Restricted one-time use of web form?

Donna T

I saw some older posts regarding voting and wondered if any recent enhancements have been made? I have created a form, to facilitate anonymous voting -- a simple yes or no with a comment. I really like the idea of keeping my voting in Smartsheet with all the rest of my project planning; nice and centralized. The only drawback is that I don't know of a way to restrict someone from voting more than once. I want to believe that people would choose to behave fairly and ethically, but there is a risk that someone could choose to vote twice.

Is it possible to restrict someone from completing a form more than one time?

Thank you,

Donna

L_123

Is there a perfect way to do this? No, any solution you create could potentially be backtracked to solve which person submitted. You can make it really difficult to track however. If I was motivated to enforce anonymity inside of smartsheet form submissions while preventing form submission duplication I would use url queries in combination with the best random number generator I could make utlizing the tick counter in the background of smartsheets time functionality.

If you are interested in a fairly complex, imperfect solution, I can walk you through how to do this.

L_123

You know something? I take this back. Instead of hiding fields and submission numbers, and having a whole separate database with rng, you could have a stacked form, 2 sheets, and a report.

The first sheet has an entry form, and forces a log-in to access. It has a created by column, and whatever notes you want on it. You can say something like "this form address can only be generated once. After you press submit, you will need to complete the form without backing out. Press submit to continue anyways". The data doesn't matter, just that they have to login, and submit. You can add a calculation column with the formula

=if(countif(user:user,user@row)>1,"You have already submitted this form, only one submission is allowed","smartsheet.com/secondformaddressgoeshere")

This checks if the person has generated the url before, and populates an error message if they have, but gives the address to the second, anonymous form, if they haven't.

setup a report on this sheet filtered by current user, make sure the report is available to everyone that needs access to the form, and direct the first form to go to the report.

Donna T

One of the main goals is to keep it anonymous. Recording who has logged in gives away unanimity, but thanks so much for your solution!

L_123

Recording who logged in is only for the first form to generate the actual survey form, unless you want to hide who has submitted as well what. The responses in this case won't be associated with their name in any way.

Donna T

Ohhh, okay, I think I'm catching on. :)

So we're sending a "mini" form of sorts that forces login and allows them to continue to the survey. This captures the login.

Then the voting form contains that states if the logged in user has already completed voted to tell them they can only submit once.

Did I get that right?

L_123

Yes, sorry that wasn't clear, I was typing it as I was thinking of it.

Donna T

No! You're fine. I'm just slow to digest it. I would say I just an intermediate user -- so I wanted to make sure I was understanding you.

I'm still a little confused, but I'll jump in and try it. I'll come back here and message if I have trouble. Thank you!