How to email-notify on every new order in Dolibarr (2026 guide)
Why automate order notifications?
Every new customer order is a key moment: you need to alert the right person (sales, logistics, accounting), sometimes confirm to the customer, sometimes trigger fulfillment. Doing it by hand risks delays and forgotten steps. Dolibarr lets you automate this in several ways — let’s review them, from simplest to most flexible.
Method 1 — The native Notifications module
Dolibarr includes a Notifications module that can send an email when an order is validated. It’s the most direct way to get a simple notification to a fixed address.
Its limits: the notification is basic (one event, one recipient, one template). As soon as you want to route by amount, client type, region, or chain multiple actions, you hit the ceiling.
Method 2 — Email templates tied to documents
Dolibarr lets you attach email templates to documents (order, invoice) and send them, sometimes automatically via scheduled tasks for cases like recurring orders. Handy for standardized sends to the customer. See also the Email connector in Knot Core for richer scenarios.
Its limits: built for sending documents to the customer, not for rich conditional internal notifications.
Method 3 — Coding a PHP trigger
The developer approach: write a PHP trigger that reacts to the order validation event (ORDER_VALIDATE) and sends the email per your rules. Flexible and powerful, but needs a developer, maintenance at each version upgrade, and logic invisible to ERP operators.
Method 4 — A visual workflow with Knot Core
With Knot Core (free, open-source GPL Dolibarr module), you build this notification visually, no code.
The trigger. Place an Object event trigger on the canvas, set to react to customer order validation. As soon as an order is validated, the workflow starts. See Object event trigger.
Routing (optional). With the Logic connector, route by order characteristics: above a certain amount, notify the manager; for a given client type, alert a specific sales rep. See Logic connector.
Data. The Dolibarr connector reads the order: reference, customer, amount, lines. See Dolibarr connector.
Sending the email. With the Email connector (included free), send the notification to the right person, with order data inserted into the message. You can also confirm to the customer in parallel. See Email connector.
Test before activating. With Simulate, run the workflow dry: no real email sent, no database write. Check that the right person gets the right notification, then activate. See Simulate.
Every execution is then tracked in Track runs. New to Knot? Start with Your first workflow.
Which method to choose?
Simple notification to a fixed address: native Notifications module.
Standardized document send to the customer: native email templates.
Conditional internal notification, routing, multiple actions, no code: Knot Core. And since it’s self-hosted, your order data never leaves your server.
Try without installing
Online demo — Free download (GPL)
Knot Core is in beta: usable, already adopted, and your feedback helps it improve.
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