Forms

A form is a page people fill in, and what they send is written into your tables: an order with its lines, a delivery request, a registration, a damage report with photos. Each question is a field of a table. One send adds one record to the form's table, plus one record per line when the form has lines, so a response is records you can open, filter and total like any other.

A form is a page, so it lives under Pages beside your dashboards, has its own address, and is published the same way: to the public, to anyone with a private link, or to members you choose. A dashboard's button can open it.

Start a form

1. Open Pages in the top bar and choose New page, then Form.
2. Under It collects, choose one:
   • An order with its items: the form an order needs, from the tables you already have. The dialog looks for an orders table, its order items, the products they are picked from and the customers who order, and says for each one whether it was found or will be made, and with which fields. Missing tables are made for you when you choose Create form.
   • Answers into one table: name the form, pick the Table to write into (and its Database), and tick the Fields to collect.

The new form opens in its builder, as a draft: see Build a form.

An order form whose products table was just made has no products yet. Add them before you publish: a customer would have nothing to pick, and Publish waits until the table has rows.

The form's menu

The menu under the form's title holds Edit (the builder), Responses with how many it has received, Try it as a customer, Publish…, Rename and Delete.

Until a form is published, only its editors can open it, and what they send through it is real: it is written to your tables and marked "Sent before publishing" in Responses. Try it as a customer shows the form as a person filling it in gets it, and writes nothing.

In this section

• Build a form: questions, which table each answer goes to, required answers, fixed and hidden values, the Send button and the footer.
• Linked records: answers that pick a product from a list, or find a customer by what they type.
• Line items and several tables: an order with its lines, and limits on lines and totals.
• After it is sent: the message, the e-mailed copy, changing a response and telling your team.
• Publish a form: who can fill it in, and what someone without an account sees.
• Responses: everything a form received, in a grid.
• Limits that protect a public form: the spam check, the hourly ceilings and the closing date.
• Forms on a phone: how a form fills a phone screen.

Publishing, addresses and private links work as they do for any page: see Pages.

In this section

• Build a formThe form builder: add and order questions, see which table each answer goes to, make answers required, fix or hide values, and set the Send button and footer.
• Linked recordsA question that links to another table is answered by picking from a list, or by typing a tax ID or a code that finds the record or adds a new one.
• Line items and several tablesAdd a section of lines to a form, so one send writes an order and each of its lines; set limits on lines and on the total.
• After it is sentThe message a person sees after sending, the copy they can be e-mailed, letting them change what they sent, and the note your team gets.
• Publish a formChoose who can fill a form in, check what one send writes, and see the form as someone without an account gets it.
• ResponsesSee everything a form received in one grid, open a response with its lines, correct it, or delete it.
• Limits that protect a public formThe spam check, how many sends a form takes an hour from one address and in all, file sizes, line counts, e-mail caps and the closing date.
• Forms on a phoneHow a form fills a phone screen, picks from long lists, and keeps answers through a bad connection.