Collecting submissions of online forms designed with Plumsail Forms

Note

Data collection and storage is enabled by default for all forms that you create.

Activate submissions

The property is ON by default; if turned off, the data will not be processed in any way. You can disable it when testing and developing a form.

Activate submissions

Save submissions

The property is ON by default; if turned off, the data from the form will not be saved to your account. It can still go to Power Automate or Zapier.

Save submissions

Submissions are stored indefinitely by default. In the form settings, you can define a period after which submissions are automatically deleted.

Save submissions period

Enable saving drafts

The property is OFF by default; if turned on, a user can save their progress and continue filling out the form later.

Enable saving drafts

A draft can be saved using the Save & Resume button on the Shared Page or an additional Save & Resume control that should be added to the form in the designer.

Note

Drafts can be edited only via the Sharing pages (or Plumsail Account). Therefore, in order to allow users to edit their drafts, the form must be approved.

Drafts are not counted as submissions, but they take up storage space. Drafts are stored for 30 days by default, and you can adjust this period in the form settings:

Enable saving drafts period

Manage saved submissions and drafts

If you decide to save the data to your account, you can then view it in Forms section of your Plumsail Account, where each form is displayed along with the number of new/all submissions, simply click on the form:

Click on the form

You can switch between saved submissions and drafts:

Submissions and dratfs

After each submission, the data will be available in Plumsail Account, where you can see it or export it to CSV:

Collected data

You can also select which fields should be displayed in this list and in what order, by clicking the Columns button:

Columns configuration

Open context menu by clicking on the vertical ellipsis symbol, this will allow you to view the filled out form, see the submitted data as JSON, mark the submission read/unread, or delete it:

Context menu

If you open the submission on a form, you can see all the data there, and there is also an option to export the form to PDF:

Form view

And this is what the submission source in JSON looks like:

Submission source

Schedule submission removal

You can configure auto-removal of submissions from Plumsail Account and their attachments after a certain amount of days in each form’s settings:

Note

If submissions are deleted, there is no way to restore them.

Clear submissions automatically

Archive form

If you want to stop gathering submissions, you can archive the form. When users open the form, they will see a message that the form is unavailable.

Archive form

You can activate the form at any time:

Activate form