Choose what form responders see after they submit

You have a few options about what you can show responders after they’ve submitted a form:

• Success messages are good for saying thank you, and for letting them know what happens next.

• Linking them to an external URL is great for when you think they need more guidance.

• Confirmation emails can be reassuring for responders to receive if the form asked them for personal information or payment.

Customize the success message they see

Your responders will see a success message after they’ve submitted their form response to let them know it’s all gone smoothly. You can customize this so it includes any extra information that’s important to you.

1. Open a form from Forms.

2. Go to Settings > Responses.

3. Open After user submits form…

4. Choose Show success message.

5. Write a success message in the text box. You can use HTML to format the message. Use answer piping to quote information from the response in the success message. 

Take them to another website

If you think your responders need more information after they’ve finished the form, you can send them to another website.

1. Open a form from Forms.

2. Go to Settings > Responses. 

3. Open After user submits form…

4. Choose External URL.

5. Enter the URL you want to take responders to.

6. Choose whether responders are redirected to the external URL within the frame the form is embedded in (this is useful if you've embedded your form in your organization website), or to redirect the entire page (useful for standalone forms). 

Send them a confirmation email

Before you can send any kind of email to your form responders through OpenForms, you need to add an email address to use to send the emails.

Confirmation emails tell your responders that OpenForms has successfully received their form response. To send people confirmation emails, first you need to make sure your form asks them for their email address.

1. Go to the Build tab of your form.

2. Add an Email field from the fields menu.

3. Open the settings for your new email field by selecting the gear icon.

4. Check the box for Use this address when emailing users about submissions.

Once you’ve set up a respondent email field, you’re ready to turn on confirmation emails.

1. Go to Settings > Responses.

2. Open Send respondent confirmation email.

3. Enter a subject and body for the email. If you need to, you can use HTML in the Email body field to format it.
   Use answer piping to quote respondent answers or form data to personalize the email.

4. Choose if you want to attach a PDF copy of their response and, if you're on an Enterprise plan, any custom documents generated from the response data.
   To change what the PDF summary includes and looks like, check out Set up response PDFs.

Remember to save your form when you’re happy with your new settings.

Anything else?

If you need to know about the responses to your form straight away, you can get notified by email whenever you receive a response.