There are three ways to send a form: a general link that anyone can open, a participant-specific link that saves the response to one person's profile, and an emailed Invite Responder invitation to a named person. Which ones a form offers depends on its Require Subject setting. A form with Require Subject turned on has no general link, because a response to it has to belong to someone.
Participants are labelled Clients, Students, Residents or Explorers depending on the account type. This article calls them participants.
Who can do this, and where
Everything here happens in the Equip web app. There is no way to send a form from the mobile app.
Team members need Forms access on their role to open a form and copy its links.
Invite Responder and the participant-specific link are only on a participant's profile, under Forms.
The responder does not need an Equip login. Staff, family members, providers and other collaborators can all fill a form from a link.
Participants cannot send a form to anyone.
Forms is turned on for your account by the Equip team. If you do not see Forms in the left menu, ask us to enable it.
Send a general link
Use this when the response does not need to belong to a particular participant.
Click Forms in the left navigation and open the form.
Click the ⋯ menu in the top right and choose Copy Link, or Download QR Code for a printable code.
Share the link with the responders.
The same two items are in the ⋯ menu on each row of the Forms list.
A general link is the same link for everybody, it can be reused any number of times, and it never expires. Responses that come in through it have no subject until someone assigns one.
Send a participant-specific link
Use this when the response has to be saved to one person's profile.
Open the participant's profile and click Forms.
Click the form you want to send.
Click the ⋯ menu in the top right and choose Copy Link, or Download QR Code.
Send that link to the responder.
The link identifies the participant, not the responder, so whoever opens it fills the form about that person and the response lands on that profile. Each participant needs their own link.
Email an invitation to one responder
Open the participant's profile and click Forms.
Click the chevron next to Start Form and choose Invite Responder.
Choose the form under Form.
Fill in Responder Name and Responder Email.
Click Send Invitation, or click Copy Link to share the same link another way.
The panel tells you the exact expiry date before you send: "Both Send Invitation and Copy Link produce a link that stops working on [date]", or "This form's links never expire."
Sending an invitation creates a Pending response straight away, so the form's Responses list shows who was invited before they have answered anything.
Generate links for many participants at once
Click Reporting in the left navigation.
Open the Forms tab.
In the Report dropdown choose Form Links.
Narrow it with the Forms, Categories, Tags, Users and Groups filters.
Click Generate.
The spreadsheet has one row per person per form, with User, Title, Description and Link columns. Those are participant-specific links, so they expire on the same schedule as any other keyed link.
Limits and what the errors mean
When each link is available
Copy Link and Download QR Code appear in a form's ⋯ menu only when Require Subject is off, the form is Active, and (on a PDF document form) Allow External Responses is on. Allow External Responses is only a setting on document forms; custom forms always allow them.
The participant-specific Copy Link on a profile is always offered, even on an inactive form, but the link will not open until the form is Active again.
Invite Responder works for any active form on the profile, custom or PDF document.
Expiry
The general link never expires, whatever the form's expiry setting says.
Participant-specific links, invitation links and Form Links report links stop working after the form's link expiry window. The default is 30 days from when the link was issued. Edit the form to change it; leaving the value blank means links on that form never expire, and anything other than a positive whole number is rejected.
Someone who opens a lapsed link sees a page headed "This form link has expired", with "Nothing you sent before is lost." Nothing already saved is deleted.
To reissue, open the response in the form's Responses list and click Send Reminder. That sends the same link again and restarts the window.
Error pages the responder can see
"Form No Longer Available" with "This form is no longer available to complete." means the form is Inactive, or it is a document form with Allow External Responses turned off.
"Invalid Link" with "This form is not associated with a user and is invalid. Please contact your administrator." means the link carries no participant but the form has Require Subject turned on.
Invitation errors
"Responder name can't be blank" and "Responder email can't be blank" appear if either field is empty. Both are required on an invitation even though the form itself may allow anonymous answers.
"Responder email is invalid" means the address is not a deliverable email address.
Other places a form link appears
On an event, each registrant's ⋯ menu has Copy Form Link, which is that person's link to the form the event requests.
A to-do created by an event form request has Fill Form in its ⋯ menu.
FAQ
Why is Copy Link missing from my form's menu?
Copy Link and Download QR Code only show when the form does not require a subject, the form is Active, and document forms additionally have Allow External Responses on. Open Edit Form and turn Require Subject off if the response does not need to belong to one participant. Otherwise send a participant-specific link or an invitation instead.
Do I need a different link for each participant?
Yes, whenever the response has to be saved to a profile. The link is what tells Equip who the form is about, so one link per participant. Use the Form Links report when you need more than a handful.
Can a staff member fill out a form about a participant through a link?
Yes. The responder can be anyone, including a team member, a family member or an outside provider. The link stays tied to the participant it was generated for, so the response still saves to that profile no matter who fills it in.
Does the general form link ever expire?
No. The plain form link and its QR code carry no personal information and keep working until the form is made Inactive or deleted. Only participant-specific links and emailed invitations expire.
How long is an emailed invitation good for?
30 days from when it was sent, unless the form's link expiry setting was changed or cleared. The invitation panel shows the exact date before you send it, and sending a reminder on that response restarts the clock.
Can I send a form to several people without creating an invitation for each one?
Yes, if the form does not require a subject. Copy the general link once and share it as widely as you like. Every submission becomes its own response.
I sent an invitation and nothing happened. Where is it?
An invitation creates a Pending response on the form right away. Open Forms, open the form, and look in the Responses list for a row with an Invited Date and a Pending badge. If it is not there, check that the invitation panel did not come back with a validation error on the name or email.
Can I send a PDF document form?
Yes. Use a participant-specific link or Invite Responder. A PDF document form can also have a general link, but only if Allow External Responses is turned on in Edit Form.
Related
Fill out a form
Remind someone to finish a form
Why can't I find, edit or download a form response?
Set or change the participant a form response is about
Limit who can see a form's responses
Make a form inactive or bring it back