Route Custom Form Responses to Any App 🔀

Table of Contents

🧩 Essentials
🎨 Make It Yours
⚙️ How to Route Custom Form Responses To Any App with Workload
⚡ Power-Up Route Custom Form Responses: Make It Part of a Larger Automation
🧠 Learn More with Workload

With the Forms by Workload trigger, you can build a custom form directly inside your workflow. You don’t need extra tools or outside apps. This guide shows you how to route custom form responses to any app—without writing code.

In this example, you’ll route each response to Google Sheets, Slack, and Gmail. But that’s just the beginning. You can connect your form to any app and trigger the exact automation your workflow needs.

This setup runs fast, scales easily, and keeps your team in sync. Whether you’re collecting leads, updates, or feedback, Workload routes your data exactly where it needs to go.

🧩 Essentials #

Before you build, here’s what you’ll need:

🚀 Workload Account
A free or paid account to create your custom form and trigger the automation. You’ll build the form directly within the first step of your workflow.

Need help designing your form? Follow our step-by-step guide on how to build custom forms with Workload.

✅ Destination Apps
In this example, you’ll use:

Google Sheets to log structured responses
Slack to send formatted messages
Gmail to generate email summaries

You can swap these out or add more apps as needed.

🎨 Make It Yours #

📎 Use Filters to Segment Responses
Only run the Slack or Gmail step if a specific form field matches a certain value—like “Yes” to a follow-up request.

📅 Add Timestamps to Sheet Entries
Log the exact date and time each response comes in by inserting a dynamic timestamp in your spreadsheet step.

🧠 Format Text with AI
Use the AI Formatter to clean up multiple-choice answers or reword long-form replies before sending them to Slack or Gmail.

🧭 Conditional Branches
Create separate paths in your workflow depending on how people answer key questions—perfect for sorting leads or directing team alerts.

⚙️ How to Route Custom Form Responses To Any App with Workload #

This tutorial picks up where we left off in our first Forms by Workload post, where you built your form and submitted a response. Now we’ll use that form as a trigger and show you how to route each response into Google Sheets, Slack, and Gmail—automatically.

Step 1: Create a spreadsheet row in Google Sheets

In your existing workflow, click the “+” button below your completed trigger

Click the ➕ button to add a new action step and continue building your workflow.

Select the app: Google Sheets

Choose Google Sheets as the app where you want to send the form data.

Choose “Create Spreadsheet Row” as the event then click Continue

Select "Create Spreadsheet Row" to Route Custom Form Responses directly into Google Sheets.

Click Sign in to connect your Google Sheets account if you haven’t done so already. For help, follow the step-by-step guide on how to connect Google Sheets to Workload. Once connected, click Continue.

Connect your Google Sheets account to Workload to enable routing of custom form responses.

Next, select your Spreadsheet & Worksheet

Pick the destination spreadsheet where new rows from form submissions will be added.

Click + Add To and map each form response to the corresponding sheet column. You can add as many as you need, then click Continue

Use the Add To button to map each field from your form into the correct spreadsheet column.

Note: If you have checkbox answers, the results will be returned in an array. We will now need to format those answers into usable answers. To do this, follow Step 2. If you don’t have any responses that need formatting, you can skip to the next step.

This example shows how to split checkbox responses into separate spreadsheet cells using arrays.

Step 2: Clean up checkbox data using AI Formatter #

Click the + icon between the trigger and your Sheets step

Click the ➕ button again to add another action and continue routing custom form responses.

Choose Tools → AI Formatter by Workload

Choose the AI Formatter by Workload app to clean and enhance form response data.

Select the event: Format Data

Select “Format Data” as the AI Formatter event to process and extract clean values from form responses.

In the Input Data field, select the array that contains the answers you want to use in the automation (ex: “Are you having fun?”)

Input the data you want to send to the formatter from the previous form submission step.

Add a prompt like “Pull out the 0 and make it a separate response”, then click Continue

Add a custom prompt to the Formatter to clean or structure incoming form data.

Hit the Test action button

Click “Test Action” to preview the output of your formatted data.

Verify that the response isolates the answer that you want to use, then click Continue to complete the formatting step

Press Continue to proceed after confirming the formatter output.

Return to the Google Sheets step in your workflow, and click on the Action tab and then move to the column that has the array answers (ex: Having fun?). Then, click in the Data field, and choose the the answer from the Format Data in AI Formatter response. When you have finished adding all of the columns you want, click Continue.

Choose the formatted output to use to Route Custom Form Responses.

Test the action

Click Test Action to check that a row was added to your Google Sheet.

Once you get a successful response, hit Continue

Press Continue to finish the Google Sheets setup step.

Step 3: Post form results to Slack #

Click the branching icon under the AI Formatter step

Click the branching icon to add a new path and Route Custom Form Responses to multiple apps.

In the new path action, choose the app Slack and select Send Channel Message as the event, then click Continue

Select Slack from the list of available apps to Route Custom Form Responses into a message.

Connect your Slack account by clicking Sign in. For help, follow the step-by-step guide on how to connect Google Sheets to Workload. Once connected, click Continue.

Connect your Slack account so you can Route Custom Form Responses directly into a channel.

Pick your channel and build the message using static labels and mapped values

Match incoming data fields to the appropriate columns in your Slack message.

Set the bot name (ex: “Form Response”), then click Continue

Set your Slack bot display name and customize the message content.

Test the message to confirm delivery in Slack by clicking Test action

Test the Slack action to verify it’s correctly configured to route custom form responses.

Once you get a successful response, click Continue

Step 4: Send a summary email with Gmail #

Add another branch from the AI Formatter step

Add a new path to continue routing custom form responses to additional apps.

Choose the app: Gmail

Choose Gmail as the app to handle automated email summaries.

Select the event: Send Email, then click Continue

Select the “Send Email” event to automate Gmail messages based on submitted form data.

Click Sign in to connect your Google Gmail account if you haven’t done so already. For help, follow the step-by-step guide on how to connect Google Sheets to Workload. Once connected, click Continue.

Connect your Gmail account to send messages triggered by routed custom form responses.

Fill in the fields that define the parameters about who the email will be sent to and who it comes from (ex: To, Cc, Bcc, From & From Name, etc)

Map the dynamic “To” and “From” fields in your Gmail step using response data.

Set a subject line for the email (ex: “New Form Response”)

Customize the subject line of your Gmail summary email using form inputs.

Structure the body using your mapped form answers, then click Continue

Add the full message body content using variables from routed custom form responses.

Run a test by clicking Test action confirm it lands in your inbox, then hit Continue when you get a successful response

Click the "Test action" button to complete the Gmail step and route custom form responses.

Step 5: Activate and test your automation #

Verify that all steps show green status dots and then click the On/Off toggle in the upper right corner to go live

Toggle the switch in the upper right to activate the completed workflow and begin sending responses through Gmail, Slack, and Sheets automatically.

⚡ Power-Up Route Custom Form Responses: Make It Part of a Larger Automation #

🔔 Notify teams conditionally
Use filters or branching to alert different Slack channels or send different emails based on a form field like department or priority level.

📬 Trigger follow-ups
Add a Gmail or Mailchimp step to send automatic follow-up emails if someone requests more information on your form.

🧹 Clean and structure the data
Add an extra AI Formatter step to correct typos, extract key info, or standardize names and dates before logging them.

📈 Log responses across tools
Send the same data to Airtable, HubSpot, or your internal database—use multiple output steps to feed different teams what they need.