How do I Preview and Publish my Form?

Form Preview

As you work on your form layout, it is helpful to be able to test how the components will look and work for the person filling out this form. First, save any changes you've made. Then, you can find a form preview and see all the debugging tools by pressing "Debug" in your three dots menu. 

This will open a new window that shows the form layout as the user will see it and allow you to interact with the fields to test them. As you enter information into the form, you will see the collected data start to update in the debug section at the bottom of your page. 

Our form builders usually have this preview tab open while they build a form so they can save and refresh the preview to see their changes. 

Debug

The Debug Section of the Form Preview has three parts:

• Step selector
• State
• Errors

Step Selector

The step selector allows you to view a preview of the form at any step of the workflow. This is useful if certain sections or fields should be displayed or hidden on a particular step. You can use the dropdown to choose any step you've created to see the form at that step. 

State

The state section displays what information will be stored for each field ID if the form is submitted as it is currently completed. You can use this to see the data types of different fields if you need to reference them elsewhere or to see that hidden computed fields work correctly. 

Errors

The errors section shows which fields will prevent the submission from moving to the next step if it was submitted as it is currently completed. If a field ID is true, that field is required and is not currently completed so it will throw an error. If a field is optional or you have completed it in the layout above, it will no longer show on this list. You can use this section to verify that the fields you have made optional are not preventing submission. 

You can learn more about validation and formulas to make a field optional or conditionally optional, in this article about how to use Validation Logic. 

Publishing your Form

When you are finished with your form, you can save your changes and then press the Publish button. 

Publishing a form creates the first version or a new version of your form and allows submissions toward it. 

We recommend opening the newly published form or version and completing a test submission. You can use fake data in the fields and a real email address. Testing allows you to make sure the form and its workflow are working correctly and that any notification emails are sent out to the correct email addresses. You can do as many tests as you need to and we usually conduct multiple tests for forms with complex workflows so we can check that all routes are working as expected. 

If you find any issues that need to be corrected, you can create a new draft, make any edits to the form that you need to make, and then publish those changes.