Forms
When business teams need a contract, they often send an email or Slack message with incomplete information: “We need an NDA with Acme Corp.” Legal then has to follow up with questions. What type of NDA? Mutual or one-way? What’s the term? Who’s the signing authority? Forms standardize this intake process so the right information is collected upfront, every time.
A form is a questionnaire that collects structured information from users. Forms can be filled by internal users (business teams requesting contracts) or by external parties. When submitted, a form can automatically generate a contract from a template, create a contract for review, or redirect to another form. Field values map to template variables, so answers flow directly into the generated document. Conditional visibility shows or hides fields based on previous answers.
What’s Covered in This Section
Section titled “What’s Covered in This Section”This section will cover everything you need to build and manage forms in Pactly. Articles are in progress:
- Creating a Form (coming soon) - Build a new form, add fields, and configure submission behavior
- Form Field Types (coming soon) - Available field types and when to use each one
- Form Actions (coming soon) - Configure what happens when a form is submitted, including contract generation and conditional routing
- Managing Forms (coming soon) - Edit, duplicate, archive, and organize forms across your workspace
What Forms Do
Section titled “What Forms Do”Forms sit at the very beginning of the contract lifecycle, before a contract even exists. They handle the request and intake stage by collecting the information needed to create the right contract, then triggering the appropriate action.
A simple example: your organization has a standard NDA template. Instead of asking legal to manually fill in the party name, effective date, and governing law each time, you create a form. A business team member fills it out, clicks submit, and Pactly generates the NDA with all the details already populated.
Forms can also handle more complex scenarios. A single form can generate different types of contracts depending on how the user answers. If someone selects “Mutual NDA,” one template is used. If they select “One-way NDA,” a different template is used. This branching is controlled by form actions and their conditions.
Key Concepts
Section titled “Key Concepts”Form Fields
Section titled “Form Fields”Individual questions or input elements on a form. Field types include text, number, date, dropdown lists, party selectors, file uploads, and more. Each field captures a specific piece of information needed for contract generation or routing.
Form Actions
Section titled “Form Actions”What happens when the form is submitted. A form can generate a contract from a template, create a contract for review, request signatures, or redirect to another form. Each action has conditions that determine when it fires, so a single form can produce different outcomes based on the user’s answers.
Field Mappings
Section titled “Field Mappings”Connections between form field answers and template variables. When a user enters “Acme Corp” in the company name field, that value maps to the counterparty variable in the template. This is how form responses flow into the generated document without manual data entry.
Conditional Logic
Section titled “Conditional Logic”Fields and actions can be shown or hidden based on previous answers. If a user selects “Service Agreement” as the contract type, additional fields for service scope and SLA terms appear. If they select “NDA,” those fields stay hidden and NDA-specific fields appear instead. This creates branching forms where different questions surface based on the contract type or deal structure.
How Forms Fit the Contract Lifecycle
Section titled “How Forms Fit the Contract Lifecycle”Forms handle the earliest stage of the lifecycle: the request. Before a contract exists in Pactly, someone needs to provide enough information to create one. Forms replace the back-and-forth of emails and chat messages with a single, structured submission.
Once a form is submitted, the configured action takes over. The most common path is automatic contract generation, where a template is populated with the form’s field values and a new contract enters the repository in Draft status. From there, the contract moves through the standard lifecycle of review, negotiation, approval, and execution.
Connection to Templates
Section titled “Connection to Templates”Forms and templates are tightly connected. Template variables define the blanks that need to be filled, and form field mappings define which answers fill which blanks. A single form can generate different contracts by having multiple form actions, each linked to a different template and each with its own conditions. This means one intake form can serve an entire category of agreements.
For templates to work with forms, the template’s variables must align with the form’s field mappings. When building a form, you select which template each action generates and then map form fields to that template’s variables.