How-to

Add a contact form

Let students ask a question from inside a lesson. Every submitted message is saved in your Messages inbox, and you can receive an email notification with a direct reply address.

Add the block

1. Open Alva Courses, choose a course, and open a lesson.
2. Choose Add block → Contact Form. This is available in both lesson editors.
3. Add a heading and introduction. You can hide the subject, make it optional, or require it.
4. Customize the placeholder, button label, and success message, or leave them blank to use the student’s language.
5. Save the lesson.

Choose where notifications go

Email me new messages starts enabled. Send messages to is initially filled from your saved contact-form default in Settings, or your store’s contact address and then its account email if no default is saved. Check this address and enter one email address for this form.

If notifications are disabled or the address is blank, messages still appear in Messages. Updating a block’s address affects future submissions. When resending an older notification, check the address shown in the confirmation.

Set store defaults and student receipts

Open Settings → Email Settings → Contact forms to save a default notification address for new forms. Existing forms keep their own saved address. Clear the default to use the Shopify store contact address again.

Email students a receipt is off by default. Turn it on to send a short acknowledgement in the student’s language after a new message is saved. It does not include the question or an access link. Receipts require a verified account with an email address; retrying a submitted message or resending the merchant notification does not send another receipt.

Automate with Shopify Flow

When Shopify Flow is available for your store, use Course contact form submitted to notify a team or start your own workflow. It runs once for a newly saved message with a Shopify customer identity, and includes the saved message and lesson details. Access-link-only accounts without a Shopify customer ID do not trigger it. See Shopify Flow triggers for the available fields.

What students see

Students send from their existing account, without entering a name or email. They need access to the published, unlocked lesson and a verified Shopify sign-in or the access link in their course email. A preview cannot submit messages.

Messages can contain up to 5,000 characters; subjects can contain up to 150. If the account has no email address, the form asks the student to contact your store directly.

If receipt cannot be confirmed, Retry original message safely retries the same text. Edits stay in a separate draft, which the student can explicitly send as a new message. Unsent drafts are kept in this browser tab when switching lessons. They are separated by store, account, and form, and cleared after sending. Closing the tab clears its saved drafts; blocked browser storage can prevent saving drafts.

Read and reply

Open Messages in Alva Courses. Switch between Unread, All, and Archived, or filter by course. The dashboard shows your unread count, and each student’s profile lists their messages with a link to a student-filtered inbox. Open a message to mark it read. Reply by email opens your email app addressed to the student; replying to a notification also goes directly to the student. Replies are not stored in the lesson.

Archive messages to clear your working inbox, mark them unread for later, or permanently delete them.

When a notification needs attention

A saved message remains available even if email fails. The delivery badge distinguishes not attempted, sending, accepted by the provider, failed, skipped, and unknown. Provider acceptance does not guarantee inbox delivery.

Use Send or resend notification to recover a missing notification. Check the recipient first. If delivery is unknown, the earlier email may have arrived; you must acknowledge the duplicate risk. A skipped notification also needs your explicit confirmation. An active send cannot be resent until its delivery attempt expires.

Sending limits

Each student can send up to five messages in ten minutes and twenty in twenty-four hours. A store can receive up to one hundred new messages per hour. A message’s notification can be manually retried three times per hour. If a limit is reached, wait before trying again.

Privacy and retention

Messages are private to your store’s admin. Removing a student from a course or deleting a lesson does not delete their correspondence. Customer privacy requests include these messages, and customer erasure removes matching messages. Uninstalling Alva Courses deletes stored messages during shop erasure. Emails already delivered to your mailbox remain there until you delete them.

See also

Use a Reflection Box for an ongoing journal, or a quiz to assess learning.

Last updated 2026-10-02