Forms - best practices to organize them

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Hello! I’m developing my first application, transitioning from Excel to Grist. It’s a comprehensive internal tool for my small marketing firm, encompassing various modules like budgeting, finance, CRM, and project management. I aim to grant access to this application to my service providers. Grist offers an excellent security model, making it easy to restrict access right down to the specific cells that suppliers can view. To facilitate their tasks, I plan to create multiple forms to streamline data entry into Grist tables. For instance, upon completing their work, a supplier would use a dedicated form to select the project they’ve worked on, enter the task details and compensation, and submit this information directly into the table. Therefore, I need to integrate these forms into my application. My questions are as follows:

  1. Can I publish the form so that only logged-in users can access it? Currently, if I publish it, anyone with the link can access the form.
  2. If that’s not possible, can I compile a list of form links within the application (perhaps on a “supplier home screen”), so that when a supplier clicks a link or button on this screen, it opens the form they need—not in design mode, but ready to create a new record?
  3. Is it possible to lock the form design to prevent any modifications by others?

Thank you in advance!

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Well, let’s start by 3. You can change permissions so only Owners can change structure and layout. In that case, nobody but the owner will be able to edit the form…

Now for the 1st question… forms are a link. You can give a link to any form in a Grist table, be it shown as a table widget, cards widget, etc.

You can then lock that column to editing to anyone but the owner, so everyone will use it as links only. Alternatively, there are some new widgets around that allow you to create widgets youself. So you can in theory make a MENU buttons widget to go for the forms.

But maybe not even that is needed. I would guess you can maybe create a clickable menu to the forms by simply using an HTML widget that reads a table with the links.