is logged in.
- Make sure the conversation post can be identified from the submission.
- Make sure the post has a valid WordPress author.
- Make sure Conditional Recipients is not enabled on the same template.
- Confirm that the assignee user still exists in WordPress.
If Smart Recipient cannot establish the required conversation context, the template falls back to its normal recipient flow rather than using Smart Recipient routing.
Where to go next #
If you still need to create the original assignment, see Round-Robin Rotation & Assignment Tracking.
If recipients should be chosen from form answers rather than conversation participants, see Conditional Recipients & Routing Rules.
For the placeholders used to personalize replies, see Dynamic Content, Placeholders & Macros.
