Building forms

Forms let your firm collect structured information from people, whether that is a brand-new prospect filling out an intake questionnaire on your public link, or an existing client completing a form you sent them. You build each form with a drag-and-drop editor, control who can use it, and decide what happens when someone submits it.

This page covers the Forms workspace: how to find your forms, create one, organize it into pages, take it live or pull it back, archive and restore it, and preview it before anyone sees it. For a deep tour of the editor itself, see The form builder in depth.

Before you begin

• A form lives at the firm level, so any member with access can find it (unless you mark it private to yourself).
• What you can do depends on your role:
  • To create a form, you need Create access for forms. If you do not, you will not see the New form button.
  • To edit, archive, or restore a form, you need Update access.
  • To permanently delete an archived form, you need Delete access.
  • Owners and Administrators have full access. Attorneys have full access. Staff can view, create, and edit forms but cannot delete them.
• If your role does not include view access for forms, the page shows a "no access" message instead of the list.
• A form that creates leads from a public web link (a Lead intake form) needs your firm to have a username set, because the public link is built from it. If you have not set one yet, see Your firm profile and details.

View and manage the forms list

The Forms workspace is your home base for everything form-related. You reach it from the sidebar, and it opens to a table of your firm's forms.

1. In the sidebar, click Forms.
2. At the top of the page you will see two tabs:
   • Forms lists every form you have built.
   • Submissions lists the responses people have sent back. (Reviewing responses is covered in Reviewing form submissions.)
3. Stay on the Forms tab to manage your forms.

Each row in the table shows:

• Name of the form.
• Lead intake, which reads Yes if the form creates a lead and contact from every submission, or No for a plain data-collection form.
• Shared?, which reads Yes if every member of the firm can use the form, or No if it is private to you.
• Status, shown as a badge: Active (live and usable) or Archive (set aside).
• Updated by and Last updated, so you can see who last touched the form and when.

Find a form

You have a few ways to narrow the list:

1. Type into the Search forms box to filter by name.
2. Click the Status filter and choose Active, Archive, or both. This is how you switch between your live forms and your archived ones.
3. Click a column header (such as Name or Last updated) to sort.
4. If you have applied filters or a search, a Clear filters button appears. Click it to reset back to the default Active view.

Row actions

At the start of each row is an actions area. Every form shows a View button, and depending on the form's status and your role you may also see a Copy link button and a More form actions menu (the "..." button):

• View opens the form's detail page, where you can see its submissions, send it to a client, and review responses.
• Copy link appears only for an active lead-intake form that has a public link. It copies that public web address to your clipboard so you can paste it into an email, a website, or a message.
• The More form actions menu ("...") holds Edit, Preview, Archive, Restore, and Delete, shown only where they apply (for example, Restore and Delete appear only on archived forms).

Act on several forms at once

If your role allows it, you can select multiple forms and act on them together:

1. Use the checkboxes on the left of each row to select forms.
2. A batch actions control appears. Depending on what you selected and your role, you can Archive, Restore, or Delete the selected forms in one step.
3. Archiving and deleting ask you to confirm first.

Create a new form

Creating a form is a two-step experience: you name it and set a few options in a dialog, then you land in the builder to add your questions.

1. In the sidebar, click Forms.
2. Click New form in the top right. (If you do not see this button, your role does not include create access for forms.)
3. In the Create form dialog, fill in the details:
   • Form name (required): a clear name your team will recognize, for example "New client intake". You can change this later.
   • Lead intake form (a checkbox, off by default): turn this on if you want every submission to automatically create a lead and a contact. See Public lead-intake forms for the full story. When you turn it on, two more options appear:
     • Public link (required when lead intake is on): the last part of the web address where people will reach the form. Your firm's link prefix is shown to the left, and the rest is yours to set. It must be unique among your firm's forms.
     • Workflow (optional): choose a workflow to attach to each new lead. The default is Don't attach a workflow. The workflow's steps are added to the lead for your team to run later from the lead's Workflow section; nothing runs automatically. A workflow only applies to lead-intake forms. See Assigning and attaching workflows.
   • This form is available for all members of the firm (a checkbox, on by default): leave it on so any member can use the form. Turn it off to keep the form private to you.
4. Click Create form.

When you click Create form, the form is saved and goes live immediately, and you are taken straight into the builder so you can start adding questions.

Edit a form's settings later

To change a form's name, sharing, lead-intake setting, public link, or attached workflow after it exists, you have two paths:

• From the forms table, open the More form actions menu ("...") on the row and click Edit to open the builder, then adjust the options in the right-hand Form settings panel.
• Inside the builder, all of these settings live in the Form settings panel on the right whenever no element is selected.

The form builder at a glance

The builder is a full-screen, three-column editor where you assemble your form by dragging elements onto a canvas.

1. From the forms table, open the More form actions menu ("...") on a form and click Edit, or click New form to create one and land here automatically.
2. You will see three areas:
   • On the left, the element palette: a list of building blocks (text fields, email, phone, name, address, dates, dropdowns, checklists, file upload, headers, and more) that you drag onto the canvas.
   • In the middle, the canvas: a preview of your form where you arrange and reorder elements.
   • On the right, the settings panel. With nothing selected it shows Form settings (name, sharing, lead intake, public link, workflow, and the confirmation message). Select any element and it switches to that element's settings, where you set the label, mark it required, add validation rules, and add show/hide conditions.
3. At the very top is the toolbar with the form's name, a Preview button, a Copy link button (for lead-intake forms), and a Save button.

For a complete walkthrough of every element, validation rule, and conditional-visibility option, see The form builder in depth.

Organize a form into multiple pages

Long forms are easier to fill out when they are split into pages. The builder lets you add as many pages as you need, and respondents move through them one at a time.

1. Open the form in the builder.
2. Scroll the canvas to find your first page. Each page is labeled, for example Page 1 of 1.
3. Drag elements from the palette onto the page to add your questions.
4. To add another page, click Add new page at the bottom of the canvas. A fresh empty page appears below.
5. Drag elements onto the new page the same way. You can move elements between pages by dragging them.
6. Each page header updates to show its position, for example Page 2 of 3.

To remove a page:

1. On the page you want to remove, click Remove page in its header. (This appears only when the form has more than one page.)
2. Confirm in the Remove this page? dialog.

7. Click Save when you are done.

Publish, unpublish, and archive a form

In Esqase a form is "published" the moment you create it: it is Active straight away, and a lead-intake form's public link starts working right away. There is no separate publish button to press. What you control instead is whether a form stays Active or gets set aside as Archive.

Make a form live

1. Create the form (see Create a new form). It is Active as soon as you click Create form.
2. Add your questions in the builder and click Save.
3. For a lead-intake form, grab the public address with Copy link (from the row or the builder toolbar) and share it. The link works as long as the form is Active.

Take a form out of use (archive)

Archiving is how you "unpublish" a form. It moves the form to Archive, hides it from the default list, and stops it being used. For a lead-intake form, archiving means its public link no longer leads to a usable form.

1. In the sidebar, click Forms.
2. On the form's row, open the More form actions menu ("...").
3. Click Archive.
4. The form moves to Archive. A confirmation appears, and the form drops out of the default Active view.

Common questions

• Can I unpublish without archiving? Archiving is the way to take a form out of use. If you only want to stop sharing a lead-intake link temporarily, archiving is the cleanest option; restore it when you are ready again.
• Does archiving remove past responses? No. Submissions you have already received stay available on the Submissions tab and on the form's detail page.

Restore an archived form and delete a form

Archived forms are not gone. You can bring one back, or permanently remove it if you are sure you no longer need it.

Restore a form

1. In the sidebar, click Forms.
2. Click the Status filter and select Archive so your archived forms appear.
3. On the form's row, open the More form actions menu ("...") and click Restore.
4. The form returns to Active and becomes usable again. For a lead-intake form, its public link works again.

You can also restore several forms at once by selecting their checkboxes and choosing Restore from the batch actions.

Delete a form

Deleting is permanent and is only available for forms that are already archived, so archive a form first if you want to delete it.

1. In the sidebar, click Forms.
2. Set the Status filter to Archive to see archived forms.
3. On the form's row, open the More form actions menu ("...") and click Delete. (You will only see Delete if your role includes delete access for forms.)
4. In the Delete form? dialog, read the warning and click Delete form to confirm.

Troubleshooting

• I do not see Restore or Delete. Those actions appear only on archived forms. Switch the Status filter to Archive first. Delete also requires delete access for forms; if your role lacks it, the option is hidden.
• I do not see the "..." menu at all. The menu only shows actions you can take. If a form is active and you have no edit or delete rights, there is nothing to show beyond View.

Preview a form

Previewing shows you exactly what a respondent sees, so you can check labels, page breaks, required fields, and the confirmation message before anyone fills it out.

1. Open the form in the builder.
2. If you have unsaved changes, click Save first. The Preview button is disabled until your changes are saved, and a tooltip reminds you to "Save your changes to preview".
3. Click Preview in the top toolbar. The preview opens in a new browser tab.
4. In the preview, fill out and move through the form just as a respondent would, including multiple pages if you added them.
5. Submit in the preview to see your confirmation message. If you set a custom Title and Message under the Confirmation message settings, you will see them here; otherwise you see the default "Thank you!" message.

You can also start a preview from the forms table:

1. On an active form's row, open the More form actions menu ("...").
2. Click Preview. It opens in a new tab.

Related

• The form builder in depth
• Public lead-intake forms
• Embed a form on your website
• Reviewing form submissions
• Assigning and attaching workflows
• Managing leads
• How clients fill intake forms