Can you create rules using a form submission as a trigger?

English Forum Tips and Tricks
1

Good morning,

I was checking the forms functionality to help a customer gather project requirements from customers and while I was designing the process, I realized there is no way in the rules (automation) option to use a form response as a trigger.

As forms create new tasks, right now it is very difficult to distinguish in the automation which tasks are manually introduced and which ones come from a form. Specially when forms are unique for each project.

As forms are meant to create new requests or gather information, being able to identify if the task is created automatically through form submission, is vital to know what to do with it or to whom we should notify.

Moreover, it would also be fantastic to relate form fields with custom fields in the project to set up automations based on that :slight_smile:

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2

Hi there!

  1. You can link fields from the form to custom fields in the project. When you create the field in the form, there is a super tiny text at the bottom right, which allows you to choose a field from the project to be mapped. We use it all the time and we use it for Rules.

  2. I am not sure if you can trigger Rules only on tasks from the form and not on others. One workaround is that the project with the form is a buffer project so all tasks there are only from forms, you do automations on them and you also have a Rule to add them to the “real” project in section “From Forms”

  3. I have a feeling Flowsana from @Phil_Seeman can do that out of the box, and you can also automatically add a set of Subtasks under each form submission

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3

Thanks for the mention, @IvanStaykov!

Hi @Cristina_Estevez,

As you say, the main problem with setting up rules based on form submissions is

Of course if every new task in a project will be coming from a form submission, it’s not a problem, but if, as it sounds like is your scenario, a project will have a mix of form-created and non-form-created tasks, it’s an issue to distinguish for rule use.

One alternative is what @IvanStaykov mentions of a special “buffer” project; i.e. a special project only for form submission purposes. (IMO this is a good potential solution when form entry is being done by supplying a direct link to the form; not so much when you want users to be able to create forms when they’re sitting in the actual target project.)

Another option which uses my Flowsana integration: if you can set up the title of your form submissions such that they contain a unique string of text that users won’t ever type when they create non-form-related tasks in the project, then you can use Flowsana’s “task contains a matching word or phrase” rule condition to trigger a Flowsana rule based on it seeing that particular string of text and thus knowing that it must be coming from a form submission.

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