How Building Forms Works

This guide explains how it all fits together. For one job at a time, the short articles in this topic have the exact steps.

Building a Form

The Agoo Forms builder, with its 34 kinds of question, ready-made starter templates, pages, endings, who answers and when a form closes, plus preview, publishing, versions and the keyboard.

The builder has five tabs: Build, Logic, Endings, Settings and Share, and Responses once people answer. It works with a mouse, a finger or the keyboard, on a computer, a tablet or a phone (where the palette and inspector open as sheets).

agooforms.com/app/grace-chapel/forms/harvest-volunteers/edit

Harvest thanksgiving volunteers

Version 2 is published · changes not published

BuildLogicEndingsSettingsShareResponses

Preview Publish

Harvest thanksgiving volunteers

Help us bring in the harvest on Saturday 7 November. It takes two minutes, and the stewards will call you before the day.

Page 1About you3 questions

1. Full name *

Short textRequired Personal

2. Mobile number *

PhoneRequired Personal

3. Which team would you like to join? *

Single choiceRequired

Start from a Template

New form offers Describe it to Agoo AI (a draft from your description, to check before it's made: see AI drafts), a blank form or a ready-made template, each a complete form with its questions, logic and endings, ready to change: event registration, meeting interest, volunteer sign-up, service request, training feedback, a simple application, supplier enquiry, internal suggestions, church membership, school admission enquiry, customer feedback, clinic registration and youth camp registration. A template that uses Forms Plus features says so, and the builder marks each one, so you can take it out or move up a level. Browse them at agooforms.com/templates.

Questions and Pages

• Add a question: drag it from the palette onto a page, or click it (or press A) to add it after the question you've chosen.
• Move it: drag it by its handle, within a page or to another one; or press Space on the handle, move with the arrow keys and press Space again. Every move is announced to screen readers.
• Set it up in the inspector: the words, help text, Must be answered, lengths and limits, options (drag to reorder, or Paste a list), and its privacy (see Privacy and retention).
• Pages: add, name, move and delete pages. Respondents see one page at a time, or one question a screen if you choose it in Settings.

Kinds of Question

File upload and Photo take files, each checked for viruses before anyone can open it: see File uploads. Payment (paid with Paystack) arrives with payments; until then the palette shows it with when it arrives, and it can't be added yet.

Signature, Ghana Card, Matrix, Ranking, Hidden and Calculated questions come with Forms Plus; the palette marks them. There is no password question, and there never will be.

Ghana's own

• Phone: Ghana first. People can type 024 123 4567, +233 24 123 4567 or 0244…, and the number is checked against Ghana's numbering plan, kept up to date from the same numbering data as Agoo's own sign-in. Choose Mobile numbers only to refuse landlines, and allow other countries in the question's settings (their numbers are checked against their own country's plan).
• Ghana Card: GHA-123456789-0, checked for its form, then sealed as it arrives. It's always sensitive and masked: it never appears in summaries, emails, receipts or exports (they show GHA-•••••••89-0), and only people allowed to see sensitive answers can reveal it on one response, each time recorded. See Privacy and retention. Ask for the number, never a photo, scan or copy of the card: L.I. 2523 forbids relying on one to check who someone is, and Agoo Forms' acceptable use policy doesn't allow it. The question records a number; it doesn't verify anyone.
• Digital address: a GhanaPost GPS address such as GA-183-8164, checked for its form.
• Region and district: all 16 regions, then the district, from Agoo's own list of Ghana's places.
• Amount: cedis and pesewas, shown as GH₵1,234.50.

Endings and Settings

• Endings: what people see after sending: a heading, words and, if you like, an https address to go on to. Logic can choose the ending (Forms Plus).
• Settings: the title and words; who's answering; a progress bar; a page at a time or one question a screen.

Who's answering

In an organisation's workspace, a form that asks for an Agoo account can also be for your organisation's staff only: anyone else is told it's for staff.

With a checked email or an Agoo account you can also turn on:

• One response a person: each person sends the form once. Someone who has already answered is told when they confirm their email, with their reference, so nobody fills it in for nothing.
• Email people a copy of their answers: a receipt to their confirmed address with their reference. Sensitive answers are never in it.

The confirmed address, or the account's name, shows with each response and in exports.

When it takes responses

Settings → Taking responses changes at once, without publishing:

• Open for responses: close a form by hand, and open it again, on every level.
• Close on a date (Accra time) or after a number of responses (Forms Plus): the form shows when it closes, and says it's closed before anyone types once it is.
• What a closed form says: your own words, such as "All places are taken. Thank you!"

People already typing when a form closes keep their answers on their phone. Every change is in your workspace's activity.

Checks, Preview and Publishing

The builder checks the form as you go, and marks each problem on its question, rule, ending or setting; the tabs count what's left. Preview shows the form exactly as respondents will see it, on a phone or a computer, with its logic working. Nothing sent in a preview is kept.

Publish makes a new version. Published versions never change: people halfway through the previous version can still send it for a day, and responses remember the version they answered. More → Versions lists every version with who published it and when; open one to read it, or Restore as draft.

Agoo Forms checks each version as it's published. Most forms open at once. One that seems to ask for passwords, PINs, one-time codes or card details, or that uses a bank's, a network's or a government body's name when your workspace isn't verified as them, says "We're checking this form, usually within a few hours" and takes no responses until a person on Agoo's safety team has looked. A new workspace can publish only a few forms on its first day. See Safety, holds and appeals.

Saving and Working Together

Your draft is kept on your computer as you type and saved to your account every few seconds. If someone else in the workspace saved a newer draft, the builder keeps both and asks: Keep mine or Take theirs.

Logic

Show and hide questions and pages from earlier answers on every level, and on Forms Plus and Team require answers, jump ahead, end early, and work out totals and scores.

Logic shows each person only the questions that matter to them. Rules live in the Logic tab, each read back in a sentence above its parts:

When "Do you need the church bus?" is Yes, show "Which bus stop?" and make "Which bus stop?" required.

agooforms.com/app/grace-chapel/forms/harvest-volunteers/edit?tab=logic

Logic

Show and hide questions and pages from earlier answers. Require answers, jump ahead, end early and work out totals too.

When “Do you need the church bus?” is Yes, show “Which bus stop?” and make “Which bus stop?” required.

When

“Do you need the church bus?”isYes

Then

Show“Which bus stop?”

Make required“Which bus stop?”

Add a rule

Rules

A rule has When (all or any of its comparisons) and Then (what happens).

On Forms Free, the full rules show in the editor marked (Forms Plus).

Examples from the Templates

• Volunteer sign-up (every level): When "Which day?" is "Saturday", show "Bring a friend?"; when "Bring a friend?" is Yes, show "Your friend's name".
• Meeting interest (Forms Plus): When "Will you come to the meeting?" is "No, I can't come", end with "Sorry you can't make it"; and always set "Your party, with you" to the sum of "How many people are coming with you?" and 1.
• Service request (Forms Plus): When "How urgent is it?" is "Today: it's urgent", show "The best number to reach you today", make it required, and end with "Marked urgent".
• Training feedback (Forms Plus): When "How was it overall?" is at most 2, show "What should we change?"; and set the score to the sum of the two ratings.

Start a form from any of them in New form and change what you like.

What Agoo Guarantees

• A rule can only look at questions that come before what it changes, and jumps only go forward, so a form never loops.
• Answers to questions someone never saw are thrown away, never kept.
• When a response arrives, Agoo works the rules out again itself and checks the answers against them, whatever the page did.
• Totals are always worked out by Agoo, never taken from the page.
• The page and Agoo work the rules out with the same code, checked against the same set of examples, so what someone sees is what Agoo keeps.

File Uploads

File and photo questions, how every file is checked before anyone can open it, who may download, and how much each level holds.

File upload and Photo questions let people send CVs, receipts, certificates, quotes and pictures with their answers. Every file is kept private until it has been checked, and only the people you allow can download it.

Add a File or Photo Question

In the builder, drag File upload or Photo from the palette (under More). Then choose, in the question's settings:

• Kinds of file (file uploads): documents (PDF, Word, OpenDocument), photos and images (JPEG, PNG, WebP), spreadsheets (Excel, OpenDocument, CSV), presentations (PowerPoint), plain text, audio (MP3, M4A voice notes) and video (MP4, MOV). Audio and video come with Forms Plus.
• Most files: how many one person may send to the question.
• Largest file: in MB, up to your level's largest. Photos can be up to 25 MB, so their location can be removed.

A photo question opens the camera first on phones. Agoo Forms never takes scripts, programs, installers, archives, web pages, SVG images or documents with macros, and refuses any file whose contents don't match its name.

What People See

People drop files onto the question, choose them, or take a photo on their phone. Each file shows its progress as it uploads and can be tried again if the connection drops, or taken off before sending. Then it says Checking for viruses: they can send the form straight away, and the file stays private until it's checked. A file that fails says why, in plain words, so they can choose another.

Checked Before Anyone Opens It

1. The file goes straight to a private, locked-off store, never through anyone's browser but the sender's.
2. Agoo reads what the file really is and refuses it if it isn't what it says. A photo loses its location and camera details.
3. It's scanned for viruses on Agoo's own machines. No file is sent to another company to be checked.
4. Only then is it kept, under a name that says nothing about it, and can it be downloaded.

A file that fails the virus check is deleted at once. The response it came with says A file was removed because it failed a virus check, and the workspace's Owners get an email, at most once a day.

Checking usually takes seconds. If a file still can't be checked after about an hour of trying, it isn't kept: the person's page says This file couldn't be checked, so it won't be sent, and the response says Not kept: it couldn't be checked, so you can ask them for it again. It never stays "checking" for good.

Downloading Files

In Responses, open a response to see its files: each with its name, size and whether it's checked. Download saves the file to your device; it's never opened in your browser, and the link works for a minute. Photos show a small preview.

Owners, Admins and Builders download files. On Forms Team, an Analyst downloads a form's files only when someone shares the form with them and allows it. Every download is recorded in the workspace's activity.

Exports list each file by its name with a link that opens after you sign in. The whole workspace's export includes files.csv: every file, its response, question, size and check.

Storage

Workspace settings → Usage shows how much your files take. Owners, Admins and Billing are emailed at 70%, 90% and 100%, once each a month, and a banner says so. When storage is full, questions that ask for files can't take more, with the reason; written answers still go through. Deleting responses gives their files' room back at once.

Keeping and Deleting Files

Files go with their response: when a response is deleted, or deleted after the time your form or workspace keeps responses, its files are deleted too. A question set to keep its answers for a shorter time takes its files with it. Files that were uploaded but never sent are deleted after a day.

If Agoo needs to pause uploads for a few minutes, file questions say so and the rest of the form still goes.

AI Drafts

Describe a form and Agoo AI drafts it for you to check, change and publish. What it costs in AI credits, what it won't draft, and what happens to what you type.

Describe the form you need, and Agoo AI drafts its questions in a few seconds. You check the draft, take out what you don't want, and make it a form; it opens in the builder like any other draft. Agoo AI never publishes anything: only you do, when you're ready.

Draft a Form

1. Choose New form, then Describe it to Agoo AI (also in + New → Draft with Agoo AI, on Home and in search with ⌘K).
2. Say what the form is for and what it should ask: "A registration for our youth camp in Kumasi, with a parent's consent and the child's age." A list of the questions you want works too; Agoo AI keeps your questions and your order.
3. If you like, say who will answer it ("parents", "church members"). Then choose Draft it.

Agoo AI picks the right kind of question for each answer: phone numbers for Ghana, cedis for money, regions and districts, GhanaPost GPS addresses, choices, dates, ratings and file uploads. It only uses the kinds of question your level has.

Check the Draft

Before anything is made, you see every question with its kind and its marks:

• Required, Personal (a name, number or address), Sensitive (health, religion, money, children's details) and Masked. A Ghana Card number is always sensitive and masked, as it is when you add one yourself.
• A rule: a question that appears only after an earlier answer, with when it appears said in words.
• Worth checking: what Agoo AI left out and why (a question your level doesn't have yet, say), and anything you should check, such as dates or prices it couldn't know.

Take out any question you don't need (and bring it back if you change your mind), change the title, then choose Make the form. The form is checked again exactly as one you built yourself, and opens in the builder, where you change anything else and publish it.

What It Costs

A draft uses one or two AI credits, by how much work it was. Every level has AI credits each month: Forms Free 10, Forms Plus 100 and Forms Team 300. An organisation's workspace uses its organisation's AI credits, so packs bought in the Console count too. A draft that can't be made, or that Agoo AI refuses, uses no credits. The screen tells you how many credits are left before you start, and when they come back.

There's a limit on how many drafts one person and one workspace can ask for in an hour and in a day, to keep Agoo AI quick for everyone. If you reach it, the screen says when to try again; templates and blank forms are always there.

What It Won't Draft

Agoo AI won't draft a form that:

• asks for passwords, PINs, Mobile Money PINs, one-time codes or card numbers. Agoo Forms never asks for these, whoever makes the form;
• speaks for a bank, a telco, a mobile money service or a government body, asking people to verify an account or claim money;
• collects information to harass or harm someone.

When it refuses, it says why, keeps what you wrote so you can change it, and uses no credits.

What Happens to What You Type

What you write is sent to Agoo AI to make the draft. Don't include anyone's personal details in it. The description and the draft are kept for 30 days so Agoo can look into abuse, and then deleted; the form you make is yours, and stays until you delete it. The AI provider Agoo uses is on Agoo's list of sub-processors; what Agoo AI receives isn't used to train AI models.

Templates

Ready-made starter templates are another way to start: see Start from a template. File uploads have their own page.