Workflows: what happens after a response

Open your form in the editor and choose Workflows. The tab has four parts: Active, everything that runs for this form; Workflows, the cards below; Notify and send, the destinations such as Email me and Slack; and Sync your data, for Google Sheets, Notion and Airtable. Form integrations covers the last two.

You can browse and set everything up before you have an account. Workflows turn on when you save the form, and your settings are kept.

Turn on Triage every new response on the AI triage card, and each response gets a short summary, a priority from P1 to P3, a sentiment (positive, neutral, negative or mixed), up to four tags and a flag when it needs a reply. On a building maintenance request form, the priority puts a leak ahead of a squeaky door. The headline shows first in your notification emails and Slack messages, and the fields travel in webhooks. Add Instructions in plain words to steer it, and press Try it to see the result on a made-up response to your draft.

It is off until you turn it on, and free for 100 responses a month; Pro lifts the cap. AI triage and AI replies run only on forms where you turn them on. Answers to contact questions, files and signatures are never sent, and email addresses and phone numbers typed into other answers are masked first.

With Add to People on (the default for forms with an email question), everyone who answers lands in People, in the dashboard sidebar: one list across all your forms. Each person has a timeline of their submissions, emails, replies, tags, notes and assignments. Tag people, save segments, and email a segment in bulk.

People is free up to 1,000 people and unlimited on Pro. Bulk email allows 500 emails a month on Free, only to people who came from a form, 5,000 on Pro and 25,000 on Business. Pro also adds the company name, logo and country for people who use a work email address. A society membership form is a natural fit: every applicant becomes a person you can tag and email later. So is a fundraising order form, whose supporters you can email next season, or a new customer information form, where Pro adds each account's company, and each stockist's orders from a trade order form land on their timeline.

Open a response on the Responses page, write in Your reply and press Send reply. It goes to the email address the person gave, and when they answer, their reply comes back into the same conversation and you get an email. It needs an email answer in the form. A reply can be up to 5,000 characters, and you can send up to 60 replies an hour and 20 a day to one response.

On Pro, Draft with AI writes a first draft in the reply box. It is never sent on its own: you edit it and press Send reply. The When someone replies card can act on their answer by itself: tag them, post it to Slack or assign it to a teammate. It suits answering a community donation request form: say yes or no from the response itself. It also suits confirming a time from an appointment request form, or sending each team its start time from a golf outing registration form.

On Pro, a response can wait for someone's OK. Add the Approval card, or the step Send to someone for approval in a custom workflow, and name the approver. They need no account: they approve or reject it from their inbox, and the page the email opens asks them to confirm, so a mail scanner can never decide for them. If it is rejected, choose whether to Stop the workflow or Carry on anyway, and a Slack notice can go out either way.

It suits forms that need someone's OK first: a PTO request form for a manager, a travel approval form or a PTA check request form for a budget holder, a trade credit application for your credit team, a medical release to return to work for HR, or a festival vendor application that someone signs off before the vendor hears back.

• Book a time (free) adds a booking button with your Cal.com, Calendly or Google Calendar booking link, or any https link. Cal.com and Calendly fill in the person's name and email from the link, and rules can send different people to different links. A church volunteer application can end with a button to book an intro call, a new client form for accountants with one for the first meeting, and a lash consent form or sugaring consent form with one for the next appointment, and a tattoo client consent form with one for the touch-up.
• Email me a copy of my answers (free) emails the person a link to a PDF of their own answers, valid for 7 days. It needs an email question, and each response can ask for it up to 3 times. A move in inspection checklist can offer it so the tenant keeps a copy, and an appearance release form so the person keeps what they signed.
• Submit another response starts the form again for the next person.

Turn each one on from the ending card in the canvas.

The Calendar invite card, or the step Send a calendar invite, emails an invite that works in any calendar app. Send it to The respondent, Them and me or Only me. Your own copy is free; invites to respondents are on Pro, at most 20 an hour for each form. Send one once you confirm a request from a tour booking form, a callback time from a choir audition form, or each session to a delegate on a delegate registration form. Your own copy suits a bakery order form, putting each pickup date in your calendar, and on Pro every yes on a wedding RSVP form can get an invite for the day.

The Daily or weekly digest card sends one email per form with the new responses, what is urgent and what is still waiting on you; on an online inquiry form, that is the inquiries still waiting on your reply, and a weekly one for a sick day report form lists every absence before payroll runs. Set it to Off, Daily or Weekly, for you or your teammates. A quiet period sends nothing. The digest is free. On Pro it adds a paragraph called "What people are saying", written by AI from that period's triage summaries, never from the answers themselves.

For one summary across all your forms instead, turn on the daily or weekly summary in your account settings.

On Pro, the Follow-up sequence card sends three emails over a week, on the day of the response and two and five days later. It stops the moment the person replies or unsubscribes; the Stop when they reply switch controls the first.

Win back unfinished forms, also Pro, emails one reminder to people who typed their email and stopped halfway. It waits 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours or 24 hours (1 hour unless you change it), and its link brings back their answers for 7 days. It needs partial responses turned on, in Settings, under Responses. It suits a long form such as a scholarship application, a lease application form or a website project questionnaire.

The Custom workflow card chains your own steps as a numbered list, with up and down buttons to reorder them. Choose when it starts, Someone submits this form, Someone replies to your email or, on Pro, Someone leaves the form unfinished, then set Only when answers match and Who it runs for: everyone, new people or returning people.

Add a step offers: Email the respondent (Pro), Email me, Send to a connected destination, Wait (Pro), Send to someone for approval (Pro), Assign to a teammate (Pro), Send a calendar invite, and Tag the person. A workflow holds up to 20 steps. Each form can run 3 active workflows free, and as many as you like on Pro. On an IT service request form, for example, Assign to a teammate can hand each request to whoever is on call, and an employee separation form can pass from IT to finance to facilities, one step each.

Every form catches bots with a hidden field, and Settings can add a minimum time to complete. A near-copy of an earlier response from the same person within 10 minutes is held as a duplicate. On a form with AI triage on, written answers that contain a link, or run to 30 characters or more, also get an AI spam check, up to 300 a day for each form. It never runs on an anonymous form.

Anything caught waits in the Spam tab of your results and starts nothing: no notification, no triage, no workflow. Not spam puts it back and runs what was held, once. See the Spam tab.