Sitecore 10.0 Forms Send Email action partial view error CustomTokensForm.cshtml was not found

Question

My setup is Sitecore 10.0 in CMS only mode. My installation also has the Sitecore Forms Extension for SC9.3-SC10.0 included.

I was adding forms using the Forms editor and got the point of adding Submit actions. Send Email is on the list but on selecting that action I was presented with a dialog box filled with the following error messages:

The partial view '/sitecore/shell/client/Applications/FormsBuilder/Layouts/Actions/CustomTokensForm/CustomTokensForm.cshtml' was not found or no view engine supports the searched locations. The following locations were searched:
    /sitecore/shell/client/Applications/FormsBuilder/Layouts/Actions/CustomTokensForm/CustomTokensForm.cshtml
Description: An unhandled exception occurred.
Exception Details: System.InvalidOperationException:  .........

This is a very clean installation in the process of an upgrade so I am puzzled. Checking the file system shows indeed that the named view file does not exist. I checked another 10.2 installation also on my system and that also does not include this file.

Any ideas on the cause of this failure? Answers below

Answer 1

So here is the solution to the error.

<add key="exmEnabled:define" value="yes" />

In the web.config there is an entry to enable/disable EXM.

I had set this to "no" because I am indeed not using EXM and that app is not present. However, it seems that if this setting is changed to "yes" then the problem goes away. The Send Email action included by default in Sitecore Forms uses EXM services to define an email message and content. When the setting is "yes" then the Send Email dialog box in Sitecore Forms opens correctly without error. However, without the whole EXM supporting services and management tools, it is essentially useless.

I am looking at the alternatives such as https://www.nishtech.com/Blog/2018/April/Send-E-mail-Action-to-Sitecore-9-Forms