FAQ: Smartsheet forms

The following articles can help you better understand how to set up a form from scratch:

1. Create and edit a form
2. Set up settings and formatting options
3. Review your form and share it
4. Manage form responses and show insights to stakeholders

There are three ways in which you can find your form:

1. Forms manager

Open your intake sheet and select Forms > Manage Forms to find all active and inactive forms connected to that sheet.

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2. Workspaces

1. Go to Home > All workspaces and find the workspace where your active form lives.

2. Once the workspace panel opens, select the sheet connected to the form to display the form under it.

3. Find, select, and load the form

From the three-dot Form menu within the workspace panel, you can:

• Open the form in a new tab with the published form URL
• Copy the published form URL directly from the workspace
• Edit the form

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3. Search

Open the Search icon  Brandfolder Image  on the left rail and search your active form by name.

• Sheet Owners and Admins can create/edit forms.

• Collaborators with Admin access to the sheet can edit shared forms.

• Smartsheet Trial users can create forms but can’t share them.

Business and Enterprise users get custom branding and security features.

• Order your fields in a way that makes sense.
• Add clear form-specific field labels or instructions.
• Use field validation to help the person provide correct data.
• Pre-fill fields using default values or query parameters.

Use conditional logic to control when to show a field.

Default: Provide no access to your data

By default, submitters can email themselves a copy of their responses and the questions by selecting the Send me a copy of my responses checkbox. As the form creator, you can turn off this feature.

To do so, open the Settings tab in the form builder and uncheck the Allow submitter to email a copy of form submission option.

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For more information, review Manage form display and submission options.

Provide View-only access to specific data.

Create a row report and limit what columns and rows your users can view. When you’re ready to share it, you can publish it by doing the following:

1. Select File > Menu or select the Share button in the upper-right area of the screen.

You need to be an Owner or Admin to see the Share button. Otherwise, the options in your button vary.

2. Select Report.
3. In the Invite people and groups field, type a user’s or group’s email address.
4. Select the permission level you want to assign to each person or group.
5. (Optional) Select Customize message to personalize the invitation.
6. Select Share.

Provide Editor access to specific data

There are multiple ways in which you can share data while restricting access.

1. Update requests

After the initial form submission, you can set up an update request workflow to request changes to a row after the initial form submission. This is a good way to collaborate with people who don’t need to have access to the sheet.

To automate update requests, do the following:

1. On the menu bar, select Automation > Create from template.
2. Select Request an update every week.
3. Select Use template.
4. Customize the template as needed.

2. Dynamic View

If you have a security concern and you don’t want people to see other rows or columns, create a Dynamic View to share sections of your sheet or report without sharing the underlying source sheet.

3. Row report in a WorkApp

When you create a WorkApp, you can include reports. This way, you get to share data with collaborators without them needing access to the underlying sheet.

Provide access to all data

Share the sheet where you collect form submissions. If any of the people you want to share the data with don’t have a Smartsheet account, you can publish the sheet for them to access.

• Mark a field as required if you don't want someone to submit the form without providing a value.
• Ensure consistent data collection by restricting field inputs (dropdowns/dates/checkboxes) or adding data validation.
• You can have more than one form on a sheet. This is useful if you want to send a different message to each audience but gather the data in one place.
• Use conditional logic and/or query parameters to re-use the same form in different scenarios.

To collect data without the form user seeing or changing it, add a default value or pre-fill it with a query parameter and hide the field.

Form submissions are anonymous by default, and submitters don’t have access to the data included in your underlying sheet unless they share it with others.

You can collect information on who is filling out your form and when they did it in two ways.

1. Add a system Created by column to your sheet and change the form security to require Smartsheet login. This collects information on who fills out the form.
2. If you want to track when a submitter filled out your form, add a Created date column to your sheet. This column keeps track of when the form was filled out, and when a new row was created.

You can’t retroactively collect information on who filled out the form before you set up this security setting.

3. Create a contact column (without any pre-filled values), make it required, and add email data validation.

If you ask anyone to log in to fill out your form, they don’t have to be a part of your Smartsheet plan to access it. 

Anyone with the form link can submit a form - no login required.

Anyone can fill out a form without having to log into Smartsheet. However, you can set extra security settings and restrict who can access your form by requesting that they log into their Smartsheet account. The System Admin sets the additional security in the form builder.

Some form features, like offline submission, barcode scanning, and geolocation, are only available via the Smartsheet mobile app. Submitters need to create a Smartsheet login to use the app.

To further limit who can fill out a form, you can try one of the following:

• Add a form password. Include a Form password column in your sheet and make that field the first field in your form. Then, add conditional logic to the form so that you can enter the correct password to see the rest of the questions in the form.
• Embed the form on a dashboard. Use a web content widget to add the form URL and share that dashboard with your desired collaborators.
• Embed the form on your website. Work with your IT department to embed the form on a webpage that already restricts access.

Forms have security settings set by the owner of that form. You can identify if your submission is anonymous or not when you access a form:

• If the form asks you to log in to access it, then your email address appears in the intake sheet the form is connected to. 

• If accessing the form via its URL directly takes you to the form, then your submission is confidential, and the owner can't trace it back to you. 

Responses are added as new rows to your underlying sheet. From there, those responses are ready for review, automation, reporting, or personalized sharing with Dynamic View.

You can store form submissions in a sheet. 

Anyone with access to the sheet can view form submissions directly on the sheet, find the form in search results, or copy and share the form's link.

1. Use the Settings tab to define whether you want new form submissions to appear at the top or bottom of your sheet. 
   
   See Manage form display and submission options for more information.
2. Create a row report using the form submission sheet as the source. You can work directly from the report and use the sheet as a data repository.  
   
   In the report, you can either group related form submissions together or use the sort feature to ensure that new rows automatically appear in the correct grouping or sort order. 

Newly created rows from forms can trigger automated workflows to immediately assign task owners, move or copy rows to other sheets, kick off an approval cycle, automatically generate a document, and more.

See Action blocks: Specify what kind of automation is triggered for more information.

Update and approval requests workflows

You can use automated workflows to send update and approval requests and send emails once the form has a new submission.

You can set automated workflows to send emails to contacts in your sheet when triggered by key events, such as a new submission or a need for more information based on form responses.

Notification or request workflows

To use a notification or request workflow together with a form, you need the email address of the person who filled out the form. Have them include it as a contact value during the submission.

There are two ways to gather this data:

1. Set up a Contact column and have the user provide their email address with email validation.
2. Add a Created By system column to your sheet and change the form security to require the user to sign in.

Consider the following as well:

• If you don't want to share the form submitter to your sheet, set the automation permissions to unrestricted.
• To include a unique ID in your emails, add an Auto Number column to your sheet and include that in your automated emails.

Formulas in the underlying sheet can populate additional data in the same row as a form submission. Submit the form first so the formula can run in the selected row in the sheet.

For example, your create a form for people to nominate other employees for an award. One of your fields is a contact to nominate. Users submitting the form may not know the nominee's manager, but you need that information when it comes to picking a winner.

In this instance, you could have another reference sheet with all employees listed in one column and their managers listed in a second column. You could use an INDEX(MATCH) combination as a column formula to automatically show the manager in your sheet.

Data (including attachments) submitted through Smartsheet forms is encrypted end-to-end. Smartsheet uses industry-standard protections against XSS and SQL injection, and restricts users from uploading executable files.

Once the data is in the sheet, it’s bound by your sheet’s sharing permissions and your organization’s data egress policies.

Don’t collect (or provide) information via a Smartsheet form that your sheet collaborators shouldn’t have or share, like passwords, social security numbers, or credit card information.

Use judgment before opening a URL provided via a form.

Consider using Dynamic View if your sheet contains columns that shouldn't be visible to all collaborators.

If you have Owner permissions on a sheet with a form, and you stop being a paid user, the conditional logic stops working.

If a sheet ends up in a state where no one in your organization has Owner permissions, the form becomes completely inaccessible. One best practice to avoid this from happening is to share someone in your organization to your sheet and make them the Owner. 

If you have owner permissions on a sheet with a form, and you stop being a paid user, the conditional logic stops working. 

If a sheet ends up in a state where no one in your organization has owner permissions, the form becomes completely inaccessible.

1. Open the sheet connected to your form.
2. From the upper menu, select Forms > Manage Forms.
3. Find the form you want to delete and use the three-dot menu to select Delete.