Yes. Click Save & Finish Later at the bottom of the form instead of Submit Response. Your answers are kept, the response is stored with an In Progress badge, and nothing is submitted: no notifications go out, no document is created, and no approver sees it. Reopen it from the form's Responses list whenever you are ready and click Submit Response to finish.
Participants are labelled Clients, Students, Residents or Explorers depending on the account type. This article calls them participants.
Who can do this, and where
Web app only, and only while you are signed in to Equip. The Save & Finish Later button is not shown to someone filling a form from a link without signing in.
Any team member with Forms access who can fill the form can save a draft.
The mobile app has no draft saving. A form submitted from the app is submitted in one pass.
Works on both custom forms and PDF document forms.
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.
Steps
Open the form and start filling it in.
Click Save & Finish Later, next to Submit Response at the bottom.
The confirmation reads "Response saved. You can finish it later." and you are returned to the form.
To pick it up again, open Forms, open the form, and find your row in the Responses list with the In Progress badge. From a participant's profile, open Forms and then the form.
Click the row, then Edit Response in the ⋯ menu of the panel that opens.
Finish the remaining fields and click Submit Response.
Limits and what the errors mean
What is not checked when you save
Required questions are not enforced. A draft can be as empty as you like.
Full Name and Email Address are not required on a draft. They are required when you submit, unless the form allows anonymous responses.
A Subject is not required on a draft, even on a form with Require Subject on.
A signature is not required on a draft. If the form requires one, it is checked when you submit. A signature you already drew is loaded back into the box when you reopen the draft.
What does not happen until you submit
Response subscribers and approvers are not notified.
No document is created and no PDF is generated, so the response does not yet appear on the participant's profile documents.
No expiration date is recorded, even on a form that tracks expirations.
The Form Responses report defaults to completed responses, so a draft is left out of it unless you add In progress to the report's Response Status filter.
Who can see and resume a draft
An In Progress response is visible to anyone who can see the form's responses, and any team member who can open it can edit and submit it, not just the person who started it. It is not private. Whose draft it is shows in the Responder column.
Saving more than once
There is no limit. Save, come back, edit, and save again as often as you need.
Approval forms
If the form requires approval, submitting a saved draft sets it to Awaiting Approval and notifies the approvers, exactly as a fresh submission would.
Denied responses
Using Save & Finish Later while correcting a denied response puts it back to In Progress rather than resubmitting it, and skips the new-signature requirement. It does not go back to the approvers until you click Submit Response.
Downloading a draft
On a custom form, Download is hidden until the response is submitted. On a PDF document form the in-progress PDF can be downloaded.
FAQ
Where do I find a form I saved?
Open Forms, open the form and look in the Responses list for a row with the In Progress badge. If the form is about a participant, their profile's Forms section shows the same response. Note that the form page's Responses list only covers a date range, so widen the Responses Date picker if the draft was started more than a month ago.
Can I save a form without answering the required questions?
Yes. Required questions, the subject and the signature are only checked when you click Submit Response. A draft can be saved with almost nothing in it.
Will my approver see an in-progress response?
No. Approvers are notified only when you submit. Until then the response has an In Progress badge and no approver can act on it.
Can someone else finish the form I started?
Yes. Any team member who can see the form's responses can open your draft and submit it. The Responder column shows who started it, and the response records who last edited it.
Can external responders save and come back?
No. Save & Finish Later only shows when you are signed in to Equip. Someone filling the form from a link or an emailed invitation has to complete and submit it in one sitting. Their link does stay valid until it expires, so they can start over if they close the page.
Does this work for PDF document forms?
Yes. The filled fields are kept and the finished PDF is only generated when you submit. A PDF draft can also be downloaded before submission, unlike a custom form draft.
I saved a draft and the participant's profile shows nothing. Why?
The document is built from the response only once it is submitted and has a subject. An In Progress response has no document yet, so nothing appears under the participant's Documents.
Can I save a draft on the mobile app?
No. The app submits a form in one pass. Use the web app when you need to stop partway.
Related
Fill out a form
Why can't I find, edit or download a form response?
Approve or deny a form response
Add your signature to a form
Where do I see the responses to a form?