How to view forms inside the client portal

To display a form inside the client portal, you need to build it as a Capture Additional Data form specifically. These are forms that capture additional data beyond what was collected on the original booking, and they're the ones that can appear in a customer's Forms tab.

The main create booking form is where you capture the essentials needed to actually make the booking. Everything else, anything that can wait, goes into a Capture Additional Data form instead, so your initial booking form stays short rather than overwhelming a customer with every question you might ever need answered.

Whether a specific customer actually sees a specific form depends on several separate settings, not just one. Each is covered below.

Who can complete the form

Choose who the form is for, assigned staff, all staff, or the customer.

Only forms assigned to the customer show up in the client portal. A form assigned to staff is for your team to complete elsewhere, not something a customer will ever see on their side.

Assigning a brand

If you run multiple brands, you can assign a form to a specific one. Only bookings made under that brand will see it in their portal, so a customer booked through a different brand won't be shown a form that has nothing to do with them.

Controlling when the form is available

Choose Always Allow to have the form available with no restriction, or set custom dates and times instead.

With custom timing, you can set an opening point, a due point, and a closing point, each worked out as an offset of a number of hours before or after the event date. Opening controls when the form first becomes available. Due gives it a deadline. Closing sets a hard cut off, so you can limit how late a customer is able to submit it at all.

Controlling whether it can be edited afterward

Once a form has been completed, you decide separately whether it can still be edited.

The same three options apply here, Always Allow, Never Allow, or custom dates and times. With custom timing, you set a from and to date for the edit window, again worked out as an offset before or after the event date.

Limit visibility conditions

On the Visibility tab when editing a form, you can set limit visibility conditions to control who sees it based on specifics of the booking itself, rather than timing or who it's assigned to.

You could show a form only for a certain event type, or only if the customer has purchased a specific product. This is particularly useful for capturing details related to one product only, a customer who bought it gets asked the relevant questions, and everyone else never sees a field that has nothing to do with what they've actually booked.

What the customer actually sees

All of these settings combine. A customer's Forms tab only shows the forms that are assigned to them as a customer, match their brand, fall within their availability window, and meet whatever limit visibility conditions are set. Get all of that right and a customer only ever sees what's genuinely relevant to their booking, rather than a long list of forms that don't apply to them.