3. The Forms List & History

Forms Knowledge Base Series

  1. Quick Start
  2. Getting Started
  3. The Forms List & History (this article)
  4. Building Your Form
  5. Donations & Payments
  6. The Look of Your Form
  7. Settings & Putting the Form on Your Website
  8. The Confirmation Email
  9. Security
  10. What’s New

The Forms list holds every form in your organization, the actions that apply to a whole form rather than its contents, and each form's version history.

Finding a Form

Forms are listed with four columns — Name, Status, Date Modified and Submissions — and a count of the total appears beside the page title. Name and Date Modified are sortable: clicking the heading sorts by it and clicking again reverses the order.

Date Modified is shown in your organization's timezone, formatted on the server rather than converted in the browser.

Search and filters

The search box filters by form name. Three chips filter by status — All, Active and Inactive — and two toggles narrow further:

FilterShows
Test modeForms currently in test mode
New submissionsForms with submissions not yet viewed

Status is a column as well as a filter, so a form's state is visible without filtering for it. Your search text, chosen status and toggles are remembered between visits to the page.

Badges and permissions

Two badges appear where they apply. Studio marks a form built with the donation wizard rather than this editor. Payment link marks an invoice payment form, whose editor tab is Form View rather than Editor.

Four actions are separately permissioned: creating a form, editing one, deleting one, and opening the form settings page. Buttons for actions your account doesn't hold are not shown. A Settings button on this page opens the settings that apply to web forms as a whole, which are distinct from the per-form Settings tab inside the editor.

Working With a Form

ActionEffect
EditOpens the form in the editor
PreviewOpens the live form in a new browser tab
SubmissionsLists everything received through the form
DuplicateCreates a copy and opens it in the editor
HistoryLists the saves kept for the form, with comparison and restore
DeleteRemoves the form, where it has no submissions

Duplicating

A duplicate is a complete, independent copy of the form — its fields, design, settings and email. The copy is named after the original with (COPIED) appended, and opens in the editor as soon as it has been created, so the name can be changed straight away.

The copy starts with no submissions and its own empty history. The original is untouched, keeps its submissions, and keeps every version it had.

Duplicating a Studio form copies both the form and its donation configuration together; if the second part fails, the first is rolled back rather than leaving a donation form with no donation settings.

Deleting, and the alternative

Delete requires the delete permission and a submission count of zero. On a form with submissions the button is disabled rather than hidden, and states the count and the alternative:

Can’t delete — this form has 47 submissions. Set it inactive instead.

Setting a form Inactive stops it accepting submissions while keeping the form and everything received through it. This is the route for a form whose appeal or event has finished.

History

Saving a form records a version, automatically and without a separate step. History on a row lists them newest first with the date and time of each, shown in your organization's timezone.

The 20 most recent saves are kept per form. Each save prunes anything older than that, so a version is permanently removed once 20 further saves have been made. A form edited repeatedly in one afternoon can therefore lose the version from the previous week.
The last 20 saves Newest first, with date and time. Older versions are pruned
What changed Differences from the current form, grouped into Settings, Fields, Design and Code
This save / Now Both versions rendered side by side as working forms
Restore Returns the form to that version, after a confirmation

Comparing a version with the current form

Selecting a version produces a list of differences between it and the form as it stands now, grouped into four areas and shown in this order:

AreaCovers
SettingsDestination, notifications, the on-screen message, the confirmation email
FieldsFields added, removed, relabeled or remapped
DesignStyle, accent color and the individual design controls
CodeCustom CSS, custom scripts and the form's markup

Only areas with differences appear. Beneath the list, the two versions are rendered side by side and labeled This save and Now. Both panes draw the actual form with its own styling and runtime, rather than a screenshot or a description of the difference.

Restoring

Restore asks for confirmation, returns the form to the selected version, and confirms with the date of the save it restored.

A restore is itself a save, so it becomes the newest version in the list and can be reversed the same way. The version restored from stays where it was.

Restore replaces the form's fields, design, settings and email. Submissions already received are unaffected: they belong to the form, not to a version. Nothing in History deletes a submission.
Forms built with the donation wizard do not record version history, because the wizard saves through its own endpoints and lays down no version. Hovering History on one of those forms says so.

ADVANCEDWhat a version contains

A version is a complete snapshot of the form at that save — markup, design, settings and email — rather than a record of individual edits. That is what allows the comparison to render both sides as working forms, and a restore to be a single operation rather than a replay of changes in reverse.