Email

When your app sends email (an invoice reminder from a handler, a sign-in code to one of its users), it goes out as the app:

• from your own mail server, through an email connection your organization set up, on your domain's reputation rather than Authoric's;
• in the app's look: its name, logo, colors and footer. Nothing of Authoric's appears in an app's mail;
• into the app's own email log, where you can preview every message exactly as it was sent, with secrets masked.

The pieces fit together like this:

An app sends nothing until it is granted a connection. That is deliberate: deny by default.

1. Connect a mail server

Any provider that offers SMTP works: Postmark, SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or your own server. Under Integrations › Email, choose Connect a mail server and give it:

Test and connect logs in to the server before anything is stored; a server that refuses is reported with its reason (EMAIL_CONNECTION_FAILED). Test again can also send a short test message to an address you give.

Editing where or how a connection connects returns it to untested. Apps keep their grant, but nothing sends through it (EMAIL_CONNECTION_UNVERIFIED) until you test it again. Removing a connection stops every app it was granted to from sending through it.

Connecting and granting mail servers is the Email connections permission; removing one, or an app's grant, is Disconnect email connections. Your organization's owner holds both; give them to others in Access › Policies.

2. Grant it to an app

Open the app, go to App integrations › Email, and choose Add a sender. Pick the mail server and an alias: the name the app's handlers will write.

await sdk.sendEmail("billing", { to: invoice.billing_email, subject: "Your invoice", body: ["…"] });

• An alias is lowercase letters, digits and underscores, starting with a letter, and unique in the app (EMAIL_ALIAS_IN_USE). Revoke it to point it at another connection.
• One grant is the app's default. The first grant an app gets becomes it; Make default moves it. sdk.sendEmail(message) with no alias uses the default, and so do the app's own sign-in, password-reset and invitation emails (see Branding and the app's own email).
• A handler may name the connection by its uid instead of an alias. The page shows both.
• Revoke removes a grant. If it was the default, the oldest remaining grant becomes the default.
• Only a tested connection can be granted.

Because handlers write the alias, not the connection, you can move the app to another provider by granting the new connection under the same alias. No code changes.

3. Send

From a handler, sdk.sendEmail. It needs the sdk:external_email capability, which is deny by default, so the handler's author (and its approver) must hold it. Everything about the message, placeholders and duplicates is in Sending email.

The email log

App logs › Email lists every message the app sent through its own connection: who it was to, the subject, its status (sending, sent or failed, with the server's reason), when, which handler or job sent it, and each message's organization. Opening a message shows it exactly as its recipient got it, in a sandboxed preview, with its plain-text part and details.

• Values written as {{secret}} placeholders appear as ••• in the log. Everything else is kept as sent. See placeholders.
• The log row is written outside the handler's transaction. A handler that sends and then rolls back has still sent, and the log says so.
• Reading the log is its own permission (Read sent email), separate from reading request logs, because message bodies are your customers' personal data.
• Messages are kept for your plan's data-retention window, then deleted, bodies and envelope together.

Errors

Sending has its own errors; see Sending email.

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