Via Public Form

To start a process via public form, do the following:

1. Log in to your account

2. Click Administration > Processes > Template Diagrams > The card of the process you want to start

3. Click Start Process > Via public form.

4. If a form has been created, the name of the form will appear. Click the name of the form to open it. The form link can be copied and shared or linked on a webpage, etc.

5. To create a new form, click New Public Form

When creating a new public form, you’ll need to give the public form a name.

Then, you will need to choose which process fields you want to display on the new public form. (The Process Fields will need to have already been created within the process.) Your process may have 30 or more fields, but you may only want to display 10 of them on the public form. You can also, optionally, decide if the fields should be required on the public form. If the field’s “required” checkbox cannot be unchecked, it is because the field is required at the process level and is therefore always required.

Once your public form has been saved at least once, the system will generate a unique unchanging URL for this public form. You can share or post this public form URL anywhere when you want to give people the ability to start a process without having a login to your account.

What a submission saves

A submission saves only the fields the form shows. Nothing sent to the form’s link for any other field is kept, so a field you leave off the form can’t be filled in through it. A submission that leaves a required field empty is refused, and nothing is started or updated until it is filled in.

Collecting files

To have people send you files with the form, show a File Attachment field on it. A job application can collect a resume this way, and a warranty claim can collect photos of the damage.

The person filling in the form clicks Attach file (the plus icon) on that field and chooses one or more files from their computer or phone. Each file can be up to 1 GB. The files are saved in that field on the process, just like a file someone on your team attaches. As with any other field, you can make it required.

Collecting a signature

To have the person filling in the form sign it, show a Digital eSignature field on the form. They type their name in that field to sign. If you make the field required, the form won’t submit until they sign.

A signature made on a public form appears, with its SIG code, on every Merge Document of that process that has a signature block for the field. Once a signature is made, the form shows it but can’t change or clear it.

A form takes a signature only in the signature fields it shows. For example, a tenant’s form that shows only the tenant’s signature leaves the landlord’s signature field unsigned.

A form with only a conversation

A public form whose only field is a Conversation field opens as a conversation page instead of a form: a chat laid out for a phone, where the person reads the thread and writes back. On a running process, each message is posted as soon as it is sent, and unless Expire Instance Forms On Submission is on, the page stays open for the next one. See Give customers a conversation page.

Personalizing what the form says

Both Instructions and Success Message or Redirect URL accept Field Tokens. Insert them with the Import Field Tokens icon next to the box, the same way you would anywhere else, and the person filling in the form sees real values rather than token text. A token with nothing to fill in is simply left blank. A password field is always left blank on a public form, even if you add its token, because anyone with the link can open the page. A field hidden from some people by its hide formula shows its value if you add its token.

Instructions appear above the fields, so tokens there are at their most useful on a form that updates a process already running (see the note at the end of this page). The form knows which process it belongs to, so it can open with what you already have on file:

We have your delivery address as Field: Address (Text). Change anything below that is out of date.

On a form that starts something new there is nothing to look up yet, so tokens are left blank until the person has submitted.

Success Message or Redirect URL is what they are shown once they have submitted. Type a message and they see it on a confirmation page. Paste a URL that starts with http instead and they are sent straight to that page. Tokens here are filled in from the process that was just started or updated, so you can confirm back what somebody entered, or hand them a reference to quote later:

Thanks Field: Contact Name (Text), we have your request. Your reference is Process Instance ID.

Instructions hold up to 500 characters and Success Message or Redirect URL up to 1,000. Each field token counts as about 30 characters, whatever length its label shows in the box. A text that is too long is not saved: you are told how long it is, so you can shorten it and save again.

You can also ask the AI Strategist or the AI Assistant to change a form’s text for you. For example, on a survey sent for each support ticket when it closes, ask: “Make the survey say which ticket it is rating.” It shows you the new instructions word for word and names the values from the process that visitors will see, including any the form itself does not show. Nothing is saved until you say yes. It can change a form’s name, instructions, submit button and success message. It will not put a password on a public form. Choosing which fields a form shows, and sending people to a web page after they submit, are still done here. You need permission to edit the process.

Note: You can also use public forms to collect information from people in the middle of an existing process that is already running. For instance, halfway through a new customer onboarding process, you can use an Automated Action to send an email which contains a link to a public form. When an Automated Action sends a Public Form link, that Public Form will always update the process instance from which it originated. (It will not start a new process.)