Forms to AODocs is an add-on for Google Forms. It lets users create content quickly in AODocs. It's as easy as filling out a Google Form and submitting it.

The Forms to AODocs add-on creates a bridge between a Google form and an AODocs library. Users answer questions on the Google form that match the AODocs document properties. Files uploaded through the form become attachments of the AODocs document.

This article explains how to configure Forms to AODocs.

Important: To configure Forms to AODocs, you must:
– be the administrator of the library you want to link to a Google form
– configure your Google form to match your AODocs document properties
– link the Google form to your AODocs document class
– check that the Google form question matches your AODocs properties

Automatically generated table of contents

Configure your Google form questions

Your Google form must follow some design guidelines to be linked to an AODocs library.

Question titles

The title of a question must be the same as the name of the corresponding AODocs property.

Question types

The question type you select should ‘naturally’ match the type of AODocs property it feeds. For example, to set up an open question that feeds a String property in AODocs, use a “Short answer” question, not a “Boolean”.

The table below shows the compatibilities between Google Forms questions and AODocs properties.

Title of the AODocs document

If you want your users to input the title of the AODocs document, provide a question named “Title” in your form. If there is no “Title” question in the Google form, AODocs documents are automatically created with a default name composed of:

• the name of the file uploaded, if there is exactly one file uploaded by the end user
• otherwise, the form’s title and the date of submission 

Notes:
– If your library contains mandatory properties but your Google form doesn't have corresponding questions, the AODocs document is created without a value in the mandatory property.
– If your library contains properties with multiple values, Forms to AODocs doesn't support them. Learn more: Forms to AODocs: Known limitations.

File upload

Google Forms provides file upload support for Google Workspace customers. Forms to AODocs takes full advantage of this feature, even when multiple files are supplied by the end user.

You can specify the:

• required file type or types
• maximum number of files per upload
• maximum size per file uploaded (default 10 MB) – select a value from the drop-down menu
• total size limit for all files uploaded to your form (default 1 GB) – click Change or go to the Settings tab and select a value from the drop-down menu

Important:
– Google automatically restricts a form with file upload to the users of your domain. Form respondents therefore have to be authenticated with a Google Workspace account of the domain to fill in the form.
– As owner of the Google form, if you enable file upload on your form, make sure you have sufficient Google Drive storage, as files uploaded by form respondents consume your storage quota before being owned by the library's AODocs storage account. If the limit of your storage is reached, the form will be blocked until some storage is freed.

Multiple file upload

• In Document Management libraries: one document is created in AODocs and all the uploaded files are attached to it.
• In Team Folders and Secured Folders: one document is created per file uploaded. Document properties gathered from form answers are duplicated across all the documents created.

Important: When you link a form to a Team Folder or Secured Folder, you must add a mandatory file upload field in your form. If the end user doesn't upload a file, the import of the response in AODocs fails.

Number of questions

Important: Forms to AODocs imports user responses in best effort. If a user’s answer doesn’t match any AODocs properties (because none has the same name as the question or the question and property types are not compatible), this answer is added to the document description, alongside its question title.

If you have exactly the same number of Google form questions and AODocs properties with the same title and the same type, all your properties should match.

If you have fewer questions than you have properties, the unmatched properties are empty when the document is created, even if the property is mandatory.

If you have more questions than you have properties, the unmatched questions are included in the document description with the indication “Non-recognized form answers:”.

Note: The author of the documents created through the add-on is always the account of the library administrator who configured the add-on.

Date and time questions

Avoid mapping Google Forms Date and Time questions to AODocs Date and Time properties. Google Forms are considered to be in the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) time zone and the user's time zone isn't provided. In AODocs, the date and time is displayed in the current user's time zone, so the timestamp in the AODocs interface may be different from UTC.

We recommend using String or Text properties instead. 

If you map a:

• Google form Date question to an AODocs Date & Time property: the time is set as midnight UTC
• Google form Date & Time question to an AODocs Date property: only the date part of the response is stored
• Google form Date & Time question to an AODocs Time property: only the time part of the response is stored
• Google form Date & Time question to an AODocs Date & Time property: both date and time are stored, but the time zone in the AODocs interface may be different from UTC

You can't map Google form Date & Time or Date questions without a year as AODocs Date & Time or Date properties.

Link your Google form to your AODocs library

We strongly recommend that the owner of the form links the form to an AODocs library and not someone else with edit access. Learn more: Forms to AODocs: known limitations.

1. Click the Add-ons button and select Forms to AODocs.

2. Select Configure in the dialog.

2. Wait for the sidebar to be displayed, then select the library you want the Google form answers to be imported to.

Note: You can only select libraries where you have administrator rights.

3. Select the document class you want the documents created by the Google form to belong to.

4. Click Save.

5. The Forms to AODocs connector tries to match the properties of your document class with the title of the questions of your Google form. You can preview the mapping of the Google form questions to the AODocs properties.

Now every time a user of this form hits the Submit button, their answers will be imported into the selected library and document class in AODocs.

Note: Only the person who linked the form to AODocs can unlink it. If this user's access is removed from the Google form and you need to unlink the form, a user with edit access must stop accepting new responses in the form and create a new form and link it to the library. 

Preview the mappings to AODocs

The Forms to AODocs sidebar displays an overview of the mappings between your form questions and the properties of the AODocs document class you bound to the form.

There are three types of mapping:

• Success indicates that your question is correctly configured with respect to the AODocs property and that user answers to it will be imported correctly.
• Warning indicates there is a risk that answers to your question may not be imported correctly in the corresponding AODocs metadata, depending on the user's answer.
• Failure indicates that answers to your question won’t be imported to an AODocs metadata. User answers to such questions will be listed in the document’s Description property.

To check the status of a mapping:

1. Click the Details button next to it.

2. View the detailed message and click OK to close it.

Learn how to filter your mappings.

Refresh the mappings

When you make changes to your Google Form or to your document class properties, click the Refresh button in the sidebar to update the mappings.

Note: Any user with edit access to the form can refresh the settings. 

Learn how to filter your mappings.

Collect end user email addresses in AODocs

You can identify the end users of your form by collecting their email addresses. You can also save these addresses to a document property.

1. Click the Settings button in the top right of the screen.

2. Select the Collect email addresses checkbox.

3. Click Save.

4. In the Forms to AODocs sidebar, click the Refresh button. A new item, Form submitter, is displayed.

5. Select the Edit button next to Form submitter.

6. Select the AODocs property you want the email addresses to be imported to. Only String, Person and Dynamic category properties are available for selection.

Note: Make sure the property you select isn’t already matched with one of your form questions. If you set up two mappings to the same AODocs property (one from a question on the form and another by collecting end user email addresses) the AODocs property will be populated with data from the question on the form.

7. Click Save to validate the mapping. When a user submits a form, their email address is imported to the selected property.

Note: If you activate the Collect email addresses option in Google Forms but don’t select an AODocs property to collect them, the email address of the end user is included in the description of the created documents.