Scenario (I saw this happen with a fairly naïve user)
- receive an email with pdf forms attached
- open the forms in new tabs in Thunderbird
- use the editing tools to fill in fields and add signatures (no need for external tool - great!)
- reply, or forward the email to another signatory, expecting the filled forms to be sent (!?)
- recipient can't see any of the added data
- frustration/anger
I wouldn't expect the above to work, but actually it seems like a useful workflow (as opposed to the old print/sign/scan palaver). I think that the user is expecting the email attachments to be like files on the filesystem that can be edited.
What is currently required is that the user saves edited pdf forms, then a new or reply email is created, and the saved pdfs are attached to the new email.
I don't have a great UX answer for this. Ideas that go towards better UX
- Warn the user if forwarding an email from which currently edited forms originated
- Attach edited forms to any reply to the originating email (optionally)
- Give option to replace or add edited forms to forwarded email
- Allow currently open/edited PDFs to appear in the Attach menu of a new email