If the Form Editor was a šŸŖ cookie jar, how might one keep hands out of it?

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Today any member of a project that has edit rights is able to modify the content within Project Forms. Since there arenā€™t any form-specific permissions, this could create some complications and perhaps introduce some confusion for those that arenā€™t as familiar with the feature. In this tip I will describe a scenario and offer :three: suggestions for better form management.

In some instances, it might be by design to :one: provide placeholders within the drop-down options of a question. Say for instance a team is using a Custom Template to collect information from the field where a form is leveraged to standardize the data entry. As such, a part of the prescribed workflow, might be to require users to pre-populate certain areas of the form for the scope of their data capture.

How might this be achieved if we want to limit the interactions users have with the Form Editor?!?

The answer lies within Custom Field mapping. As seen in the GIF from the link, you are able to :two: connect drop-down options to Custom Fields within the project. If the fields are setup properly for the scope of a generic project, a template can be used which then allows users to customize the options within said fields. Users can then be instructed to edit fields from the customize menu or column header. If a user was to attempt to change the drop-down options from a form they will be sent back to the same field editor. They wonā€™t be able to simply introduce a new option to an already-connected custom field which provides a nice layer of control.

Disclaimer: this is one of the few instances where our org will purposefully not add this field to the org library. This is done because this field is meant to be modified to suit the needs of a specific project and not to report aggregated data.

Waitā€¦ hold the phone :phone:ā€¦ rewind the clock :clock1030:ā€¦ you might be asking, why might one want to limit the user interaction with the editor?!?.ā€¦ Wellā€¦ without form permissions, if your experience is anything like mine, a decent subset of users mistakenly will try to submit form data through the editor :man_facepalming:ā€¦ creating unnecessary rework!.. Itā€™s trueā€¦ it happensā€¦ For this reason, when it comes to Forms we prefer to :three: ONLY advertise the Form Link and we avoid drawing any unnecessary attention to the Form tab which contains the editor.

Be the change, vote for a better tomorrow here: [Forms] Ability to manage Forms permissions :wink:

Is this helpful? How do you creatively manage Forms and the uninviting manipulation of its content?

6 Likes
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oh yes. A client of mine butchered the 5 first questions I prepared by trying to answering them within the editor ^^

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Yep, this regularly seems to happen :woman_facepalming:

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Itā€™s easily understandable, I can hardly blame the form user for thinking that they naturally will only have permissions to edit somewhere that is permissible. Thatā€™s the way it is is 99.99% of apps & websites we encounterā€¦

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This problem has pretty much been resolved for me since the form permissions release: [Forms] Ability to manage Forms permissions - #52

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Thatā€™s brilliant, thanks for the update!