To assign tasks to multiple users:
- Add a Person field to your form and choose Checkboxes as the type.
- Select the correct source form from the Look Up People From drop-down menu.
- Include the right people by setting appropriate conditions.
- Set the Person field to default to the right people.
- Save your form.
- Go into the Workflow section and edit the role that you would like to assign multiple users to. In the drop-down menu under Share Specific Entries With, select the Person field you just created, then click Save.
- Save your form, then go to your Entries.
- Create a new grid view, label it, turn ON Shared With Me, and turn ON Assign As Tasks.
- Filter your grid view to include entries with the correct status, then hit Apply.
- Save your filter to this view.
Learn more about Workflow Tasks.
You can share workflow links with anyone via email; however, workflow participants must log in to your Cognito Forms organization to view and complete tasks.
Each plan level includes a set number of free users, with the option to add more at $5 per user, per month.
Learn more about Workflow Tasks.
You can use the Share function to see everyone you’ve shared an entry with. From the Entries Page, open the entry and click Share in the top menu.
Learn more about Workflow Tasks.
Workflow task assignments make it easy to see the work that needs to be done. Regardless of the number of people involved in your workflow, every user will see what they need to do at each step in your process.
To assign workflow tasks, you’ll need to create a user-specific view using the Shared With Me option in your Grid View Settings. Then, enable Assign As Tasks and select Save.
When a user logs in to Cognito Forms, they can view their task assignments under the Task section on the organization dashboard.
Learn more about assigning Workflow Tasks.
To remove the Cognito Forms watermark from your custom document, you must switch the Billing Mode option in the Manage Document Templates dialog from Test to Live. Each live document template costs a flat fee of $4 per form per month – no matter how many times the template is used to generate a document.
Learn more about our document generation feature.
Of course! Our Workflow features allow you to automate an endless variety of processes, including basic approval workflow, parallel approval workflow, parallel task workflow, serial task workflow, negotiation workflow, and more.
On your form’s Build page, open the Workflow menu to assemble your workflow using a combination of custom actions, statuses, and roles. Not sure where to start? Use one of our pre-built templates (like the Expense Report Form) and customize it to fit your needs.
Learn more about creating automated workflows or get in touch with our support team if you have any questions.
You can determine when your form is available using the Limit Form Availability settings in the Workflow menu.
To update your form’s availability dates:
From your organization’s Dashboard, find the form you want to update and open the Build page.
Open the Workflow menu and select Public Links.
Under Allow Links – By Date, update the Available From and/or Available To dates and times. Or, select Allow Links – Always to make public links available at all times.
Save your changes.
Learn more about managing public links in our help guide.
Cognito Forms does not currently support the ability to send out automated reminder messages or emails. You can, however, manually send an email notification at any time from the Entries page.
To manually send an email notification:
- Go to your form’s Entries page.
- Open an individual entry, then select the Email option at the top of the entry.
- Choose which email notification you’d like to send using the dropdown field provided. Edit the email if needed.
- Hit the Send button.
Learn more about sharing entries in our help guide.
Yes! The easiest way to hide a Submit action button on your form is to never allow the action to be performed. To do this:
Go to your form’s Build page and open the Workflow menu.
Open the Action Settings for your Submit action.
Under Allow Action, select Never.
Make sure to save your changes.
Now the Submit action will never appear on your form, however you can change this setting at any time.
You also have the option to allow a Submit action to be performed only by certain roles, or even allow it under certain conditions. Click “For Roles” beneath Allow Action to assign one or mole roles the ability to perform this action. Or, select “When” to apply conditional logic for when the Submit action should become available.
Yes! You can trigger an email that acts as a submission confirmation from an existing Submit action on your form:
- Click Workflow in the form builder and open the Action Settings for your Submit action.
- Under Send Emails, add and build your confirmation email. In the To field, use the Insert Field option to select the Email field that collects your form user’s email.
- Under Include, check the box next to Entry Details. This will include a copy of the form user’s entry details in the body of the email.
- Make sure to save your changes.
Click on the email notification from the Action Settings for the form action that triggers the email.
Specify who’s receiving the email, the subject of the email, and optionally include a custom message.
Under Send, select “When” to open the conditional logic builder.
Specify the criteria that should trigger the email to send.
Make sure to save your changes.
With the help of some conditional logic, you can redirect people to a different web page depending on the information they submit.
To use conditional confirmation pages:
- Add a Calculation field to your form and make sure to set the Show This Field settings to For Roles > Internal.
- Write an if/then statement as the expression for your Calculation field, e.g
= if ChoiceField = "Choice A" then "https://www.mywebsite.com/choice-a" else if ChoiceField = "Choice B" then "https://www.mywebsite.com/choice-b" else "" - In the Action Settings for your Submit action, select Redirect underneath Confirmation. Then click into the URL field to insert your Calculation field using the Insert Field option.
Yes! You can create fields that only appear to administrators when previewing the form, viewing the form from the Publish page, or viewing/editing entries. To do this:
- In the form builder, select the field you wish to display internally.
- Under the Show this Field section in the left-hand field settings, choose the For Roles option and select Internal.
- Make sure to save your changes.
To view the IP address of the person submitting your form:
- Add a Calculation field to your form.
- Set the calculation to:
=Entry.Origin.IpAddress - Set Show This Field to For Roles and select Internal.
Learn more about limiting the number of submissions per unique IP address.
Organizations on the Pro, Team, and Enterprise plans can add Table fields to their forms. Similar to repeating sections, a Table field is a grid that repeats and expands as needed.
To add a predefined (or preset/static) table to your form:
Add a Table field to your form. In the Table field settings, set the minimum and maximum range for the Number of Items to your desired number of rows (ex: 4).
Check the Automatically Hide Add and Remove Buttons? option.
Make sure to save your changes.
In some cases, you may want to set specific values for each row. For example, let’s say you have a field in your table labelled “Quarter” and you want each row to display a different value (Ex: Q1 in the first row, Q2 in the second row, etc.):
For the Default Value option in the field settings, use an if/then statement to display a value depending on the item number. Ex:
= if ItemNumber = 1 then "Q1" else if ItemNumber = 2 then "Q2" else if ItemNumber = 3 then "Q3" else if ItemNumber = 4 then "Q4" else nullMake sure to set the Read-Only option to Never.
Save your changes.
Now, the first column of the table will display a static value based on the row number:
Yes! You can use the Lookup field to filter choice options based on quantity limits, dates or other custom criteria. In this case, you’ll need two forms: 1) a source form that contains your choice options and quantity limits, and 2) an order form with a Lookup field that filters the available choice options.
To hide unavailable choice options using the Lookup field:
Create a source form and populate it with your choice options. In this example, we’re listing time slots available based on date and time. This form includes a Date field, a Time field, and a Number field for the quantity available of each time slot.
Populate the form entries with dates, times and available quantities. You can populate these values manually by creating new entries on the Entries page or directly from the form. You can also import entry data into the form via an Excel spreadsheet.
Create the form that allows people to sign up for time slots. Add a Lookup field and look up choices from the Time Slot Inventory form. Then, set the Include option to only include entries where the number of available slots is greater than zero. Optionally, include a Number field on the form (ex: ‘Number of People’) to allow more than one person to book a single time slot.
Select the Specify Quantity option and set the Quantity Available to the Availability field on the source form. Make sure to include an error message as well (ex:
="There are only " + TimeSlotsAvailable.Availability + " slots available."). This message will appear if someone attempts to sign up for more slots than are available. Optionally, if you’re allowing more than one person to sign up at a time, set the Specify Quantity option to the ‘Number of People’ field.
Make sure to save your changes.
Now, you can test out your workflow. For this example, we can submit an entry to claim all of the available time slots for 6/1/2023.
Once we submit our entry, the Lookup field will automatically filter out the unavailable time slot. If someone attempts to sign up a number of slots that exceeds the quantity available, your custom error message will appear.
Learn more about filtering choice options using the Lookup field.
Yes! To import choice options, prices and values, simply select the first line of the choice label textbox and paste your list from Excel or another text editor. Choices, prices and values must be tab delimited (automatic when pasting from Excel) and separated by line breaks between choices.
Each line item will populate down the list, eliminating the need to manually copy every item from long lists.
Cognito Forms is a subscription-based service that hosts all forms and collected data securely on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. It is PCI (DSS) Level 1 and HIPAA compliant.
While we do not offer the option to host forms on your own web server, you can embed your form directly into your website and send form data to other applications using various integrations.
Learn more about our hosting provider and our data security practices.
If your Choice field is set to the Radio Buttons type, you cannot deselect (or clear) the field once you’ve selected an option. However, you can deselect choice options if the field is set to the Dropdown or Checkboxes types.
To allow Choice field options to be deselected:
- Copy the existing Choice field and change the field type to the Dropdown or Checkboxes type.
- Set the original Choice field to Internal view only. You can also delete the field entirely, which will subsequently delete any data that you’ve already collected on this field.
- Make sure to save your changes.
Yes! When someone uploads an image file to your form, you can display that image directly in the generated PDF document.
To include uploaded files as images in your generated documents:
Open the form builder and select the File Upload field.
In the field settings, restrict the allowed field types to just JPG or PNG files.
Make sure to save your changes.
If you want to resize images or customize other elements in your document, you can use our document generation feature to create document templates in Word.
Cognito Forms does not currently support the ability to copy sections (or groups of fields) between forms, or merge two forms together. Alternatively, we recommend making a copy of your form and removing or adding fields as necessary.
To create a copy of your form:
In your Cognito Forms account, open your organization’s Dashboard.
Select the form title, and then select the Copy option.
Edit the title, and select the organization and/or folder where you want to copy the form. If your form is not encrypted, optionally include the associated entry data.
Hit the Copy button to automatically save your new form.
While Cognito Forms does not currently offer the ability to automatically adjust or reset quantity limits, you can manually reset a quantity limit using one of the following options:
- Update the existing quantity limit to account for previous entries. For example, if your field has a quantity limit of 10 and 2 entries have been submitted, you must update the limit to 12 (not 10) to take the previous entries into account. You can use an expression such as
=FieldName_QuantityUsedin a calculation on your form to see the number of quantities used on a specific field. - Create a new field to reset the quantity limits. You can simply copy the existing field to create a new field with new quantity limits. Please note that if you delete the old field, the associated entry data will be deleted as well. To maintain the existing data, you can set the Show This Field option in the field settings to Never.
Cognito Forms does not currently support generating QR codes. However, this is an option we are considering for a future release.
Alternatively, if your form is embedded on your website, you could use an external javascript library (see example) to generate a QR code on your site.
We do not currently offer the ability to insert images into Choice field options. However, this is a feature we are considering for a future release.
Alternatively, you can insert each image into its own Content field. Simply add a Content field to your form, and select the Insert/edit image option from the formatting toolbar. In the dialog that appears, you can upload your image or include the image url. Then, use the Show This Field - When option in the Content field settings to conditionally display the image when the corresponding choice is selected.
Templates that use Lookup fields are a bit different from standard templates. They include additional, connected forms that supply entry data to populate dropdown menus on the template.
This extra level of connectivity enables you to work more efficiently. You can reference the same data from multiple forms, eliminating the need to update rapidly changing data in multiple places (such as when teachers change courses from one semester to the next, or store locations open and move.)
How to use these templates:
- Choose the template you want to use and select Use This Template. (The template will open in the Cognito Forms builder for you to customize.)
- Click Save Connected Forms in the pop-up dialog (You can choose to save the sample entries already entered in your connected forms or not. These entries are placeholders and only exist to demo the Lookup Fields.)
- Save your new form template and connected forms. (You can rename the forms at this time - before entering your source information.)
- Preview your new form to make sure the Lookup fields are working.
- Enter your data (or replace the sample entry data) in the connected forms by creating new entries.
- Return to the main form and preview it again. You should see your entry data appearing in the appropriate Lookup field dropdowns on the form.
- From here, you can continue customizing your template as you would any other. Add your own branding, create additional automation, and build out your form like you would any other.
Yes! You can easily copy forms and entries both within your organization and across different organizations.
To create a copy of your form:
In your Cognito Forms account, open your organization’s Dashboard.
Select the form title, and then select the Copy option.
Edit the title, and select the organization and/or folder where you want to copy the form. If your form is not encrypted, optionally include the associated entry data.
Hit the Copy button to automatically save your new form.
Yes! When two or more forms are connected via the Lookup field, you can share those forms together as a bundle.
To share multi-form templates:
Open your organization’s Dashboard and select the form that contains data lookups.
On the Build page, open the Settings section and select the Share As Template? option. Here, you can find the Share Link for your form. You can also check Share entries? to include the associated entry data (such as a product inventory or list of store locations) along with your shared form.
Make sure to save your changes.
Repeat the steps above with all of the connected lookup forms. You can share up to 20 connected forms with a single template. Once you’ve shared all of the connected forms as templates, you can share a single link to the main form. From this link, users can see your shared forms with the specific form appearing in a preview window.
At this point, users can optionally save the connected forms and associated entry data. When they hit Save, the shared templates are automatically saved into their organization.
Learn more about creating data lookups and sharing forms as templates.
We do not currently offer the ability to embed videos directly onto your forms.
Alternatively, you can use a Content field on your form to add links to other websites (like YouTube). Simply add a Content field to your form, and select the Insert/edit link option from the formatting toolbar. In the dialog that appears, you can include your video link, display text, and choose whether the video will appear in the current window or a new window.
If you find that you no longer need a form, you have the ability to either archive or delete it from your organization’s Dashboard. The archive option will set the form aside in the Archived folder, where you can restore it back at any time. The delete option, on the other hand, will permanently delete the form along with all associated entries.
To delete a form:
- Log in to your Cognito Forms account. Select your profile image in the top right corner and then select the organization where the form is located.
- On the organization Dashboard, select the checkbox next to the form title and then select the Delete option from the top menu.
- Type DELETE to confirm that you want to permanently delete the form and associated entries.
Yes! Using our Lookup field and Quantity Limit features, you can create product inventory and limit quantities for specific items.
To create and manage a limited product inventory:
- Create an inventory form and populate the form entries with product details using fields like Product Name, Price, Size, Available Quantity, etc.
- Create a sales form and add a Lookup field. In the Lookup field settings, find the Lookup Choices From option and select the Inventory form.
- Next, find the Limit Quantity option. Set the Quantity Available value to the Starting Quantity field from your inventory. Make sure to include a message to display when the quantity is exceeded (ex: “Out of stock!”).
- After setting the quantity available, the Lookup field Choice Description will automatically display the total quantity remaining next to the product name:
If the quantity for a product has been exceeded, an error message will display to let the customer know the item is no longer available.
Learn more about managing limited inventories and setting up quantity limits on your forms.
If you’ve been logged in to your Cognito Forms account and have been idle (not interacting with the browser) for over 8 hours, you will be automatically logged out. For users with HIPAA-compliant forms, user timeouts will change from 8 hours to 1 hour to increase the security for sensitive personal health information (PHI).
If your account is logged out in less than 8 hours, you may have a bad session token.
To clear a session token:
- Log out of your account.
- Clear your browser cache and cookies.
- Restart the browser and log back in.
If you experience any issues logging in to your account, contact our support team.
While you cannot directly pull repeating section or table data through the Lookup field, you can use a simple calculation on your form to pull the data through instead.
To lookup repeating data:
- Add a Lookup field to your form and select the form that you want to pull the data from.
- Add a Calculation field. For your expression, use the names of your Lookup field and repeating section/table, followed by the .Select function and the name of the field inside the repeating section/table that you want to reference:
=Lookup.RepeatingSection.Select(Name) - Now, your Calculation field will display every name entered into the repeating section on the other form.
Learn more about referencing repeating data and creating data lookups.
When someone shares a template with you, the link should open a page showing all templates that user has shared with you.
If the link you were sent takes you to the general templates page, or you don’t see the template you were expecting among the shared templates, it could be that settings were changed, or the form wasn’t saved before it was sent to you.
Check with the sender to make sure:
- The Share as Template option is enabled in the form settings.
- The form has been saved.
- The title of the form has not changed, which would invalidate the previous share link.
This will usually fix the problem. Simply have the sender correct the settings and/or save the form and resend it. If that doesn’t work, contact our support team.
To turn off (or ‘unpublish’) a form, try one of the following options:
Disable public links. Turn off the Public Links option in your form’s Workflow menu and make sure to customize the ‘Not Available Message’ that users see if they visit your form once it is unavailable. Please note that public link availability settings do not affect Save and Resume links or Workflow links.
Change the form’s availability end date. Find the Public Links section in your form’s Workflow menu and set the ‘Available To’ date and time to any time in the past.
Archive the form. From your Dashboard, select your form and then select the Archive option at the top to archive the form. Archived forms are not accessible to users (though they can be restored at any time).
We do not currently offer the ability to sketch or draw over an image on your form. However, this is an option we are considering for a future release.
Alternatively, you can provide users a link from another application (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) to download the image. The user could draw over the image, and then upload the image back into the form using the File Upload field.
Yes! With Text piping (also referred to as “question piping”), you can take user input from one field and insert it elsewhere on the same form. For example, when a user enters their name, you can insert it directly into the help text of another field on the form to create a more personalized experience. To do this:
- Add a Name field to your form.
- Select the field that you want to personalize and find the Help Text section in the field settings.
- Use the Insert Field option to insert the Name field value into the message.
Yes! You can use our text piping feature to insert (or “pipe”) answers from a previous question into a later question on your form. For example, if you’re asking a customer about their favorite type of pie, you can insert their answer directly into the label of the next field on the form. To do this:
Add a Choice field to your form labelled ‘Which type of pie do you like the best?’
Add a follow-up Textbox field. In the field settings, use the Insert Field option to insert the answer from the previous Choice field into the field label, ex: ‘Why do you like [WhichTypeOfPieDoYouLikeTheBest] the best?’
Set the follow-up Textbox field to only appear after the previous Choice field is filled out, ex:
=(WhichTypeOfPieDoYouLikeTheBest != null)Now, when a customer selects their favorite pie, their answer will automatically populate the label of the next field:
To prevent users from selecting a date in the past:
Find the Range option in your Date field settings.
Set the minimum range to this expression:
=DateTime.Today
Make sure to save your changes.
When you collect integers via the Number field, the resulting value contains commas (or a different type of character depending on your form’s location settings). When you need to collect a number without commas (ex: a year), use a Textbox field instead:
- Add a Textbox field to your form.
- In the field settings, find the Format Validation option and select the Numeric option. This option requires users to enter only numbers.
- Optionally, select the Custom Mask option and enter your numeric value (ex: ####) as the Format Mask.
Our forms use what’s known as a “smart” captcha.
We have rules in place that automatically detect spam bots based on how the form is used. As long as your customers are humans, the captcha won’t appear and frustrate your users, and you’ll block any nasty spam entries.
We do not currently support the ability to create fillable PDFs from your forms. You can, however, create regular PDF files using our document generation feature and then manually convert the files to fillable PDFs once they’ve been created.
To create PDFs from your form entries:
- Open the Entries page.
- Find the entry that you want to export.
- Select the Create Document option to download the entry as a PDF.
Yes, this feature is available to organizations on our Pro, Team, and Enterprise plans.
To enable Save & Resume on your form:
- Open the Workflow menu on your form’s Build page.
- In the menu that appears on the left, click the Save & Resume option to enable the feature.
- Make sure to save your changes.
For more in-depth details, visit our tutorial on using Save & Resume.
To save your entry as a PDF:
- Go to your Entries page and click on the entry you wish to export.
- At the top of the entry view, select the Create Document option.
- Select a template to automatically download a PDF copy of your entry. (Optionally, you can click the Manage Templates to manually edit your PDF’s settings to include or exclude a title, logo, fields, etc.)
To further customize these templates, you can use our advanced document merging feature.
Learn more in our Document Merge tutorial.
It’s easy and intuitive, so feel free to jump right in.
Simply choose the types of fields you’d like to add to your form. Position them where you want them. Style them to make them match your brand. Then send them out into the world.
And if you want to add super powers to your form – things like calculations, automated behaviors, and conversational styling – you can do that too.
Check out our quick-start video to learn how to create your first form.
Browse our library of online tutorials.
Electronic signatures are considered legally binding for nearly every business or personal transaction in the United States and around the world.
The eSIGN act of 2000 established the legal basis for the use of electronic signatures in the United States as an alternative to paper signatures. In the United Kingdom, the equivalent legislation to the ESIGN Act was the Electronic Communications Act 2000.
When using Cognito Forms’ Signature fields to capture a signature, take the following additional steps to ensure full compliance with eSIGN:
- Inform the person filling out the form that the signature will be legally binding and provide a paper-based alternative if possible (the consent provision).
- Include a date next to the signature to show when the document was signed.
- Include a PDF copy of the signed form in the confirmation email sent to the customer/user (the retention provision).
- Additionally, send a PDF copy to yourself (or to a cloud service via Zapier) for your own records.
Following these simple steps ensures that you have notified your customers that the form submission will be legally binding, and have provided them with an electronic copy of the signed contract; thus fulfilling the basic requirements of the eSIGN act.
In Cognito Forms, you have the ability to upload images in multiple places on your forms. However, Google Drive currently prohibits the remote hosting of uploaded images. We would recommend using an alternative service to host the images that you want to display on your forms.
When you copy a form, the settings that get copied over will differ based on the location the form is copied to:
- When a form is copied within the same organization, all form settings will be copied verbatim.
- When a form is copied into a different organization (this includes forms that are shared as templates), most form settings will be copied over with some exceptions.
For a detailed explanation, visit our Copying Forms tutorial.
Cognito Forms performs very well in the latest version of most major browsers, enabling you to build and manage your own online forms and consistently display forms to users.
These browsers, however, are the ones we specifically support:
- Edge
- Firefox
- Chrome
- Safari
- Safari iOS
If you’re unable to see your form, first check your browser to make sure you are running the latest version. If you still can’t see your form after updating your browser, please contact our support team.
Yes! If your form has multiple pages and you want people to be able to review their answers before submitting, you can use a Content field to effectively create a summary page at the end of your form.
To create a review-answers page on a multi-page form:
Add a final page to your form called Review (or something similar).
On this page, insert a Content field. Content fields allow you to insert field data, so you can easily list out all of the user’s answers in a concise format.
Underneath your Content field, add a Yes/No field set to required. This way, the person filling out the form must confirm that they’ve reviewed their answers before submitting their form.
You can split any form into multiple pages using a Page Break.
To add pages to your form:
Open the form builder.
Insert a Page Break where you want to add a new page. From the Form settings section, you can edit page titles, display a progress bar, and display page numbers at the bottom of each page. Additionally, within the field settings, use the Show Next Page option to conditionally display the page based on conditions on the form.
Save your changes.
At the moment, we do not support offline usage of Cognito Forms. However, this is an option we are considering for a future release.