How can we help?

Overview

The External Request Form gives an institution a public, no-login-required way for people outside the organization like community members, vendors, alumni, or other external groups to request space. Submissions land in a request queue where Event Coordinators can review them and convert approved ones into reservations.

This article covers building and publishing the form. For reviewing and acting on submissions, see Managing External Requests - The Request Queue. For adding the form to an institution’s own website, see Embedding the Request Form on Your Website.

This article is for Platform Admins and Facilities Managers who are configuring the form for their institution.

Prerequisites

• Feature must be enabled first. The External Request Form is off by default and must be turned on for the platform by Concept3D. If the External Requests option doesn’t appear in Settings, contact your Partner Success Manager or support@concept3d.com to have it enabled.

• Permissions. Only users with the Platform Admin or Facilities Manager role can access the form builder. Event Coordinators cannot configure the form, though they can manage incoming requests once the form is live.

• One form per institution. The form builder currently supports a single external request form per platform.

Step by Step Instructions

Create the form

1. Go to Settings in the admin sidebar and open the Request Form Builder.

2. Click Add Form

3. If no form exists yet, provide a name for it. The form saves in an unpublished state until it’s ready to go live.

4. Set a URL slug — the human-readable piece of the public form URL. Slugs must be unique per platform.

Add the standard fields

Every form always includes these fields, and they can’t be removed or reordered:

• First name, last name, email

• Event name

• Requested date(s) and time(s)

• Expected attendance

• Description

• Additional Notes

Add custom questions

1. Add a question and give it a label.

2. Choose a response type: Text Input, Number Input, Single Choice, Multi-Select, or File Upload.

3. Mark the question as required if it must be answered before the form can be submitted.

4. For Single Choice and Multi-Select questions, add the list of choices. Choices can be reordered or edited inline.

5. Drag and drop to reorder questions. Standard fields always stay above custom questions.

Write the confirmation message

Add the message requesters see on screen immediately after submitting. This is separate from the confirmation email the system sends automatically. Use it to set expectations (e.g., typical review time, who to contact with questions).

Configure notification recipients

1. Select one or more people to be notified by email whenever a new request comes in.

2. Only admin users like Event Coordinators, Facilities Managers, and Platform Admins appear in the recipient list.

3. Recipients can be added or removed at any time.

Publish the form

1. Once the slug is set, click Publish.

2. The form builder displays the public URL and an iFrame embed snippet. Copy either one to share the form.

3. The form can be unpublished at any time. Its public URL returns a 404 while unpublished.

Common Variations or Use Cases

• Editing a question after it has responses. The wording (label) and required setting can still be changed, but the response type is locked once a question has at least one submitted answer. To change the response type, add a new question instead.

• Deleting a question. Questions can be soft-deleted from the form. Existing submissions still show the deleted question’s responses, labeled the same way they’d show for any other custom question.

• Deleting the entire form. Deleting a form immediately stops it from accepting new submissions and unpublishes the public URL. Existing requests and their responses remain visible on their original request records. Nothing already submitted is lost.

Settings and Configuration Options and Definitions

• Required question — Must be answered before the requester can submit the form.

• Slug — The unique, human-readable portion of the form’s public URL.

• Published / Unpublished — Whether the public URL is live. Unpublished forms return a 404 to anyone visiting the link.

Troubleshooting

• The Request Form Builder option isn’t in Settings. The feature hasn’t been enabled for the platform yet — contact your Partner Success Manager or support@concept3d.com.

• Can’t change a question’s response type. This is locked once the question has at least one response, to protect existing data. Add a new question instead.

• Publish button is disabled. The form needs a slug set before it can be published.

Related Articles

• Managing External Requests - The Request Queue

• Embedding the Request Form on Your Website

• Submitting an External Room Request