When Stacy Tomkins, web architect for the City of Greensboro, North Carolina, talks about Jotform, she doesn’t hold back: “I can’t say enough good things about it. It’s got a little something for everybody.”
That enthusiasm isn’t just personal. For a city government with nearly 3,800 employees serving more than 300,000 residents who increasingly expect fast, mobile-friendly access to government services, Jotform Enterprise has become essential to how Greensboro operates.
Like many municipal governments, Greensboro runs on a lean budget, a large and diverse workforce, and a mission to serve every resident efficiently and equitably.
The challenge: Paper processes in a digital world
The City of Greensboro has been using Jotform since 2018, but until the COVID-19 pandemic, it still used paper forms for the majority of its processes. When in-person services came to a halt during the pandemic, the city’s longstanding reliance on paper forms became impossible to sustain, forcing a reckoning with the status quo.
“We realized that paper forms, which we typically used for the majority of our public work, just were not sustainable during that time,” says Tomkins. “Jotform really took off for us as a tool for gathering information and fulfilling requests.”
The challenges were clear: Paper forms were expensive. Processes were slow. Staff spent valuable time on repetitive, manual tasks like routing requests, chasing approvals, and managing communications that could have been automated.
Beyond the pandemic, the city faced another challenge: Meeting the communication expectations of its residents. Most Greensboro residents access information on their phones and expect to access government services that way as well. Any solution the city chose had to meet residents where they were.
Why Jotform Enterprise?
When it came time to formalize and expand the city’s digital forms strategy and choose a software tool, cost was a major factor, but it wasn’t the only one.
“Ultimately, we chose Jotform because the cost was much lower than Adobe licenses for all of our employees,” Tomkins explains.
We could have a paperless solution that was also more flexible in terms of email routing and workflows than Adobe was. And the learning curve was much, much lower.
Stacy Tomkins, Web Architect, City of Greensboro,
For a city government working within tight budget constraints, the value was clear. Jotform Enterprise delivered enterprise-grade capabilities without the enterprise-grade price tag.
How Greensboro uses Jotform Enterprise
The City of Greensboro has deployed Jotform across nearly every department, with use cases spanning internal operations and public-facing services.
Internal workflows include
- HR onboarding forms
- Employee satisfaction surveys
- Benefits management and leave requests
External, public-facing forms include
- Water service applications
- Police ride-along and fingerprinting appointment scheduling
- Volunteer sign-ups for community lake cleanup initiatives
One of the city’s most significant workflow improvements has been in HR and benefits. Employees who need to request planned leave without pay used to submit paper forms that were manually routed to liaisons for approval — a slow, opaque process.
“Our Jotform workflow has automated all of that,” says Tomkins. “Employees submit their request and it is immediately routed to one of several potential liaisons. They can immediately review it and, with a click of a button, approve it or ask for more information. Our benefits team can see at any point in the process where each person’s request is.”
The result: Liaisons now receive requests in real time instead of processing a backlog at the end of open enrollment. The benefits team has full visibility into requests, and employees get answers faster.
A community event, reimagined
Perhaps no example illustrates the impact of digitization more vividly than the city’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast, a tradition spanning more than 40 years.
“In the past, it was handled by our human rights department with notepads and phone calls,” says Tomkins. “There was real risk of someone’s name being written on a notepad, and maybe lost.”
Today, the entire process runs through Jotform. Attendees sign up through an online form, are automatically routed to a payment portal after registration, and receive an instant confirmation. On the backend, the human rights team can assign tables, track payments, and follow up with registrants, all from the submission records in Jotform Tables, without a single phone call.
It’s a small example with a big message: When government processes work seamlessly, communities feel it.
Serving residents where they are
One of the biggest advantages to using Jotform for Greensboro has been the mobile experience it provides. Since most residents access city information on their phones, the ability to preview and optimize forms for mobile before publishing them has become standard practice.
“We can test all of our content to see what it would look like on a phone before we push it out,” says Tomkins, “so we can be assured that everyone can see the form and layout properly and submit things without any issue.”
Accessibility compliance is equally important for a government entity. Jotform’s built-in accessibility checker gives the team confidence that their forms meet federal requirements.
What the team loves most
Ask Tomkins what she appreciates most about Jotform Enterprise, and three things rise to the top.
Flexibility and customization. “It can be as complicated or as easy as a user would want. We can customize forms, emails, PDFs, and workflows — or we can use the defaults. It works either way.”
Draft mode. “It allows us to make changes to heavily used live forms and show our departmental partners what the form would look like with those changes before we introduce them to the public. They can sign off — or tell us what else needs to change.”
Customer support. “It’s very strong and fast. And if we can’t get what we need through customer support, we can use the AI chatbot.” Support, she notes, is typically available within an hour or two — which is critical for a team managing public-facing government services.
The results
The impact of Jotform Enterprise is felt across the organization:
- Significant paper cost reduction: The city reduced printing and distribution costs by digitizing forms that were previously shared on paper across departments and with the public.
- Reclaimed employee time: By automating routine tasks like email notifications, approval routing, and request tracking, staff can focus on higher-value work.
- Faster community response: Residents get instant confirmations, real-time updates, and mobile-friendly experiences that meet modern expectations for government services.
- Greater operational visibility: Department leads can see exactly where any request stands, eliminating the back-and-forth that was common in paper-based workflows.
Advice for other government organizations
For city leaders, managers, or community stewards considering a similar move, Tomkins’s recommendation is unequivocal.
I would definitely recommend Jotform to anyone because it really streamlines processes and cuts down on a lot of the repetitive tasks that take up employees’ time throughout their day. It’s easy to pick up — you can customize it or leave it as is — and it works really well for organizations big and small.
Ease of use is a particular selling point for public sector teams that may be hesitant about adopting new technology.
“Jotform is drag and drop. And with the AI assistant, people can type in what they want their form to say and it will create it for them. You don’t have to be technical to get real results.”
And for those who want to push further? The ceiling is high.
“I always want the challenge of seeing if I can make a form not just the way it was requested, but better,” says Tomkins.
For the City of Greensboro, Jotform Enterprise isn’t just a form tool. It’s the infrastructure behind faster approvals, more accessible public services, leaner operations, and a government that can keep pace with the community it serves.
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