Request forms in Eklo: build, share and manage submissions

Eklo Forms is how a church takes requests from its staff, volunteers and, through public forms, anyone with the link: facility bookings, purchases, time off, volunteer applications. Each submission gets a reference number like FAC-0001 and can run through an approval workflow.

Open Forms in the left rail. The sidebar shows All forms, My forms (forms you own), Shared with me (forms you can edit but don't own) and, under Teams, each team that owns a form you can see.

On a phone, or in a narrow window, the list shows a card for each form. Tap the card to open the form, Fill out to submit it, or ⋯ for Submissions, Edit form, Workflow and, on a public form, Share link. ⋯ only shows on forms you can edit.

Guests don't see Forms.

Start from a templateCopy Anchor Link

1. Click From template.
2. Pick one of the nine templates: Facility Request, Event Request, Purchase Request, Check Request, Creative and Communications Request, Time Off Request, Volunteer Application, Background Check Authorization or Incident Report.
3. Check its questions and approval steps. Under Who approves, choose the person or group for each step.
4. Click Install template. The form opens in the builder, ready to change.

Every template installs as a Private draft that only you, the form's editors and workspace admins can see, so you can try it out yourselves. Nobody else can submit it until you change its Visibility. Volunteer Application and Background Check Authorization are meant for a public link: check them over, then set them to Public when you're ready.

Build a formCopy Anchor Link

1. Click New form.
2. Type the Form name and an optional description.
3. Add fields from the left-hand panel:
   • Inputs: Short text, Long text, Number, Money, Date / time, Yes / No, Dropdown, Multi-select, Person, File upload, Email, Phone, URL.
   • Layout: Section heading, Divider, Page break. A page break splits the form into steps.
   • Custom fields: your workspace's custom fields. See Workspace settings.
4. Click a field to set its Question, Helper text and whether it's Required. Dropdowns and multi-selects need at least one option; file uploads can allow up to 20 files of up to 25 MB each. On an Email question, This is the submitter's email says where approval results and questions go (see Hearing back).
5. To show a field only for some answers, click Show only when… and add a condition, like "Room is Sanctuary".
6. Drag fields to reorder them, or on a touch screen use the up and down arrows beside each field. Click Preview to try the form. A public form previews as visitors see it at its link, without the questions the link leaves out. Nothing you submit in the preview is saved.
7. Click Create form. Eklo opens the new form's page, where its submissions will appear.

On a phone, or in a narrow window, the builder has two tabs: Fields, with Add a field below your questions, and Settings. Tapping a field opens its settings on Settings; with no field picked, Settings shows the form's settings. Building is easier on a larger screen, but everything works.

Eklo makes the form's web address from its name when you first save it. Renaming the form later doesn't change it.

On a large screen the builder tucks the sidebar away to give the form room. Show sidebar, at the left edge, opens it over the page.

Saving an existing form, or its workflow, keeps you where you are. At the top, Forms goes back to the list and the form's name goes back to its page. If you leave the builder or the workflow editor with changes you haven't saved, Eklo asks first. Unsaved changes next to Save shows when there are some.

LimitsCopy Anchor Link

Who can see and submit a formCopy Anchor Link

In the builder, click Form settings. On the Settings tab:

• Owning team: puts the form in that team's folder. The team's admins can edit it.
• Visibility:
  • Public: anyone with the link can submit, without signing in.
  • Internal (the default): everyone in the workspace can see and submit it.
  • Team: only members of the owning team.
  • Private: only the people and teams you pick under Audience.
• Editors: people or teams who can change the form and see every submission.
• Reference prefix: the letters at the start of each request's reference, 2–8 capital letters or digits, like REQ for REQ-0001.
• Close to new submissions: stops new submissions straight away.
• Auto-close at: closes the form at a date and time you choose.

On the Theme tab, pick the Form color, shown on its dot in lists, on its submissions and on the page people fill in. Default uses the form's theme color. You can also upload a Cover image (PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP, up to 5 MB).

Click Save changes when you're done.

Who can edit a form: its owner, its editors, the owning team's admins, and the workspace's owners and admins. Anyone in the workspace can create a form.

Forms can't be deleted. Use Close form at the top of the form's page, or Close to new submissions here, to retire one.

Share a public formCopy Anchor Link

1. Set the form's Visibility to Public and save it. The first time you do, Eklo opens the form's page with Share link open.
2. In Share link, Copy the link for your website, bulletin or email, Open it to check it, or Download QR code (PNG) for a slide or a printed sign. On a phone, Share… opens your phone's share sheet.

Share link is also at the top of a public form's page, on its row in the forms list (in its ⋯ menu on a phone), and under Visibility in Form settings. Before a new form's link goes live, Save and copy saves it first and copies the link Eklo confirms.

People filling in a public form:

• don't need an Eklo account;
• complete a quick "I'm human" check before Submit;
• keep what they've typed if the page reloads or a send fails. For up to an hour, in the same browser tab, their answers are filled back in, with Start over to clear them. Sending the same answers again after a dropped connection records them once. Changed answers, or answers sent after Start over or once the hour is up, go in as a new submission;
• afterwards see Thanks — got it., the time they sent it, their reference number and a copy of their answers, with Print or save a copy. Eklo doesn't email them a copy.

Things to know:

• File upload, Person and custom fields aren't shown on the public link, and the builder marks them Not shown on the public link. A required one doesn't stop people submitting.
• To stop spam, one network can submit a public form up to 60 times an hour, and a form takes up to 1,000 submissions an hour. A busy shared network, like the church Wi-Fi at a sign-up table, can reach that limit.
• A closed or past-its-close-time form shows Registration closed with your church's name. A private or archived form shows "This form isn't available."
• The form's owner and editors get a notification for each new public submission, the same as for a signed-in one.
• Eklo checks required questions and answers on its side too, so a public submission can't skip a required question.

Hearing backCopy Anchor Link

Approval results, follow-up questions and the workflow's messages to the submitter go to the submitter by email. For a public form, Eklo uses:

1. the Email question marked This is the submitter's email. Unless you pick another, that's the form's first required Email question. Turn it off for someone else's address, like an emergency contact;
2. otherwise, the optional Your email box Eklo adds at the end of the form when no question holds the submitter's email.

If a public form has approval steps or messages to the submitter but no Email question, the builder and the workflow editor say Submitters won't hear back, and Eklo asks before you publish it. In the workflow editor, Make email required adds a required Email question for you, or makes the submitter's one required. A request with no address shows that on its timeline, so you know to follow up yourself.

Submit a formCopy Anchor Link

1. In Forms, hover over the form and click Fill out. On a phone, tap Fill out on the form's card. A closed form doesn't offer it.
2. Fill it in. On a form with several pages, click Continue → to move on.
3. Click Submit.

The form's owner and the people listed as its editors get a notification. If the form has an approval workflow, the first approvers do too.

To follow your request, open Tasks → Approvals → My submissions.

Work with submissionsCopy Anchor Link

Click a form to open its page. Editors see every submission; everyone else sees only their own, under My submissions. Each row says where the submission is: waiting on someone, approved (green), declined (red), finished, or canceled. All, Open, Completed and Canceled above the list show just those.

Editors get the form's tabs under its name: Submissions, Workflow (with its number of steps) and Edit, which opens the builder.

• Click a submission to open it. Its Timeline shows what's happened so far. Back returns to the form's page.
• Click a file someone uploaded to open it. Files are checked for viruses and other harmful content first, so a file uploaded moments ago may show Still checking this file for a few seconds. One the check finds harmful shows Removed: may be harmful and can't be opened.
• Click Edit to correct the answers. Once the first approver decides, the answers are locked.
• Click Export CSV to download the submissions as a spreadsheet, one column per question.
• Click Fill out to submit the form yourself.

Editors can also change a form from the top of its page, on a phone too:

• Close form stops new submissions straight away. Reopen form starts them again. If the form's Auto-close at time has passed, Eklo asks first, then clears that time.
• Share link shares a public form.
• Rename changes the form's name. Its web address stays the same.

On a phone, Export CSV is under ⋯.