[Webform 8.x-6.x] Fix confusing Send From and Reply To

@jrockowitz I think the two phases are good and especially think some good help tips would benefit it greatly.

I think for the most part, we need to clarify who the "sender" actually is within the UX. That's where I think my biggest confusion comes in. I think of Send From as the person composing the email form because it's on the General tab, however Send From (in this case) is the email server. On the General tab we have details for the sender server (Send From) but not for the sender user (Reply-To).

Anywho, I don't have any docs off hand to point to but I'll do some digging and see what I can come up with.

@jrockowitz I'm clueless on the programming side, but I'll do what I can to help out :-)

Good general info
https://help.campaignmonitor.com/from-name-and-address
https://www.leadsparrow.com/blog/sender-name-best-practices-pitfalls#.XI...

Good info, not really helpful
https://glockapps.com/blog/email-deliverability-best-practices/#2

Great info
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1235534/what-is-the-behavior-differe...

Here's a starting point for some info to better understand the lingo and what's-what.

First and foremost, I'm no expert on the matter of email, though I've got a fairly decent understanding. I may not be 100% correct in my understanding, but let's go with what I know and if things need corrected by someone smarter than me, that's fine.

Headers

Sender / From / Send From: We need to clarify that the sender (From: header) is the "Brand" or "Company" or "Website" that is sending the email. In regards to Webform, the Sender & Send From should be defaulted to [site:name] and [site:email]. This is background information and should NOT be in the foreground IMO. It's a great candidate for the Advanced tab because it contains settings that should rarely be changed by anyone. I say that, and after coming up with a few scenarios (below), It might make sense to poll the community and find out "how" they are using webforms: Collect customer info, reply to customer? Collect Lead info, reply internally? I can see where Send From does make sense on the General tab, but I believe that "reply-to" should also be there as well.

So, yes, you can use any From: address, however there are email hosting companies (Comcast for example) that will reject ALL email if the From: domain does not match the IP for the sending email domain (reverse DNS). In other words, if the server sending the email is sending from IP 1.2.3.4 and the From: header has a domain with the IP 5.6.7.8, some places will reject it because the two don't match. I quit using Hostgator shared servers for this reason because they use an email gateway system with countless IPs. The sender email IP address was NEVER the same as the "sender" (my website) IP which was causing webforms to get thrown into spam or black-holed.

This is why it is a very bad idea to use the customers information in the "Send From" area. From isn't the customer, From is the sending company. This is also why I feel like the Send From and Sender Name/Email in the Advanced area are redundant. They should both handle the "From" header if I'm not mistaken and setting the latter, simply overrides the former which is kinda pointless when you could have simply set the former correct to begin with...

Reply-To: This should be clarified as the email address that a person receiving the webform, will ultimately reply to. This CAN be the same as the From: address in a situation where a webform is used more like a lead generation form and a response would be sent to someone within the company.

If a webform is collecting customer information however, this should be set to the collected email address of the customer.

Example Header Scenarios

Webform Customer Contact
From: no-reply@fancywidgetsinc-fake.com
To: sales@fancywidgetsinc-fake.com
Reply To: sally.customer@_gmail_.com
Return-Path: bounced@fancywidgetsinc-fake.com

Webform Lead Generation
From: leads@fancywidgetsinc-fake.com
To: sales@fancywidgetsinc-fake.com
Reply To: head-of-leads@fancywidgetsinc-fake.com
Return-Path: bounced@fancywidgetsinc-fake.com

Current Thoughts

In my mind, the General tab should have the 3 main headers in this order:

Send From:
Name
Email

Tip: This is the "From:" email header which should come from <em>you</em>.  It should be your brand, company or website entity.

Send To:
Name
Email

Tip: This is the "To:" email header which will be the person(s) responsible for receiving this webform.

Reply-To:
Name
Email

Tip: The "Reply-To:" email header is used for replying to the email that is received.  For example, if you collect a customers email, you would want to reply-to them.  If you collect a lead generation form and want to reply to the coordinator, you would reply-to them.

That's a good start I think?

I'l note, the thing that's throwing me off the most with Send From is that it defaults to the collected Name and Email of the webform if I remember correctly...

In other words, Webform would default send From: sally.customer@_gmail.com instead of sales@fancywidgets-fake.com or whatever the backend site email address happens to be.

Like I mentioned before, From: "should" default to [site:name] [site:email]

On a side note, I personally believe the reply-to should always be added to the email, even if From: and Reply-To: are the same. Not sure if this is proper RFC standards, though I doubt it matters.

Thanks @jrockowitz

Last night, I added a new webform from scratch and noticed the Send To name and email, defaulted to [site:name] [site:email] which is the expected result.

I haven't had a chance to test it and wasn't going to mention it until I did test it, but may as well throw it out there that it may only be the automatically generated "Contact" webform that is present when you first install the module, that uses the Name and Email from the fill-able forms instead of the sites info.

Still, some better tips and help is warranted along with maybe moving things around like the reply-to.

Been thinking about this a bit and simply throwing out an idea.

UX Naming

Send From - Help text for "Send From" would state something like: Send From is the actual sender of the email. This is usually the brand or email address of the website.

Form From - Help text for "From Form" would state something like: Form From is the email captured from the webform. This is usually the customer or incoming contact email that is collected from someone who submitted the form.

@jrockowitz no worries. I know you're busy.

I've attached a screenshot of the pre-built "Contact" form settings which is where my original disconnect came into play that prompted this entire discussion. I do still believe that having the Sender plus the Form info in one area makes the most sense, but like I noted in a previous comment, a brand new webform does not default the Send From to the Form From tokens but instead, defaults them to the correct "Site From" tokens.

Keep this in mind when re-working things that the pre-built form has a major disconnect.

Thanks @jrockowitz

Been a while since I've set one of these up, but look forward to seeing the changes.

On a side note, I think 'Send from' to 'Send from (website/organization)' might make more sense as 'Send from' to 'Send from (website/domain)'

Sorry for being so late to throw in the suggestion :-/