A public form is for people you do not know yet: enquiries, applications, event sign-ups. Nobody signs in.
What you need
The Create public forms permission. Without it the public option does not appear. Ask your administrator. See Setting up Forms.
Make the form public
- Open the form, choose Settings, then the Access tab.
- Under Who can fill this form, choose Anyone with the link can fill it.
- Under Form link, set a Custom path if you want a readable address, such as
/forms/staff-survey. - Publish the form and share the link.
Optional settings
- Opens and Closes set the dates the form accepts responses.
- Limit total responses closes the form once it has that many.
- Let people edit their response after submitting lets each person reopen their link and submit again.
- Let respondents save and finish later is on the Look & options tab. It adds Save & finish later and a private resume link. Foldr keeps the saved response for 30 days after its last save. On a public form the link is the only key, so tell people to keep it private.
- Show the page progress bar and Form width are also on Look & options.
How a public form protects itself
There is no CAPTCHA. The visitor’s browser solves a small proof-of-work puzzle before it can submit, and Foldr limits how fast answers arrive. A visitor can upload 200 files and 2 GiB a day to a public form.
Things to know
- A public form needs a Destination if it has a File upload question. Without one it refuses every upload.
- To send a copy of the response to the person, name the Submitter email question in Settings > Responses. A public respondent has no account, so the copy needs that address.
- A Person question on a public form must be limited to particular groups, so it cannot list your whole directory.
If something does not work
- The public option is missing. You do not have Create public forms.
- The form says it is not open. Check Opens, Closes and Limit total responses.
To send a form to named people instead, see Asking named people to fill in a form. To choose what happens after Submit, see Choosing where form responses go.