The Series· No. 51 · Act XIII — The Working Surface

By DocuSeller · Published

Forms in the Wild
DocuSeller · No. 51

The easy part is sending it out

Anyone can put a form on the internet.

The hard part is what happens nine minutes later.

When the first answer comes back and somebody has to decide whether it's any good.

A posted public form has a no-login link, an opening and closing window, and a response cap A public link, with boundariesPublic formYour answerNo loginOpen / closeResponse cap
A form nailed up in the open air, with a clock and a limit hanging off it.

So let's get publishing out of the way, because it's the easy half.

A form gets its own public link. No login, no attachment, no "see attached, please print, sign and scan". Around the link sit the dials: when it opens, when it closes, how many responses you'll accept, one per device, a password if it shouldn't be quite that public, and a switch saying every answer needs a human before it counts.

Nobody answering it signs in. They fill it in on a phone standing in a car park, it saves itself while they type, and they finish it on a laptop that evening — same form, same half-written sentence.

Now the half nobody demos.

A submitted form can be approved, rejected, cancelled, or completed, with an illustrative author and timestamp recorded Every decision keeps its author and timeDraftSubmittedApprovedRejectedCancelledCompletedExample history · ApprovedA. Lee · Oct 12, 09:14
Four ways out, and a note beside each one saying who chose it.

Answers land in a pipeline, not an inbox. Draft, submitted, then approved, rejected, cancelled or completed — and every move records who moved it and when.

An answer sitting in somebody's inbox is a rumour.
Three illustrative signed delivery attempts reach a receiver, with the first two unsuccessful and the third delivered Signed handoff, with retriesReceiverAttempt 1Attempt 2Attempt 3Example: two retries, then received
Sealed, so they know it's us. Posted again, because they were at lunch.

Somebody will want them in a spreadsheet, because somebody always wants them in a spreadsheet. Excel or CSV, one button.

And when the answers belong in another system entirely, every submission is handed straight over — sealed so the far end knows it genuinely came from us, and posted again if the far end isn't answering.

And sometimes the answers have to be a document. A board or a closing file doesn't want a row in a spreadsheet; it wants a page. So a workflow's document station turns a finished form into a PDF: every question with its answer under it, in the order the form asked them, unanswered ones left as a dash rather than quietly disappearing, the signature printed with who signed and when, and anything they uploaded carried through. It files itself in the order's folder, beside the documents the workflow made itself.

Then the numbers. How many people opened it. How many started. How many finished.

Illustrative counts fall from 100 opens to 62 starts to 28 finished forms, emphasizing the gaps between stages Where do people stop?Illustrative countsOpened100Started62Finished28Compare the gaps between each stage
The interesting number was never the one at the finish line.
Three of those are counts. The gap between them is the entire story.

One last thing, small and load-bearing. Publishing photographs the questions. Edit the template next month and the live form carries on asking exactly what it asked on the day.

The form was never the product. The answers were.

Next: the letter that stops halfway down the page and asks you a question.

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