Is there a way to create a form that a visitor could fill out when using a public link?

[Abby Memmesheimer]

I've checked out a few of the Confluence apps and liked Forms for Confluence the best. But when we use the public link to share the form, visitors can't fill out the form since its a third party macro i believe? Any way to get around this? Or is there another form solution? Our intention is to have our clients fill out the form, who will likely have no skill in using confluence itself. 

[Tom_Carrott_Adaptavist]

Hey @Abby Memmesheimer - im the Product Manager for Forms for Confluence and I believe I should be able to help you resolve this issue. 

Are you available to connect on this? I'd love to help!

[Tom_Carrott_Adaptavist]

1. Open the page where the form in question lives
2. Edit the page
3. Edit the form to open the form builder
4. Click the settings cog icon in the left preview pane window
5. Navigate to the 'advanced' tab
6. Check "Allow anonymous form submissions" 
7. Save your form and publish the page

Let me know if you'd like a call to discuss this further :) 

[Olha Yevdokymova_SaaSJet]

Hello @Abby Memmesheimer 

It sounds like you're running into the limitations of using Forms for Confluence with public links. Here's a solution that might work better for your needs: Smart Forms for Jira, developed by my team

With Smart Forms for Jira you can:

1. Embed Forms on Confluence: With Smart Forms for Jira, you can create forms in Jira and embed them directly into your Confluence pages. This eliminates the issue of third-party macros and allows for seamless form usage.

2. Public Sharing via Link: Once you've created a form, you can generate a public link to share it with your clients. They don't need Confluence access or skills to fill it out—just click the link, complete the form, and submit it.

3. Automated Workflow Integration: Once a form is submitted, Smart Forms for Jira can automatically create or update Jira issues, assign tasks, or send notifications.

[Kristian Klima]

Hi @Abby Memmesheimer and welcome.

Let's start with the basics:

• public links are to share individual pages in isolation - links between individually shared will not work
• anonymous access is enabled for the entire space and preserves integrity of your content

Both have their use-cases but sharing public links ON TOP of having anonymous access enabled is counter productive. This forum is full of cases of confusion when an end user clicked the public link and were wondering why they can't see the navigation tree, why links don't work etc.

As far as I know, the only way anonymous users can interact with the page is when they have permission to Edit (Create new pages) or add comments.

There might be an app that can circumvent that - @Alex Medved _ConfiForms_ may expand on this notion including whether his app works on public links.

Just be careful when opening anonymous access editing options - anyone on the internet will be able to edit the page.

There are apps that can deploy Jira Service Management widgets etc. but I would always deploy some sort of authentication to prevent bots from filling out the form.

[Abby Memmesheimer]

I believe our space is a publicly accessible space.. In the space settings for anonymous users, i have the view settings selected in All. Is there another setting I need to adjust?

Right now, when anonymous users view the space using the public link, any content that would normally be displayed in macros says "open in confluence" instead.. I'm still learning how to use Confluence, so I appreciate your help! 

I checked out ConfiForms, but was a little above my skill to figure out how to use.. and i thought it seemed like the user actually filling out the form would need to know how to use macros, no? 

[Alex Medved _ConfiForms_]

No, the user does not have to know how to configure the form... 

But it is correct that the functionality of Confluence to render the contents via public links is very limited and is not capable of rendering 3rd party macros.

Therefore the anonymous access is a better option (of course, there is absolutely no need to give edit permissions on the page to the anonymous users)

[Alex Medved _ConfiForms_]

Not sure about the Forms for Confluence app, but have you tried to use it on a publicly accessible Confluence space? (A page that can be accessed by anonymous users?) 

Very common use case for our ConfiForms app 

The form is designed and configured by someone who understands how to do it and used by everyone else