Troubleshooting requests
What to do when an invitation does not arrive, a recipient cannot open the form, or a workflow is not told about an answer.
The invitation never arrived
Open the request on the Requests page and read its timeline. The first invitation line tells you which case you are in.
| Timeline says | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Invitation queued | Accepted and about to be sent. | Give it a minute. If it stays queued, check the request has an email address. |
| Invitation sent | The email left Formstep. | Ask the recipient to check their spam folder. Sending from your own email domain helps. |
| Invitation failed | Formstep could not send it, the address bounced, or the recipient marked it as spam. | If the address is wrong, send a new request to the right one. Otherwise copy the link and send it yourself. |
| No invitation line | The request was created with Link, so nothing was emailed. | Copy the link and send it yourself. |
Sending from your own email domain makes invitations more likely to reach the inbox. On Free, Formstep emails only your first 10 invitations, to your own address.
The link shows a notice instead of the form
The request has ended: it was completed, it expired, or it was canceled. A completed request cannot be answered again. If the recipient needs another go, send a new request.
The workflow was not told
The request page’s Callback section shows where Formstep tried to send the outcome and what happened. Callback failed means Formstep tried for about four hours and gave up. Ask whoever runs the workflow to fix it, then click Replay to send it again. Developers: see Request callbacks.
A workflow stopped matching after an edit
An answer is missing from what the workflow receives, or it can no longer fill in a field. A published field key was changed, or its question was deleted and replaced. Type the old key on the field in the editor’s Fields tab and publish again. See When a key is about to disappear.
Developers: see the API error reference for every error a request call can return.