How to let people outside your team fill in a form

A public form puts some of an Object's fields on a page anyone can open, with no Tideswell account. Each one they send becomes an ordinary record in that Object's list. You build it on the Object's Form tab in Settings › Objects; if Objects are new to you, start with What is an Object?.

Fairgreen Golf Co. uses one for Repairs. A customer with a split seam fills in their name, the product and the fault on Fairgreen's website, and the repair lands in Objects › Repair for Priya Raman to pick up.

Before you start

You need to be an admin, because Settings appears only for admins of the workspace. Saving a form needs the Define Objects row in Settings › Permissions, which admins have by default. See How to set who can see and edit an Object.

The form is for an Object your team created, so the Object and its fields come first. Follow How to create an Object and How to add a field and pick its type if they do not exist yet.

How do you build the form?

Open the Object's Form tab, say what the page is called, tick the fields a visitor should fill in, then press Save form. Each Object has one form, and you can come back and change it whenever you like.

1. Open Settings › Objects and click the Object, for example Repairs.
2. Open the Form tab.
3. In What the page is called, type the heading visitors see, such as "Request a repair". It starts as the Object's name.
4. In A line above the form (optional), add a sentence of welcome or instruction.
5. Choose who hears about a submission, and keep Accepting submissions ticked. Both are covered below.
6. Under What it asks for, tick each field the visitor should fill in.
7. Press Save form. "Form saved." confirms it, and the form's link appears beside the button.

Save form stays greyed out until at least one field is ticked.

How do you word each question for a stranger?

Type the question into the What a stranger sees box that opens under each ticked field. It starts as the field's own name, and the visitor reads your wording instead.

Your team might call a field "SKU", while a customer understands "Which product is it?" better. Changing the wording here leaves the field's name inside Tideswell as it was.

Tick Required on a question the visitor must answer before they can send. Use Up and Down to put the questions in the order a visitor should meet them.

Which fields can go on a form?

Most fields a person types into can. The ones a visitor cannot fill in, such as a Linked record, a Person, a File or a calculated field, are listed under Cannot go on a public form, each with the reason beside it.

That keeps your own records and your team's names off a page anyone can open. Add the details those fields hold once the record is in, from the record itself.

If the Object has no field a visitor could fill in, the tab says so. Add one on the Fields tab first.

What does the visitor see?

The visitor sees your heading, your line above the form and your questions, with a Send button. Once they press it, a thank-you message tells them it has been sent.

To check the questions before you share the link, look at the panel headed What a stranger sees, below the fields. It lists them in order with your wording, and updates as you tick, reword and move fields.

Who hears about a new submission?

Pick a member in Who hears about a submission. Each time the form is sent, they get an email titled "New submission:" followed by the form's heading, telling them it is in the list.

The email says a submission arrived and leaves out what was typed, so open the record in Tideswell to read it. Choose the first option, Nobody, to let submissions arrive in the list quietly.

Where do submissions go?

Each submission becomes a new record in the Object's list, next to the ones your team added. The screen puts it this way: "the automations you already have run on it".

So a workflow that starts when a repair is created runs for a form submission too. How to choose a trigger covers that trigger, and How to find and open your records covers working through the list.

How do you share the link or put it on your website?

After the first save, the form's address appears next to Save form with two buttons.

• Copy link copies the address, ready to paste into an email, a reply to a customer or a social post.
• Copy embed code copies a short snippet for your website. Paste it into the page where the form should sit, and the form appears there inside your own page.

The address stays the same each time you save, so a link you have already handed out keeps working after you change the questions.

How do you stop taking submissions?

Untick Accepting submissions and press Save form. Anyone who opens the link, or the page it is embedded in, then reads "This form is not accepting submissions at the moment."

Tick it again and save when you want submissions back. The link is the same one, so nothing needs re-sharing.