Create a form
Build a form your team or supporters fill in, from a volunteer sign-up to a site report, and publish it.
By the end of this page you'll have a published form, with your own questions, ready for its first submission. Let's build one.
Before you start: you need permission to create forms. To build a form that creates records (an object form), you also need permission to create that kind of record.
Pick the kind of form
There are two kinds, and you choose when you create the form:
- Object form: each submission creates a record, and the form can ask that record's own fields. Use it when the answers belong on a record, for example a form that adds a volunteer to a custom object.
- Standard form: a survey or request with its own questions. The answers are kept as the submission itself, and no record is created.
The kind, and an object form's object, can't be changed later.
Start from a template
To skip the blank page, select From a template and pick one: Contact us, Volunteer application, Event feedback, Incident report or Updates. You get a private draft with the template's questions, and anything it saves (a contact form saves each submission as a lead) already set up. Change anything you like before you publish it. A template you can't use says why, for example when it saves records you don't have permission to create.
- Choose how long its answers are kept under Keeping answers in the form's settings: by default they're kept until you erase them.
- Contact us and Volunteer application save people. Someone they add is not opted in to marketing; to ask, add an email or text opt-in to the form.
- In an Incident report, what happened and who was involved are seen by administrators only.
Create the form
Open Forms
Go to Automations > Forms, then select New form.
Choose the kind of form
Select From a template, Object form or Standard form. For a template, pick one; for an object form, choose its Object.
Name it
Enter a Name (and a Description if you like), then select Create and open.
Your form starts as a private draft and opens in the form builder.
Add your questions
The builder has three areas: the questions you can add, the form itself, and a panel to edit whatever you've selected. On a phone or small screen, switch between them with Add, Form and Edit.
Add questions
Drag a question onto the form, or select it to add it. Questions are grouped:
- Text & Input: questions answered by typing or picking a value, such as text, email, phone, number or date.
- Selection & Choices: questions answered by choosing, such as a dropdown or a checklist, and Choose a followed by an object's name, which offers that object's records as the choices.
- Layout & Structure: pages, sections and text blocks that organize the form, and For each lists, which ask the same questions about each of several records.
An object form also lists the object's own fields, so an answer can go straight onto the record.
Set up each question
Select a question to edit it in Properties: its label, whether it's required, help text and who may see the answer (Admins only, Team or Public).
Save your draft
Select Save. Saving keeps your work without changing what anyone fills in.
Building something similar to a question you already have? Select it and use Duplicate to copy it, then change what you need.
Publish
Select Publish. The form is now live, and its status reads Published.
Changes you make afterward stay in the draft until you publish again, so you can work on a new version while people keep using the current one. Every published version is listed on the form's Versions tab.
That's it. Your form is live and ready for its first submission!
Settings explained
Open Settings in the builder's panel to change how the form behaves. The sections you'll use most:
Ask the same questions for each record
To ask about several records at once, such as visitors at each site or a rating for each program, add For each followed by the object's name from Layout & Structure. In Records, choose which records to list with a filter, their order, and what each row is titled. Then add the questions to ask for each record inside the list.
To show one of a record's fields in its row, select the list and pick the field from the palette, or write {{ row.field }} in a text block.
- On a form your team fills in, people see only the records they can see in that object's list, a page at a time, and answer only the ones they need. A row they leave empty isn't sent.
- A list shows at most 200 records.
Lists on a shared form
A list can also be on a form shared on a portal page or by public link. There, everyone filling the form sees the same records: the ones the person who published the form can see in that object's list. A few extra rules keep what it shows safe to share:
- The list needs a filter, on the object's own fields, and shows at most 50 records.
- A row's title and the fields it shows must be public and not personal data. An account shows only its name, and households are never listed.
- A custom object can be listed only after an administrator turns on Allow on forms shared outside your team for it in Settings, under Objects.
- The list can't filter by fiscal year. Use calendar dates instead.
- An administrator approves each list. Save the form, select the list, check the records Records says it shows, and choose Approve list. Any change to the list's records, order, title or the fields it shows needs a new approval, and the form can't be published until every list is approved. The published form keeps showing the list it was published with until then.
- Withdraw approval stops the list showing on the published form too, until it's approved again.
Let people choose a record
To ask "which of our locations?" or "choose your church", add Choose a followed by the object's name from Selection & Choices. The answer is one record of that object. In Records, choose which records it offers with a filter, their order, and what each choice shows, then pick how it's Shown as: a dropdown, radio buttons, or a search box that narrows the choices as people type.
- On a form your team fills in, people choose from the records they can see in that object's list, up to 200. Narrow the filter if more match.
- To link the chosen record to a record the form creates, map the question under Mapping to a lookup field of the same object. If the chosen record is deleted before the form's records are written, for example while the submission waits for approval, that mapping fails and nothing is linked.
- A record question is asked once for the whole form, so it can't go inside a For each list or a repeating section, and it isn't available on an Updates form.
On a form shared on a portal page or by public link, the same rules as lists on a shared form apply: a filter on the object's own fields, at most 50 choices, only public information that isn't personal data, never a household, and an administrator's approval. When you approve, check every choice Records lists: approving confirms none of them is a person's name or other personal information, because anyone with the form sees them.
Troubleshooting
Related
Share a form
Put your form in front of the right people.
Manage form submissions
Read, correct and erase what comes in.
Still stuck?
We're here for you, and no question is too small. Tell us what you were trying to do and what happened, and we'll help you get it sorted.