Sharing a form & who can answer
Inside the workspace, or a link anyone can open - plus anonymity, one answer per person and retention.
There are two ways to get a form in front of somebody, and they are independent - a form can use either, both or neither.
| Route | Who can answer |
|---|---|
| Share inside the workspace | The people you name. They see it under Shared with you, and they are the people the audience figures are about. |
| A share link | Anybody who has the link. No Noots account, no sign-in, nothing to install. |
The states a form can be in
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Draft | Still being written. Nobody can answer it yet. |
| Open | Accepting answers. |
| Not open yet | It has an opening time that has not arrived. |
| Closed | It reached its closing time, or somebody ended it. |
| Switched off | Disabled by hand, without ending it. |
Somebody arriving on a link that is not collecting gets the same page as somebody arriving on a link that was never real. That is deliberate: telling the difference would let a stranger work out which links exist. Inside the workspace you see the actual state, because you are the person who has to know which switch to flip.
The settings worth understanding
- One answer per person
- On by default. Turn it off and somebody can answer more than once.
- Anonymous
- Off by default. See Reading the answers for exactly what it withholds.
- Repeats
- Off by default. A recurring form asks again every so many days, and each round is counted separately.
- Opens / closes
- Both optional. No closing time means it collects until somebody ends it.
- Thank-you screen
- Your own title, message and an optional link with its own label.
Turning sharing off stops the link working. It does not change the link, so turning sharing back on brings the same address back to life - which is convenient and is also the risk. If a link has reached somebody it should not have, do not merely switch sharing off and on again.
How long answers are kept
A form can carry its own retention period, and it wins over the workspace's in both directions - shorter for something sensitive, longer for a yearly survey - so one form's rule never becomes everybody's. With nothing set on the form, the workspace's own data retention applies. Set it in the builder.
Somebody a form was merely shared with gets the form and their own answer. The overall figures, the per-question breakdown and the individual responses are for people who can edit the form. That is the same rule wherever you ask from, including when you ask Hoot about a form.