Google-forms – What happens when multiple people edit a multi-page form

google-forms

Imagine I have a multi page Google form and the "edit after submit" option is enabled.

Imagine we have a 3 page form with the following text questions:

  1. Q1
  2. Q2
  3. Q3

The form is submitted with blank values. UserA and UserB both navigate to the "edit" link.

What happens in the following scenarios?

Do two people see real time info?

  1. UserA opens the form on page 1.
  2. UserB opens the form, changes Q2=foo, then submits.
  3. UserA goes to page 2.

What happens?

  1. UserA sees the updated value foo for Q2.
  2. UserA sees a blank value for Q2.

Does the form combine the two submissions?

  1. UserA opens the form on page 1.
  2. UserB opens the form, changes Q2=foo, then submits.
  3. UserA goes to page 3, changes Q3=bar, then submits.

What is the state of the form?

  1. It combines both values to produce ,foo,bar.
  2. Last submission wins to produce ,,bar.

Best Answer

Google Forms edit links are "dumb," they will not show you when someone else is modifying the form and they will overwrite other changes since the last reload.

The state of the form when you first load it in your browser (on page 1) is the state that will be submitted.

Do two people see real time info?

No. The answer is 2. UserA sees a blank value for Q2 because that was the value when the form was loaded.

Does the form combine the two submissions?

No. The answer is 2. Last submissions wins to produce ',,bar'. because that was exactly the data that UserA saw when they submitted the form. Had it had a different value in the middle slot, they might have been rightly confused.

So the way to think about it is:

  1. The state of the form when it is loaded will never change based off of future submissions. If you care about taking in values from other people that may be editing at the same time, make sure to refresh the form.
  2. Whatever you see in the form when you hit the submit button is exactly what will be submitted. It will overwrite other people's changes.
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