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StretchForms Concepts and Glossary

A reference for every term you'll meet in StretchForms — forms, keys, types, statuses, routing, submissions, partial saves, analytics, webhooks, and Intelligence.

Why this glossary exists

StretchForms uses a small, consistent vocabulary across the builder, the registry, the inbox, analytics, and webhooks. Learning it once makes every other article easier to follow. Keep this page open as a reference while you work.

Core objects

Form A named form definition. Its most important attributes are:

  • Name / title — human-readable label (minimum two characters).
  • Form key — the URL-safe identifier: lowercase letters, numbers, -, and _, two characters or more (for example client-intake). Auto-generated from the name if you leave it blank.
  • Form type — a category slug (for example contact, quote, application, intake). This is what links a form to the responses it collects and what triggers automatic messaging routing.
  • Description — optional helper text.
  • Priority weight — an integer 0–100 (default 50). Higher weights sort forms to the top and get their routes evaluated first.

Field A single question inside a form. Each field has a label, a type (short text, long text, email, phone, number, date, dropdown/choice, checkbox), a required flag, an optional placeholder, and, for choice fields, a list of options.

Submission (response) One completed answer to a form. Submissions carry the respondent's answers plus context such as the source page, and — for contact-style forms — name, email, phone, company, subject, and message. They also record consent flags (terms and privacy) where captured.

Status and lifecycle

A form's status is one of:

  • Draft — being built; not accepting responses.
  • Active (also shown as Published or Live) — accepting responses.
  • Paused — temporarily stopped; you can resume it later.
  • Archived — retired; kept for the record but not live.

Routing terms

  • Target app — the StretchSuite app a form's responses are meant for (for example messaging). Contact and quote forms are set to messaging automatically.
  • Default team — the team that owns responses by default (contact/quote forms default to the submissions team).
  • Routing mode — how responses are handled: Manual review (default), Team route, App handoff, or Dry-run algorithm route (routing is recommended but applied manually).
  • Route — a rule attached to a form that sends matching responses to a team, stage, or app.

Multi-step and partial saves

  • Step — a page in a multi-step form.
  • Partial save — a respondent's in-progress answers, stored so they can leave and come back.
  • Resume token — the unique key that identifies a partial save and lets a respondent resume exactly where they left off.
  • Expiry — an optional time after which a partial save is no longer resumable.

Analytics terms

StretchForms records four event types you'll see in analytics: view, step_complete, field_answered, and submit. These roll up into per-form metrics: views, step completions, fields answered, submit events, total submissions, submissions in the last 7 days, and partial-save counts.

Webhook terms

  • Webhook endpoint — an external URL that receives a POST for each new submission.
  • Signing secret — a shared secret used to HMAC-sign the payload so your receiver can verify authenticity.
  • Delivery — one attempt (or set of attempts) to send a payload; each has a status of queued, test, succeeded, retrying, or failed.
  • Signature header — the x-stretchforms-signature header, formatted t=<timestamp>,v1=<hmac>.

Intelligence terms

  • Intelligence inbox — the triage view of all submissions, with notes, an event timeline, and assignment history.
  • Classification — read-only signals the engine computes for a submission: spam score, PII detection, routing recommendation, and validation quality. It never changes the submission.
  • Algorithm contract — the policy that governs what automation may do. Classification, routing recommendation, validation quality, and spam/risk detection are allowed now; CRM-handoff scoring, support-priority scoring, and automated assignment are dry-run only; autonomous mutation is off, and any persisted output is audited.

Tips

  • Form type is the connective tissue — it links a form to its submissions and drives auto-routing. Choose it deliberately.
  • "Active" = live. If responses aren't arriving, the status is the first thing to check.
  • Dry-run means "suggested, not done." The engine can recommend a route or score but won't act on its own.

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