Have all of editing, mandatory fields and save+continue working together

I have a test form:
https://eu.jotform.com/build/91994106506865

I created an incomplete record using the import tool, and have the edit link working:
https://www.jotform.com/edit/4417684742516402860

I've enabled save and continue and unique question on email.

I want to be able to send this to a recipient, and have them be able to edit a field (say phone number) and pass the same edit link on to a colleague to complete another field (say q3).

How can I get the first recipient to edit and save their changes to the incomplete record (i.e. add the phone number without filling in Q3) without actually submitting it given Q3 is mandatory - and will be completed by the second colleague on a different machine.

I can't use client cache as it will be passed between colleagues, so need to use server-based solution.

I can't use URL passing because the form will eventually have ~700 questions which will be too much to pass on URL.

I don't want to split it into several forms as I will not know which colleagues will fill each section/form, i.e. may still require multiple people to fill one section/form, or could be one person filling out all sections.

I don't want to use cards as given the number of questions, I want to be able to display a section at a time.

This is not an approval workflow, but simply a collaborative completion.

Is this possible? As this seems the one blocker for me to move to you from ZoHo forms.

The Auto Fill feature you enabled in your form will not for your case because the Auto Fill feature is saving the data locally on the user's browser.

Based on your requirements, I think that you can use the Save & Continue Later (session method) option. 

How to Save Forms and Continue Later

The Session method is saving the data on our servers. With this method, you will need to use two forms, one for session generation and second as primary. The users will be able to access their sessions from any locations.

However, you will need to send the session link to all users that will be filling the form. You will also need to tell them to click on the Next or Back button once they fill their part of the form to save the entered data. Once they fill it they can notify the other user to complete the other fields. 

Thanks, I had read that, but I cannot see how that will work with the edit URL, can you elaborate on how those instructions change when I have pre-created the response record?

You do not have to use the edit link in this case. You can create the session link, fill the part of the form, save it and then send the session link to the other users. 

I cloned your form and created a demo session link - https://form.jotform.com/92273811619965?session=1

I filled the email address and the Phone Number. You can test it and fill just the q3. After you fill the q3 click on the back button to save the data you entered. You can then reload the form, or open the link in some other browser or device and fill some other form fields to test it. 

If you want to use the edit link than each user will have to submit the form after filling their part of the form and provide to the other users the same edit link. However, in this case, they would not be able to skip the required fields, unless you also add some conditions to hide the required fields and create some kind of an approval workflow form. You can check the following guides:

How to Let Users Update Their Form Submissions at a Later Date

A General Approach on Building an Approval Process Workflow

Thanks for your reply,

Ok, so I stop using the edit links and try instead your session suggestion.

I want to use the read-only field instead of email (as email recipient may get more than one submission to complete).

But I'm still missing something even before I get to step 7 in https://www.jotform.com/help/97-How-to-Save-Forms-and-Continue-Later

i.e. I have one submission I pre-created, which I try to open the form with that record, it has the q1 internal id read-only field (uniquename=q1Readonly) set to "sample input text"

but when I try and open the record with:
https://form.jotform.com/91994106506865?session=sample%20input%20text

or

https://form.jotform.com/91994106506865?q1Readonly=sample%20input%20text

Neither of them load the pre-created record (i.e. email is not set to sample@example.com as per the submission).

What is the URL of the link I am going to send the first person? (or the second person!)

R

That is not how the session method works. To use the session method you need to have two forms. One that will create the session link and the other main form.  

I previously only provided you my test session link and that might cause some confusion. 

Here is my form that will create the session link - https://form.jotform.com/92273819239971

This form does not have any visible fields. It only has the Unique ID widget that I used to create the session. Once you submit it the session link of the other form will be shown on the Thank You page. 

Please note that instead of the Unique ID widget I used, you can use any other field to create a session link. 

So, once you are redirected to the other form, you can fill some of the form fields, save the entered data by clicking on Next or Back button and then share the session link with other users.

If you want to make some form fields on the main form read-only, you will have to add those fields to the first form as well, fill them in the first form and then pass them on the second form, by following steps from this guide:

How to Automatically Pass Form Data to Another Form

ok,

but i still don't understand something: given I am pre-creating the partial submission records via import, how can I refer to each record in the URL? either in first or second link?

I'm sorry but I do not understand your question? How exactly are you "pre-creating the partial submission records via import"? To which import are you referring to? 

If you want to prepopulate the form, you can use our prepopulate app or SpreadSheet to Form widget.

How to Use the Spreadsheet to Form Widget

I used https://www.jotform.com/help/308-Import-App-Easily-Import-Your-Excel-or-CSV-Data-into-JotForm
to create all the records, but with only partial information. The easiest example is a re-run of the same survey where I want to present the responses from last round.

It seems you want to allow user to submit the same form again. Is that correct?

You may like to take a look at the following guide on how to let users edit their own submission: https://www.jotform.com/help/40-How-to-Let-Users-Update-Their-Form-Submissions-at-a-Later-Date

Alternatively you can also find your form's submission ID, build the edit URL and share it with your users. The following guide should help you find out submission ID: https://www.jotform.com/help/549-Where-to-Find-the-Submission-ID

Example Edit URL: https://www.jotform.com/edit/****SUBMISSION_ID****

Hope this helps.

Do get back to us if you have any questions.

we're going in a circle, that is where I started as per my original question, and was advised by

Thanks in advance,

Rui

Just to confirm your requirement, the user would submit the Form once and then the next set of the users would submit the Form by editing right?

A workaround that I have come up is as follow:

1. The Form is designed in such a way that it has fields in multiple pages and the Form fields which the different user would be filling is kept separately in different pages. For example, User A would be filling field 1, field 2 so keep these two on the first page, User B would be filling fields 3 and 4 so keep these 2 in another page.

2. The first user would submit the Form and the next pages would be hidden for him. Each page has a submit button.

3. On submission second user would get an email with the edit link for him.

The edit link would directly contain the second page URL, the other pages would be hidden:

https://www.jotform.com/edit/4420234883524970157?jumpToPage=2

4. You can set up conditional emails for each user to fill the Form for that specific user:

The edit link for the third page URL:

https://www.jotform.com/edit/4420234883524970157?jumpToPage=3

5. We can hide the next, previous page conditionally as well as by custom CSS.

I have setup the below conditions to hide the page break:

here is my Demo Form:

https://form.jotform.com/92303020598957

You will notice the email Id field for user 2 and user 3. if you fill the email id here you would get the direct link to edit the Form.

The above URL is for one of my submission.

Let us know if this workaround would be helpful to you so that we can discuss further on this.

Thanks.

The problem is that (1) presumes that I know which respondents will be completing each section, which is not the case for me: sometimes one respondent will fill in the whole thing but may take a week, other times different sections of pages will be farmed out to different colleagues. Am surprised that I cannot just use an edit link in combination with save+continue (i.e. without having to submit and have mandatory fields completed). Surely re-running a 2nd round of a large survey and providing previous responses is not a unique use-case ?

Unfortunately, edit link and Save & Continue Later features cannot be combined. 

If you want to import your data and allow users to partially fill the form using the edit link, I can only suggest you to create a form without required fields.

If you want to use use the Save & Continue Later feature, you would not be able to use edit link, so you would have to use the solution I previously provided. 

1. Create a session link.

2. Partially fill the form using the session link. You would to this instead of importing the data.

3. Provide the session link to your users.