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Publishing

Forms have draft and published states. Edits don’t affect live forms until published.

Versioning Model


Draft vs Published

When you edit a published form, changes go to draft_schema. Applicants continue seeing published_schema until you re-publish.

Publishing a Form


Scheduled Publishing

Forms can be scheduled to go live at a future date:
The background worker checks every minute for forms where published_at has passed:

Scheduled Closing

Forms can also be scheduled to stop accepting submissions:
The worker closes forms where closes_at has passed:

Form Freezing

After a form receives its first submission, it becomes frozen. Frozen forms:
  • Cannot have their schema modified
  • Can still be closed/reopened
  • Can have settings changed (branding, etc.)
This protects data integrity—changing questions after receiving responses would break historical data.

Freeze Fields

Auto-Freeze Behavior

The background worker automatically freezes forms:

Manual Freeze/Unfreeze

Super admins can manually freeze or unfreeze forms:
Unfreezing a form with existing submissions can cause data integrity issues. Only do this if you’re certain the schema changes won’t break existing responses.

Preview Mode

Admins can preview draft changes before publishing:
This shows draft_schema instead of published_schema. Only authenticated admins see the preview.

Effective Status

The effective form status considers scheduling:

Form Status Summary


Lifecycle Diagram


Creating Forms

Form builder guide

Public Pages

Applicant-facing forms

Background Jobs

Scheduled task processing

Submissions

How submissions work