Pack Buttons in Published Docs?

[Daniel_Stieber]

Hey,
I’m struggling a little bit with this topic, maybe someone has an idea?

• I want to include a subscribe form into a published doc. The subscription should be handled via a pack into a 3rd party tool e.g. Mailchimp or Hubspot.

I have the pack ready, but I can’t find a really satisfying solution for implementing a form.

Own Form

Play Mode
When a pack is in Play Mode, Uses can not run Pack Actions

Edit Mode
When in Edit Mode, users can theoretically submit. It requires locking which I don’t want to require, but the worst: any changes are live, so if a user fills out the form, other users can see it too. Clearing the fields after submit doesn’t really help …

Coda Forms + Automations

When using a normal Coda Form, an automation could trigger the pack action. This also requires locking, and the worst is, that personal user data is stored somehwere in the pack. Is this accessible via the console in some way? (Looking at @Paul_Danyliuk )
In case there is an error with the Pack, the user does not get any feedback. Not a big thing when the doc maker gets a notification and can fix things, but what if the user should automatically receive a whitepaper or any other answer from the CRM/Mailing tool after subscription? Getting a “thanks for sub” but not receiving the mail until the doc maker fixes something is not satisfying.

Links in Form texts are not possible and the checkbox below / on the right of the long text looks weird. Would prefer the learned way of having the checkbox left and the text right.

Embed Coda Forms + Automations

Data is now securily stored in a different doc, but it takes up so much space in the public doc and with the “submit as” and the gray background it looks totally out of place. Also like above, in case there is an error with the Pack, the user does not get any feedback. A pro is though: inlcuding the same form in many docs is easy.

For now I might have to continue with the embed forms.

But has anyone every played around with a scenario like this or has an idea / feedback what the best approach would be?

[Paul_Danyliuk]

Embedded form in a play mode frontend doc + DB and automation on the private backend doc would be my solution of choice. It’s the only safe choice.

No feedback in case of error — no problem That’s not the scenario you expect to happen frequently, do you?

If you want to alert your users that there was a problem and could be delays with delivering your content, build this into your backend doc. E.g., on the form submission rows, change the state as the submission is processed: New → Processing → Processed. And capture timestamps, too. Then have another regular automation or whatnot that’ll check for items that got stuck in the Processing state for far too long, and send apologies to those users via regular Gmail pack.

P.S. You could also just use webhooks or any other method of delivering data via link. E.g. make an Integromat (Make) integration that’d add a row in your backend doc when a link with ?email= data is opened. Then use any mechanism to trigger that link from your frontend doc, e.g. a button that would reveal an Embed with that link.

[Daniel_Stieber]

Thanks @Paul_Danyliuk That’s super helpful.