Don't type personal details, such as a client's name.

Emailing Clients Their Intake Link

Set a client's email on a form, send their secure intake link from your agency's address in their language, edit the template, and review what was sent.

Each form can carry the email address of the client it belongs to. Once it’s set, you can email that client their secure intake link in one click — from your own agency address if you’ve connected one, or from DS160.io on your behalf if not — and review everything that’s been sent for the form from one place.

Prerequisites. This workflow is for Owners and Admins of a Business workspace. To send the link, the form needs a customer email. White-label email (SMTP) is optional: it sends the email from your own address instead of DS160.io’s.

Set the customer email

Open a form and find the Customer email field in the form’s overview. Click the pencil to edit, type the client’s address, and save (Enter to save, Escape to cancel). The address must be a valid email; submit an empty value to clear it.

Once set, the address also appears as a small badge on the form’s row in your forms list, so you can see at a glance which forms have a client attached.

With a customer email set, a Send client link button appears next to it. If you haven’t connected white-label email, a note under the button says the email goes out from DS160.io on your behalf.

Example: how this looks on the platform

Click it, confirm in the dialog, and the platform emails your client a secure intake link. The email is:

  • From your agency — sent through your SMTP server if you’ve connected one, otherwise from DS160.io on your behalf. See white-label email for how each is sent, the daily limit without SMTP, and where clients’ replies go.
  • A plain, simple message containing a link of the form …/client-intake/<form>?token=…. If you’ve set up a custom domain, the link uses it.
  • In your client’s language — the email and the intake form both use your workspace’s default client-link language, so the message matches the form your client sees.
Example: how this looks on the platform

The link expires after your workspace’s default number of days, 30 unless you change it. Send a fresh one any time if it lapses. While sending, the button shows Sending…, then Link sent when it’s done.

If a client doesn’t open their link, you can have the platform chase them for you — see automatic inactivity reminders.

Three settings under Workspace Settings → Client intake decide how every new client link starts out:

  • Default Client Link Language — the language the client sees when they first open the link, and the language of the emails about it. The client can still switch languages inside the form.
  • Default Client Link Expiry — how many days a link lasts, from 1 to 365. New client links last 30 days unless you change it.
  • Allow any photo upload — accept any photo from the client and check it yourself, instead of holding them to the DS-160 photo rules. See Document Storage & Photo Automation.
Example: how this looks on the platform

The defaults apply wherever a link is made in the platform:

  • A link you email with Send client link uses all three.
  • On the Create Client Link and New DS-160 form pages, Expires In (Days), Default Language and Allow any photo upload start at the defaults, and you can still change them for that one link.

Changing a default affects only links created afterwards: a link already sent keeps the settings it was made with. Links created through the API state their own expiresInDays and defaultLanguage, so those defaults do not apply to them.

If you use inactivity reminders, keep the last one on or before the default expiry. A reminder set after it is marked in the settings and only reaches clients whose link was set to last longer.

Customize the email template

By default we write the intake email for you. To send your own wording instead, open Workspace Settings → Communication → Client email templates (Owner/Admin, Business workspaces). Templates are plain text and you can edit both the subject and the body.

Templates are per language. Pick a language, write your subject and body, and save. When you send a link, we use your template for your workspace’s default client-link language. If you haven’t written a template in that language, we fall back to our built-in default for that same language — never your template from another language.

Drop these variables into the subject or body and we replace them when the email is sent:

  • {{clientLink}} — the secure intake link. Required in the body; you can’t save a template without it.
  • {{expiryDate}} — the date the link expires, in numbers in the client’s language: 30.06.2026 in Romanian, 06/30/2026 in English. No month name, so nothing is left untranslated.
  • {{agencyName}} — your agency name.
  • {{formName}} — the form’s name.
  • {{customerEmail}} — the client’s email address.

The editor shows a live preview with sample values as you type. Use Reset to default to remove your template for the selected language and go back to our built-in wording.

Review what was sent

Open Emails from the form’s overview to see the form’s email history at …/forms/<form>/emails. You’ll get a chronological list of every email sent for that form — recipient, type, subject, and when it went out — and you can click any entry to read the message body.

This log includes the client intake links you send, plus the platform’s form notifications (such as “ready for review” and client-activity updates). It’s Owner/Admin only and scoped to your workspace and form — it never exposes other workspaces’ or platform emails.

Example: how this looks on the platform