Forms

Forms

give your team a tidy interface to enter information - and then act on it automatically. A warehouse worker clicks Allocate Stock, enters a quantity, and the form updates the right records; a manager clicks Approve Expense, confirms a budget code, and the approval is logged automatically.

Under the bonnet, a form is an Automation

- specifically, one whose first step is Open a form. The form collects the input; the automation's remaining steps do the work, using the values the user entered. That's why forms and automations share the same editor and the same set of actions.

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1. When to use a form

Forms shine for actions that need input from a user but don't belong to a record's main lifecycle.

One-off or ad-hoc actions

Something you do occasionally and don't need to track as a stage - logging a quick decision, capturing a reading, kicking off a side process.

Cross-collection actions

An action that touches more than one Collection

- allocating stock from an Inventory record to a Job, for instance.

Actions that split or branch

When one record needs to spawn several others, or one decision needs to fan out into multiple updates.

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2. Forms, workflows and automations

These three features overlap, so it helps to know which to reach for.

Feature	Reach for it when…
Workflow	A record follows a lifecycle of ordered stages, and you want a badge, history and stage-based control. See Workflows.
Automation	Something should happen automatically in response to an event, with no user input needed. See Automations.
Form	You need a user to supply information at the moment of action - especially for one-off, stage-independent or cross-collection work.

In short: a workflow tracks where a record is; an automation reacts without asking; a form asks, then acts.

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3. How users reach a form

A form appears as a button on a record's right-click menu, wherever you've configured it to show. A user right-clicks a record, selects the button, fills in the form, and submits - at which point the automation's steps run. Every submission is recorded in the automation's run history, just like any other automation.

Because a form is an automation triggered by right-clicking, it always runs from a record's context menu inside Kinabase.

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4. Public and external forms

To collect input from people outside your organisation, forms are delivered through a Portal

- there's no per-form "make public" switch. You attach the form to a portal, and external users complete it there. See External Portals.

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5. Build your first form

Creating forms

Build a form step by step - pages, fields, validation and the actions that run on submission.

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Need more help? Ask your System admin, or contact our support team via Help & Support.