Often times you want to collect surveys/forms from customers and employees. Do you have applicants whose information needs to be tracked? Is there a workflow attached to a form that your client needs to fill out? When managing CRMs, it’s typical that some data is desired from clients, customers, attendees, employees. When a webform is needed, Google Forms is a free option, and also has an add-on to collect payments (Payable Forms). Managing and reviewing submissions to the webform can be done with Kintone.
Examples of use cases include:
- Customers submitting/information
- Collecting survey data from clients/employees/voters, etc.
- Event registration, fundraising, attendance.
Submissions to Google Forms can be captured, and the records can be stored in Kintone, with a tool called Make (formerly known as Integromat). This tutorial will demonstrate how customer feedback can be collected and managed.
In short, Make can allow third-party tools like Google Forms, Outlook, and Slack (1400+ platforms supported). By building a scenario, a series of actions on different platforms can be performed on a Kintone record. Every scenario starts with a trigger (e.g. a survey is submitted, an email is received, a Kintone record is created). NOTE: Scenarios can also be triggered by a scheduled timer.
- Trigger: Google Form survey is submitted.
- A Kintone record is created.
- Kintone users are assigned to review the survey.
Here is the Google Form:
Below is the Kintone app used to collect the surveys: Customer Feedback. Creating an app in Kintone is simple, and by clicking the plus button in the Apps section of your portal, you can “Create an App From Scratch”. Drag and drop the following fields in the Form section.
There is a Kintone field for every field we want to capture from the form. Link fields are used to store Email addresses and phone numbers. Text fields can store 64 characters, while Text Areas are used to store longer text. It’s important to keep field types in mind. For example, Number fields in Kintone cannot store alphanumeric data. We would get an error in Make if we attempted to map the Name field from Google forms, to a Number field in Kintone.
We will build a scenario to implement this process. First, create a Make account. The subscription cost is based on the amount of times Make is triggered, and how many steps (called operations) are in the scenario.
“Make charges you according to the total number of operations performed by the modules in your scenario. More modules and more bundles being processed in a scenario mean a higher number of operations. The amount charged for your scenarios depends on how complex your scenarios are. This means that you’ll want to choose a subscription that best fits your needs …
Every time a module in a scenario performs an action, it counts as one operation.” — Counting the Number of Operations, Make
Create a scenario. Click the plus button on the screen to add a new module, Google Forms. Create a connection to Google Forms with your connected Google account and search for the form.
After going through the steps of account authentication, you should be able to click the Search button and find the Feedback Survey form.
Search for the name of the Google Form you just created.
Next, create a Kintone module for Create New Record. This will automatically connect to your existing Google Forms module, and take place as the second action in the scenario.
Map out the fields from the Google Form to the fields in Kintone. When your cursor is in the box representing a Kintone field, the panel will display fields from the Google Forms module to select from.
Let’s add the other fields as well, like the Comments field and the Name field.
Sometimes when mapping Make fields, an error occurs: “BundleValidationError: Validation failed for 2 parameter(s). Collection can’t be converted to text for parameter ‘value’.” The field containing the actual data for the field must be selected. See the example below, where I got an error for selecting Name from Google Forms instead of value. The menu shows a preview of a submitters’ name to the right, which helps select the right item.
The same can be said for the other fields as well. Make sure you are selecting an item with data, or the error will stop the form from being captured into Kintone. Below we will map the answers into the Comments Text area field.
Once all fields have been filled, your scenario should now be complete. Submit a test survey to Google Forms, then the scenario should properly transform the fields into a Kintone record.
If you select the timer icon on the Google Forms module (automatically placed on the first module created), you will see that new submissions will be checked every 15 minutes. The Run Once button can be pressed to trigger the scenario immediately, to create Kintone records from all the waiting submissions.
Now, when someone submits the Form, a record will appear in Kintone. Type some data into the Form and submit it, then come to the scenario and click Run Once (or wait 15 minutes).
Now Process Management can be used to assign users tasks. Push the status to Review. The next user is assigned and issued a notification to perform a certain task.
In Kintone, Process Management can be used to track the status of a submissions’ workflow. Map out a list of statuses, and the survey submission can be pushed forward by different users. Maybe your employee must review a submission before it can be approved? Users can be notified and reminded about tasks automatically assigned to them.
You can set up a process that allows multiple users to edit and review records. Using the process as a workflow, you can manage internal requests and approvals with your app. You can also use this feature for task management and inquiry management, both of which requires multiple users to work on the same task.
The Process Management feature
Go to the App Settings for your survey collection app. The Process Management tab is on the left under General Settings.
Select the checkbox “Enable this Feature”. Under Status Settings, input a list of stages to the workflow. Under “Add User”, we can set which people and departments must take action at that stage.
The statuses can be arranged to your liking: “Review Submission”, “Reject Submission”, “Approve Submission” are all possible stages that we could add and map out. To add another status to branch from (for example to choose “Completed” or “Rejected” from “In Progress”), click the plus button to the right of “Status After Action Taken”.
On the submission records, you can assign users to take action.
After the record is assigned, it will appear on the assigned user’s home screen under “Assigned to Me”.
When clicking that icon/notification, the assigned user is redirected to the particular record. They can use the buttons (labeled “Start” below) to push the submission to the next step in the workflow.
Finally, once the submission reaches the end of the flow (without branching), the Process Management buttons disappear.
Process Management can also be restricted by permissions, to only be accessible to certain users.
That completes the tutorial on collecting and managing surveys with Google Forms and Make. This foundational knowledge can be expanded to create complex scenarios in Make and Process Management flows in Kintone. Kintone can store your data, while Make can manipulate data, send data and interact with other platforms. Make Scenarios can be triggered by a schedule, or by events in Kintone (such as creating a record or with Webhooks).
If you have any issues, post your questions at https://forum.kintone.dev/
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