Sending form invitations

Introduction

Having created and published a Form, you'll want to make it accessible to prospective respondents. One way is to send invitations to those in your Address Book or Children module, enabling you to keep track of who has responded and whose response is outstanding. Invitees will enjoy a simple, intuitive user experience with any smart-linked form fields pre-populated with their existing details, making it easy for them to respond to a form they've been invited to complete. For further information on smart linking, see the related support article: Connecting form fields to people fields.

Customising the default invitation email

You can customise a form's default Invitation email. On a form View, note the invitation actions to Preview and Edit the default invitation email.

On the Edit Invitation Email pop-up, you can add custom sender details that are used when invitations are automatically sent by the system, such as when a "Send form invite" Flow action is automatically processed. Use the HTML Editor tools to add a custom message. The ::form_button:: merge field is important and must be present in the invitation body. Save your changes.

Customising the submission success message and confirmation email

As with the default invitation email, you can also customise the Response Submission success message that respondents see on their screens and the confirmation email they receive when they submit a response. Note the response submission actions to Preview and Edit the success message and submission confirmation email.

Sending invitations

From the form View of a published form, click Send invite:

A pop-up reminds you that sending invitations to existing invitees who have not responded will send them a reminder. However, those who have previously responded (and new invitees) will receive a new invitation. Click Proceed:

The default invitation for the form is pre-populated into the Send email pop-up, but you can customise the message further if you wish. It's important that the::form_button:: merge field is always present in the invitation body, but it can be positioned anywhere within the message. This merge field becomes each recipient's personal form page link. Next, Add recipients - you can search and select invitees individually by name or type a Tag name to bulk-invite multiple tagged people. Only recipients with an email address can receive an invitation email. Similarly, those who have opted out of receiving general emails will not be sent an invitation. However, you may be able to use the Communication override, "Do not respect communication settings", to send to those people if you have a lawful reason.

Clicking Preview Email shows a likeness of the final styled invitation and any previously selected Recipients. You can still add and remove recipients at this stage or click Back to edit to make further changes to the invitation message. When you are ready, click Send Email to send the invitations.

Once sent, the Invites tab shows a list of all invitees and their current response Status "Not Responded". Use the filters are the top of the list to view only Responded or Not Responded invitees. A response Status is not shown for anonymous forms. As each invitee submits their response, the invitation status updates to "Responded", and their response is added to the Responses tab. Note the invite Actions to Resend a "Not Responded" invitation or to Delete an invitation, which prevents the invitee from accessing their invitation form to submit a response or edit a previous one. Deleting an invitation does not delete a response that has already been received.

You can send repeat invitations and reminders. For example, if someone submitted a Church Survey response last year, they can be invited to submit a new response for the current year using the same form. The system tracks the response status of each invitation:

• If a person has an existing invitation with a 'Not Responded' status, a repeat invitation will contain a link to their existing invitation, essentially serving as a reminder.
• If a person has an existing invitation with a Responded status, a repeat invitation will contain a new link, which will create a new response when the form is submitted.

In the example below, Robert has previously responded. Sending an invitation to Robert again creates a new invitation:

When an invitee submits their response, a response Notification email is sent to the form Managers, and a submission Confirmation email is sent to the invitee. The invitation email and the submission confirmation email are shown in the person's communication log on their profile.

As invitees begin to respond, we encourage you to read our related support article for further information on Managing form responses.