# Publishing

Once your form is ready, publish it to make it publicly accessible and start receiving submissions.

## Setting the Slug

The **slug** is the short identifier that appears in your form's public URL:

```
https://forms.maica.com.au/f/your-slug-here
```

### Rules

* Must be unique across all forms in the system
* Can only contain lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens
* Auto-generated from the form title when the form is first created (e.g. "New Client Intake" → `new-client-intake`)
* **Can be changed while the form is in draft status**
* **Cannot be changed after the form is published** — changing the slug would break any links already shared

Set the slug in **Settings → General → Slug** before publishing.

## Publishing Your Form

1. Open the form in the builder
2. Review your form in the canvas (or open the preview in a new tab)
3. Click **Publish** in the top-right corner of the builder
4. The status changes from **Draft** to **Published**
5. Your form is now live at its public URL

When you publish, a **version snapshot** is automatically saved (recording the schema, the publisher's name, and the timestamp).

## Making Changes After Publishing

You can continue to edit a published form. Changes auto-save to the draft state. The live form continues to show the last published version until you publish again.

To push changes live:

1. Make your edits in the builder
2. Click **Publish** again

A new version snapshot is created each time you publish.

{% hint style="warning" %}
**Important:** If you add, remove, or rename fields after a form has already collected submissions, be aware that earlier submissions will not have data for new fields, and any removed fields' data will still be in older submissions.
{% endhint %}

## Unpublishing

To take a form offline without deleting it:

1. Open the form in the builder
2. Go to **Settings → General**
3. Change status from **Published** to **Draft**
4. Save

The public URL will immediately return a "form not found" page. Existing submissions are preserved.

## Sharing the Form

Once published, share the URL directly:

```
https://forms.maica.com.au/f/your-slug
```

You can embed this link in:

* Emails and email signatures
* Salesforce emails and templates
* Your website
* QR codes
* Salesforce Experience Cloud pages

No login is required for respondents.

## Closing a Form (Submission Cap)

If you want a form to automatically stop accepting submissions after a set number of responses, configure the **Maximum total submissions** in **Settings → Submissions**.

Once the cap is reached, the public form page shows a closed message. The form remains published — it just stops accepting new submissions. You can raise or remove the cap at any time.

## Embedding in Salesforce

Forms can be launched from Salesforce in two ways:

1. **Link** — Add a hyperlink to any email template, component, or button that opens the form URL
2. **Button with record context** — Pass a `?recordId=` parameter in the URL so the form can pre-fill fields with Salesforce record data

Example URL for a Salesforce button that passes the current record ID:

```
https://forms.maica.com.au/f/my-form?recordId={!Contact.Id}
```

Replace `{!Contact.Id}` with the relevant merge field for your Salesforce object.


---

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Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://knowledge.maica.com.au/maica-knowledge-base/forms/forms-overview/publishing.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.