Submitting a form response on behalf of another person

In this article, you'll learn how to set up a form so that a respondent can submit a response on behalf of another person and how to process those responses. For example, you might have a course substitution form that advisors fill out on behalf of their advisees.

Setup

To allow this behavior, you'll need to specify the Respondent Permissions in the form's settings.

1. Go to the form's page and click Respondent Permissions under Settings.
2. In the edit dialog, choose a role—users with this role will be given specific permissions with this form.
3. Choose what kind of responses this role may submit.
4. If the role can submit responses on behalf of someone else, choose the roles or people for whom they may do that. Your options here will depend on the role to which you're giving permissions.
5. Remove a permission by clicking .
6. Click Save to finish.

You should also review the form's fee setting. If the form has a required fee, the respondent will be required to pay it before submitting it. You could consider allowing the fee to be charged to a student's account or setting up a 100% discount code that you'll later provide to respondents.

The Linked Person field

Depending on the form's settings, the Linked Person field lets the form respondent choose who the response is linked to. Some notes for you to keep in mind:

• Keep in mind that any linked fields on your form will update the Linked Person's profile when the form is processed.
• In particular, do not use the Linked Person and Linked Name fields on the same form! (Unless you want the form response to update the linked person's name.)
• Use Linked Person when you want the respondent to be able to link their response to someone already in Populi. Examples: a form for Registrars to evaluate Faculty members, or a form for Advisors to request a degree change for an advised student.

The behavior of the Linked Person field depends on the Respondent Permissions and other form settings.

• Login Required: Since respondent permissions are based on user roles, you should require a login for such forms. Someone without a login will not be able to select anyone in a Linked Person field.
• Respondent Permissions: The specific options vary for each user role. At minimum, you need to allow the appropriate users to submit responses linked to someone else. For some roles, you'll get the option to make a list of specific people (Listed People) the respondent can choose from. Advisors and Faculty can submit on behalf of their students. More powerful roles (Academic Admin) can submit on behalf of anyone else or people with specific user roles.
• Published/self-service: If a form is listed in the self-service area, the respondent will have the option to search for and choose who the response will be linked to; search results will be determined by the limits imposed in the Respondent Permissions setting. More on this in the next section.

Requesting a response



Here's how to set up a form request so the respondent can submit a response on behalf of another person:

1. Go to the Profile > Activity Feed view of the person for whom the response will be submitted. For example, if an advisor is going to submit a course substitution form for a student, go to the student's profile.
2. In the right column, click Add a form.
3. Select the form from the drop-down.
4. Select the appropriate respondent from the list.
5. Click Save.

Some notes:

• The respondent will see the form request on their Home > Forms view and will also receive a notification abou it.
• If the form contains a Linked Person field, it will be auto-filled with the person's name; the respondent won't have the option to change it.
• After the response is submitted and processed, that response will be available on the person's profile as well.

Processing the form

After the respondent submits the form, you can process the response as normal.