Merging Form Data

Hey,

I am part of an association that uses JotForms as part of a selection process to accept new members. 

The way it works today is that we have one form filled by applicants and another form filled by their recommender. Until now, we've had to manually merge the information between both folders (of application and recommendation) to create an "applicant folder" with all the information inside. 

I was wondering if there is any way to automate that process by linking the two forms? For example, after an applicant fills in their application, their name is added to a pool of names in the recommendation application that the recommender selects.

The result would be that after "ABC" fills in their application form, their recommender would enter the recommender form and their first question would be to select who it's for, and instead of it being a plain text answer, it would be the names of all those who filled the application form, like "ABC".

I hope that question makes sense. Please let me know if there is any way to do this/ solve the problem in any other way. 

Many thanks!

Shira Amit

After the applicant fills the application form, you can send an email to the recommender that includes a special link to the recommendation form. That special link pre-populates the recommendation form.

https://www.jotform.com/help/528-How-to-Pre-Populate-the-Same-Form-with-Data-from-a-Previous-Submission

You may also use the same form and implement a process workflow. Please see this generic guide to  do so:

https://www.jotform.com/help/432-A-General-Approach-on-Building-an-Approval-Process-Workflow

Maybe I didn't explain well enough. 

The recommender shouldn't see the applicant's form. Each has their own form to fill out and shouldn't see what the other writes. 
So ideally I would have one form from the applicant, and the recommendation form filled twice- each time by a different recommender. I need all three PDFs of this form to be in one folder. 

Is it possible that if all the forms have a field for "Applicant email" that the results get grouped and automatically saved to the same folder?

I think what you're trying to create is an approval form. My colleague provided this guide: https://www.jotform.com/help/432-A-General-Approach-on-Building-an-Approval-Process-Workflow

If the recommenders turn to fill out the form, in the guide, you can hide the applicant data so the recommender can only see the field you want to show. Same as the applicant, you can hide the fields for the recommender. Here are some helpful guides that can achieve that:

How-to-Show-or-Hide-Fields-Base-on-User-s-Answer

How-to-Show-or-Hide-Fields-on-Edit-URL

If that's not what you're looking for, could you please give us a sample form that we can test so we can try to replicate it.

Is it possible that if all the forms have a field for "Applicant email" that the results get grouped and automatically saved to the same folder?

I am not sure what folder you're referring to, is it in the Form Builder? You can try integrating your form to Google Drive by following this guide: https://www.jotform.com/help/192-How-to-Integrate-a-Form-with-Google-Drive

I've integrated my forms to google drive. As it works now I have one form filled by the applicant which creates a folder on Google Drive with the form and all its supporting documents. 

The other form, filled by two recommenders, is also integrated to google drive but the results are placed in a different folder on google. Since I want all the information on the applicant in one place, I then have to manually drag and drop the recommendations from their google folder to the applicant's folder. Doing that for 200 people is quite the waste of time as you can assume :)

What I am looking for is that the google folders will be created according to the applicant's email- as that is a shared field for all forms. So the result would be that entering a google folder with the applicant email will give me the applicant form as well as their recommender's form.

Unfortunately, that is not possible. Each submission will create each own folder inside the ROOT FOLDER.

You can only assign one ROOT FOLDER to where all your forms' submissions will be saved but every submission will trigger creating each own subfolder.