Managing form responses

Managing responses

Each form's responses are listed on the Responses tab of the form's "View" page, with the most recent response first in the list. Use the Status, Search and Advanced Search to further filter a long list to find the response/s you are looking for or Download the full response list to a PDF or CSV format file.

For Public and Private (i.e. non-anonymous) forms there is a Person column and a Responded column showing the date and time of the response. Responses to form invitations will show Linked to the invited person, however, responses made through the public-facing form page are shown Unlinked and will need to be linked to the appropriate contact or child before any further response processing can happen (see the related support article for further information on Form Actions).

The response Actions available (explained later) depend on the Primary Response Type - Contacts, Children or People - whether the response is Unlinked or Linked to an Address Book contact or a Child and whether the response status is Active or Archived. The response Actions (shown below) may not be immediately visible if the form has lots of fields - scroll horizontally to the right to access the response actions or click anywhere within the response row to open the response View in a pop-up and see the available actions for that response.

Linking responses

Clicking on a response from the list opens the response View in a pop-up. If, like the example below, the response is Unlinked, the response can be optionally linked to an existing contact or child in ChurchSuite, or you can add a new contact or child using any smart-linked response fields to populate the various fields on the "Add contact" or "Add child" form. The response is then linked to the newly-added contact or child.

The Link to person action opens a pop-up, with linking suggestions matched using certain smart-linked form response fields to match to the Address Book or Children module. fields from the form response. Either select from the list or use the Search to choose the appropriate person to link the response to. If none of the suggestions are correct, or you are unable to find the correct person using the Search, close the pop-up and optionally Add contact or Add child to add a new person.

Should you need to make response-linking changes you can use the Edit person link option on the More actions menu, which opens a pop-up through which you can unlink the response. The response can remain unlinked, or you can link to a different person (with link suggestions provided, as explained above), or you can add a new contact or child from an unlinked response. Note that it is not possible to edit the person linking for responses relating to a form invitation.

Finally in this section, responses are shown in the Forms widget on the Engagement tab of the person's profile page in the Address Book or Children module. The Forms widget lists the most recent form activity at the top of the list and shows Invites and Responses. Clicking on an item in the widget list redirects you to the Responses list of the form (subject to any form visibility restrictions).

Editing responses

If you need to edit a person's previously submitted form response, you can do so using the Edit response action located on the More response actions list.

Selecting Edit response opens the form page and response data in Edit mode.

A Resend confirmation checkbox, ticked by default, ensures a change confirmation email is sent to the respondent when the response changes are saved. Note that when editing a response, any data protection element that is usually present on the form is not shown in this context where a user is making changes to the form.

ChurchSuite maintains a comprehensive response change log (accessible via the More actions menu on the response View) detailing user changes made to a response.

Archiving responses

It's helpful to be able to distinguish form responses that have been actioned and those that still need to be dealt with, especially when you receive lots of responses. Rather than delete actioned responses, you can Archive responses - archived responses can be later Set as active again if necessary. Note, some of the response actions - like Run actions - are only available for Active responses.

Working within the Responses tab of a form, you can switch between viewing Active (the default), Archived or All responses.

Updating people's details from form responses

As explained in the support article on Creating forms, the fields in a form can be optionally smart-linked to the fields in ChurchSuite's modules - essentially mapping a form field to a ChurchSuite field. Smart-linked fields can then be used to populate a new person's details (when adding a new contact or child) or, as explained in this section, to update a linked respondent's existing details where there are differences between their existing details and the smart-linked response data. In this way, form responses can help keep people's details up to date, although consideration should be given as to whether the difference in data is an intended update.

For example, if a response has a different email address, should the person's existing email address be updated to the one used in their form response? Remember, changing a person's email address will prevent them from logging into My ChurchSuite their existing email address. ChurchSuite makes it easy to identify the differences and allows you to selectively choose which data to update. Let's see how...

Smart-linked response data that differs from the linked person's existing data is highlighted in yellow. Differences include the use of uppercase and lowercase data, and where there is missing data - either missing from a smart linked response field or missing in the linked person's existing details in ChurchSuite.

The same styling of differences in data is shown in the response View pop-up. Click Edit person to see a full list of the differences.

The Edit person pop-up lists the differences between the linked Contact or Child and their form Response. By default, the existing data is selected, but you can selectively choose to update any of the existing data to the response data. Click Save to process the changes. Change logs are added against the linked person's profile for any changes made. In the example below, consideration should be given to whether the existing email address and mobile number are still correct, or whether the form response details are intended to be an update to the person's existing data. The nature of your form may bring context to the answer to this question - for example, an 'update your details' form likely expects that differences should mean an update of details. If in doubt, we encourage you to seek clarification from the form respondent.