Once a form is shared through its public link, the work shifts from collecting information to acting on it. On Atlas Advanced, everything people send back lands in one place: Data Collection.
Finding submissions
Data Collection appears in the navigation on the Advanced tier, beside Data Schemas and Forms. It lists every form you’ve published, each with a count of submissions beside it. Open a form and its public link and its submissions sit on the same page.
Submissions arrive without any manual refresh. The moment a customer submits, the count goes up and their entry appears, listing who sent it — the name and email they gave before starting the form.
Data Collection is part of the same file system you work in everywhere else in Atlas, so a submission is just another item you can find.
Reading a submission
Open a submission and you see the form you designed, filled in: the same sections, in the same order, with the same layout you set for print. Each section corresponds to one of the data schemas the form attaches, so the answers are already structured — street in the street field, email in the email field, validated by the formats you chose.
Nothing was retyped, and nothing was transcribed.
Sharing a submission
When a submission needs to reach somebody who doesn’t use Atlas — a subcontractor, an accountant, a colleague on the road — download it as a PDF. The PDF uses the same layout as the form, so it reads naturally.
Submissions are final for the respondent
On the public form, the review step warns respondents that a submission can’t be edited afterwards. That protects you: what’s in Data Collection is exactly what the respondent confirmed. If something needs correcting, follow up with the respondent using the email address they provided.
Habits for staying on top of submissions
- Check Data Collection at a set time each day, or more often for time-sensitive forms. The per-form counts make new activity easy to spot.
- Respond from the details provided. Every submission carries the respondent’s name and email, so there’s always a way to follow up.
- Keep one form per purpose. A single Service Request form shared everywhere is easier to manage than several near-identical forms.
- Improve the form from what you see. If respondents often leave an optional field blank, or ask questions the form doesn’t cover, adjust the schema and publish a new version. Past submissions keep their original shape.
Growing beyond Data Collection
As submissions accumulate, many businesses want to organize them around what they’re about — a customer, a property, a job — and route them to the right team. That’s what the Enterprise tier adds with classifications, topics and records, and pipelines that move records through review and approval.
A simple weekly routine
Submissions are only valuable if someone acts on them. A routine that works for small teams:
Daily
- Open Data Collection and check the counts on your active forms.
- Open new submissions and read them.
- Respond using the name and email captured with each entry.
- For anything that needs work scheduled, add it to your normal scheduling process.
Weekly
- Scan the week’s submissions for patterns — questions people ask that the form doesn’t cover.
- Note any fields left blank often; they may be unnecessary or unclear.
- Adjust schemas and publish new versions where needed.
Monthly
- Compare submission counts across forms to see which are being used.
- Retire forms nobody uses, and improve the ones that matter.
Turning submissions into action
Submissions arrive structured, which makes the next step easier:
- Follow up using the respondent’s email — every submission has one.
- Share a PDF with anyone outside Atlas who needs it.
- Schedule the work in whatever system you use for scheduling.
- On Enterprise, organize the information around the customer or property it concerns, so history accumulates in one place.
Common questions
Can submissions be edited? Respondents can’t edit after submitting, which is why the public form ends with a review step. Corrections are handled by contacting the respondent.
How do I find an older submission? Data Collection is part of the same file system used everywhere in Atlas, so search and sorting work as they do elsewhere.
Can two people work on submissions at once? Yes. Access to Atlas is controlled by your organization’s settings, and on Enterprise, security policies decide who can reach what.
What if a submission is clearly a mistake or duplicate? Contact the respondent to confirm, and keep your own convention for how duplicates are handled — for example, acting on the most recent entry.
Preparing for growth
As volume grows, two things help: keeping one form per purpose, so submissions stay comparable, and moving to Enterprise, where records can be organized around customers and properties and routed through pipelines with review steps and role-scoped work queues.
Handing work on
Submissions often need to reach someone who didn’t receive them. Three practical patterns:
Share the PDF. For subcontractors, accountants or anyone outside Atlas, the PDF preserves the layout you designed.
Summarize into your scheduling process. If scheduling lives elsewhere, agree a standard summary — customer, address, request, date received — so nothing is lost in translation.
Move up a tier when handoffs get complex. If submissions routinely need routing, review and follow-up by different people, that’s the point at which Enterprise’s pipelines and role-scoped work queues start paying for themselves, because the routing lives in the system rather than in somebody’s memory.
