Password Protection Methods & Use

Controlling access to forms and results is essential for many form owners, and Formsite provides several places where authentication can be required. Password protection is the most common way to authenticate form visitors and result recipients.

Password-protecting the form is typically needed when access needs to be offered to a controlled group of visitors. A business employee form is one example where the results needs to be restricted to a specific group, and applying a password to the form is the fastest way to guarantee only qualified access.

Places where they are available are:

• Form password
• Save & Return
• Email secure link
• Reports password
• Require login to access files

Form password

The most basic protection for the form is the form password, which can be found on the form’s Form Settings -> Security page. The password can be created, edited, and deleted from that page, and all visitors to the form link will have to enter the correct value to access the form.

When to use:

• To control access to the form by a group of visitors. Simply give each approved visitor the password or instruct current visitors to share with new ones.
• To prevent access when modifying an existing form. Sometimes editing already-public forms is unavoidable, so setting a password is a quick way to prevent anyone from seeing or submitting the incomplete form.

Save & Return

The downside to a single form password is the struggle to control who knows, so Save & Return allows visitors to create their own accounts to access the form.

The primary benefit to Save & Return is the ability to complete the form over multiple visits, but other benefits include allowing multiple incomplete results, the ability for each visitor to see their results history, and the ability for form owners to manage individual access.

Email secure link

Accessing the form is only one part of the process. Protecting results is also necessary and emailed results in Notifications is possibly the most vulnerable method. The Secure Link is a way to allow emails to be sent with access to each form result without danger of exposing any results data.

The Secure Link format will send a secure link as the body of the email notification, then clicking the link will require the correct pass before allowing the visitor access to view the secured result.

Reports password

Another method of accessing the full Results Table is through a Report. Protecting the results is done through optionally setting the pass when setting up the report, as well as configuring Results Filters and Views to restrict results by specific answers and restrict the items shown.

Require login to access files

Along with the form and results, files attached to form results are also vulnerable to exposure. The setting to Require login to access files can be enabled as a barrier to compromised emails or results.

Enabling the setting will require a valid Formsite account (main account or Sub-user account) to access any uploaded files that accompany a form result.