Publishing and sharing

A form does nothing until it is published. Publishing switches its link on; sharing is getting that link to the right people.

Publishing

Publish on a draft's row in the forms list. The status changes to published, and the Link column gets a copy button.

Publishing locks the form's questions, so every submission stays tied to the questions it answered. To change a question afterwards, use Back to draft, which turns the link off until you publish again. See Editing a published form.

Public or private

Set in the builder under Who can fill this form?, and shown in the Access column of the forms list.

Access	Forms list says	Who can fill it	Link
Public	Public link	Anyone who has the link. No account needed	/f/<slug>
Private	Members only	Signed-in members of the workspace that owns the form	/fill/<formId>

The <slug> in a public link is a long random code, not the form's title, so nobody can guess a form's link or find one by trying names. Form pages are also kept out of search engines.

Who counts as a member

A private form is for the people inside the workspace, so what "member" means depends on the workspace.

Workspace owning the form	Who can fill its private forms
A team	Everyone on the team: owner, admins and members
A CivicPort community	The community's members and admins, signed in with their CivicPort accounts
A personal workspace	Only you

Someone who opens a private form while signed out is asked to sign in, and comes back to the form afterwards.

Sharing the link

Three ways, all from a published form's row.

Copy the link

The copy button in the Link column. Paste it into an email, a newsletter, a website or a QR code. Hover over the button to see the link before copying.

Invite people by email

Invite sends the form's link to a list of addresses, one email each, with the subject "Please fill out: (form title)".

1. Paste the recipients, one per line. Either Name <email> or a plain address works. Commas and semicolons also separate addresses.
2. If the form has prefilled links, choose whether to send the blank form or one of them. Everyone in the batch gets the same one.
3. Press Send. FormsUI reports how many of the emails went out.

Up to 50 addresses per send.

On a public form, each recipient's link carries their own email address, and their name if you gave one, so those are already filled in when they open it. On a private form the email tells them they will need to sign in first.

Make a prefilled link

Prefill makes a link with some answers already filled in, for sending to one person or one group. See Prefilled links.

What the person filling it sees

Part	Detail
The top	The form's title and description. A team with branding switched on adds its logo and colour
Name and email	On public forms. Optional, and filled in already if they arrived from an invite
Questions	All on one page, or one section per step with a progress bar and Back and Next
Their progress	Kept on their device as they type, so closing the tab does not lose it. Sensitive answers are the exception and are never kept
After Submit	A thank-you page

If the form is a draft or archived, the link shows "This form isn't available" instead.

Being told about submissions

Email me when this form is submitted, in the builder, is on for every new form.

Setting	Detail
Notify	Up to 5 addresses, separated by commas. Leave it empty to email whoever created the form
What the email holds	A link to the submission, not the answers themselves
Daily limit	A form sends at most 100 of these emails a day, so a busy public form cannot bury your inbox. Submissions past the limit are still recorded; only the email is skipped

You can change these settings on a published form without unpublishing it.

Taking a form down

You want to	Do this	The link
Change its questions	Back to draft, edit, Publish	Off until published again
Stop using it for good	Archive. See Archiving	Off until restored