Frequently Asked Questions
Below are answers to the most common questions.
Subscriptions can be purchased via our subscription page.
For subscription-related questions, please refer to the frequently asked questions at the bottom of our pricing page, or email our support team at support@formapprovals.com.
You can transfer forms from your My Forms dashboard, or manually from within Google Forms. In both cases, you need to prepare your Google files first.
The existing admin needs to:
- Share the Google Form with the new administrator;
- Share the Google Sheet™ that is linked to your form. This can be accessed from the 'Responses' tab of your Google Form;
- If you have a File Upload question in your form, share the folder that stores file uploads;
- If you set up the add-on to generate PDFs from an attachment template, share the attachment template(s).
In all cases we recommend giving the new administrator owner level access. Editor level access can be problematic if the owner's account is ever closed.
The existing admin needs to:
- Go to your My Forms dashboard and use Transfer Form or Transfer All Forms from the Actions menu.
Once this step is complete, let the new administrator know they can proceed with Step 3.
The new admin needs to:
- Install the add-on if you haven't already.
- Open the Google Form, open the add-on, and click 'Ok' if prompted with a warning about the previous admin.
- Click Settings, then Account, then toggle the add-on ON.
- If the form uses attachment templates, you will need to re-authorize them. This is required because the add-on needs your permission to access the template files.
- Open the Google Form™ and open the add-on.
- Click Settings, then Email Editor, then click the Other tab.
- Scroll to the Attachments section. Templates that need re-authorization will have a warning icon next to the attachment. Click it to re-select each file from your Google Drive™.
- Save your changes.
These steps need to be done for each form that is connected to the add-on.
If you have a paid subscription with us, also make sure to transfer / update your subscription.
First, follow the steps in How do I change the administrator? to share your Google files and transfer your forms.
For Individual subscriptions:
- Existing admin: Go to your Subscription page, scroll to the Transfer Subscription section, and enter the new user's email address. You can optionally check Also transfer all my forms to transfer your forms and subscription together.
- New admin: You will receive an email notification with details of the transfer. No further action is required for the subscription itself.
For Team subscriptions:
Existing admin: Simply add the new administrator to your Team by following the steps on this support article.
If a form is showing as Inactive, it means the add-on is not processing submissions for that form. You can activate it from within Google Forms.
- Open the Google Form that you want to activate.
- Open the Form Approvals add-on from the puzzle piece icon in the toolbar.
- Click Settings, then click Account.
- Toggle the add-on ON.
Once activated, the add-on will resume processing form submissions for that form. If you experience any issues, refer to our troubleshooting guide.
The timezone is taken from the settings of the spreadsheet that is linked to your Google Form. To change the timezone, refer to this Google support article.
Users can also change the language of email notifications. To change the language, update the language (locale) in your spreadsheet settings. Refer to this Google support article for how to change the locale. The add-on will translate the items on email notifications that are not customizable using the Email Editor. Use the Email Editor to then change the remaining content as you require. Learn more about personalizing notifications using the Email Editor.
- To notify the requestor when the workflow is complete (i.e., approved by all recipients) or ends early (i.e., declined, cancelled, or more info is requested), simply enable 'Collect email addresses' in your Google Form settings. When this is enabled, the add-on will automatically notify the requestor.
- To notify all recipients when the workflow is complete, enable 'Notify recipients when complete' within the 'Settings' tab of the add-on.
- To notify recipients when the workflow ends early, enable 'Notify recipients when ends early' within the 'Settings' tab of the add-on. This will notify any recipient(s) who the add-on is currently awaiting a response from, recipient(s) that have already responded, and recipient(s) with the 'Receives a Copy' role type.
- To notify specific recipients when the workflow is complete, add a new recipient, then change the role type to 'Receives a Copy', then set the receiving order to the last level of the workflow. For example, if you have a workflow already set up with one recipient, set the receiving order of the new recipient to 2.
Within our documentation, we refer to 'requestor' and 'recipient' quite often:
- The requestor is the person completing the form submission (initiating the request).
- The recipient is the person receiving and responding to the request. The recipient may have one of the following roles: 'Needs to Approve', 'Needs to Sign', 'Needs to Recommend', 'Needs to Acknowledge', 'Needs to Action', 'Needs to Edit' or 'Receives a Copy'. Learn more about recipient role types.
Recipients are not required to have a Google account, nor are they required to install anything. Each time a submission is made on your form, an email is sent to your recipients with a unique link to respond directly from their email without having to log in.
In addition, unlike other add-ons, recipients are not required to have access to your Google Form or linked Google Sheet.
- Requestor Confirmation - If 'Collect email addresses' is enabled in your Google Form settings, the person submitting the request will receive a notification confirming receipt of their request.
- Recipient Notification - each time a form submission is made, the first recipient(s) will receive a notification with details of the request and links to action the request. Once they have responded, a notification will be sent to the second recipient (if any), and so on.
- Complete / Declined / More Info Required / Cancelled - These notifications state the outcome of the request and are sent to the requestor if 'Collect email addresses' is enabled in your Google Form settings. These notifications will also be sent to recipients with role 'Receives a Copy' if they are in the final position of the workflow. See How do I notify users when the workflow is complete? for more information.
Each notification type can be personalized. For further details, refer to this support article.
If a recipient has incorrectly responded to a request or you have changed your workflow settings and need a request to re-route based on your new settings, you can restart a workflow request from the beginning by following these steps:
- Make sure the Restart workflow on edit setting is enabled in the Settings tab of the add-on sidebar. This setting controls whether the workflow restarts when a response is edited.
- Open your Google Form
- In your Google Form settings, make sure you have Collect email addresses set to Responder Input and Allow response editing enabled. These settings can be changed back after the next steps have been completed.
- From your Google Form, click the Responses tab
- Click the small green spreadsheet icon to open the spreadsheet
- Within the spreadsheet, go to the Detailed Approval Records tab
- Locate the Request # that you want to reset
- Click on the Edit Response URL from column G
- Click through and re-submit the request.
This process will restart the workflow from the beginning.
To allow edits, enable Allow response editing in your Google Form settings. When enabled, the add-on will include a link for the requestor to edit their form submission in the confirmation email sent immediately after a response is made.
Requestor edits
The add-on can optionally restart the workflow when the requestor edits a form submission, sending the request back to the first recipient. This preserves the integrity of the request and gives recipients the opportunity to re-approve the revised request. When the workflow restarts, the Revision # is incremented (e.g., Request #5 becomes Request #5/1).
This behavior is controlled by the Restart workflow on edit setting in the Settings tab of the add-on sidebar. When disabled, the edit is recorded but the workflow continues without interruption — no emails are re-sent and no statuses are reset.
Recipient edits
To allow recipients to edit the request, the add-on provides two options:
- Needs to Edit role — Change a recipient's role to "Needs to Edit". The add-on will send them a link to edit the form submission. Once edited, the workflow proceeds to the next step. Note: this recipient must be on its own level in the receiving order. See important considerations for this role type.
- Edit Response URL marker — Add the <<Edit Response URL>> marker to the Recipient notification template or to a private message. The recipient can edit the form response, but the workflow will not proceed until they also perform the action associated with their role (e.g., Approve, Action, Recommend). This allows a recipient to both edit and respond.
How the add-on determines who made an edit
Google Forms does not tell add-ons who made an edit. When recipients are able to edit (via the methods above), the add-on uses the following logic:
- If a recipient with the Needs to Edit role is currently awaiting a response, the add-on accepts the edit and proceeds to the next recipient — it will not restart the workflow.
- If the <<Edit Response URL>> marker is included in the Recipient notification template or within a private message, the add-on will not restart the workflow when an edit is made while the Overall Status is "In progress" or "Complete".
- In all other cases, the add-on assumes the edit was made by the requestor and restarts the workflow (unless Restart workflow on edit is disabled).
Common error messages include:
- We're sorry, a server error occurred. Please wait a bit and try again.
- drive.google.com refused to connect
- You need permission (to access a file)
- Something isn't quite right, please try again in a few minutes.
- There was a problem: The add-on does not have sufficient authorization to run
- ScriptError: Authorization is required to perform that action
- Error: Logged in with multiple Google accounts. Sign in with one account only.
Refer to our troubleshooting support article for guidance on how to avoid the above errors.
We recommend the add-on administrator sets up the add-on using a Google account that has Google Mail enabled. It's not an issue if you don't, however since Google add-ons run and send emails from your Google account, you will be required to purchase the Mail option (send emails from the formapprovals.com domain) when subscribing to one of our paid plans. If you would like to trial the service with emails being sent from formapprovals.com before purchasing a subscription, email support@formapprovals.com