Every church has forms that collect sensitive information. Benevolence requests, counseling intake, elder nominations, job applications: these are all situations where submissions should only be visible to a handful of people.

But until now, every Manager in People automatically had admin access to every form. A workaround for this was to demote the Managers to Editors — which took away access to everything else they needed, too. Some of you turned to third-party tools, losing the connection to People profiles and workflows. And for plenty of others, the plan was simply to trust that people wouldn't look.

This has been one of your most-requested improvements, and we're happy to share that you now have full control over who has admin access to each form.

Exclude Managers from a form

From a form's collaborator settings, you can now remove the default Manager permission if there is another individual or group with “manage” permission.

Remove managers permission group from forms

When Managers are excluded from a form, they won't see it in their form list, won't see submissions on profiles, and won't see related entries in the activity log. (If the form feeds into a workflow via an automation, Managers without access will see it labeled as [Hidden form] — the same pattern you're familiar with from workflows and notes.)

Grant access by permission group

In addition to adding individual collaborators, you can now assign access to entire permission groups with Manage or View only access. 

Assign access to permission groups in forms

Instead of individually adding dozens (or hundreds!) of people to a form, you can grant access to a whole permission level in a couple of clicks.

Forms you can finally keep in People

If you've been using third-party tools for sensitive forms — or just avoiding collecting certain information altogether — you can now collect all of it with the confidence that only the right people will see it, and with the benefit of everything flowing into profiles and workflows where it belongs.

New forms still default to sharing with all Managers, so nothing changes about your existing setup unless you choose to adjust permissions on a specific form.

If there are other changes you’d like to see come to forms, we'd love to hear about it! Click the (?) icon in the top right corner of Planning Center to share your thoughts.

💙 The People Team,
Zane, Usborn, Shawn, Shane, Saryn, Kody, Julia, Gabi, Fred, Dave, and Benson