For anyone about to hand a form to partners who wants to see it work first.A form is the only part of a partner program where a silent failure is invisible until a partner is already annoyed. It renders fine, it accepts a submission, and the record writes nowhere because one field is not mapped or a CRM validation rule rejected the value. The fix is five minutes of dry run, once, before anyone external sees it. This guide is that dry run, including the cleanup, so the test does not leave a fake deal in your pipeline.
What you’ll achieve
One test submission taken all the way through: the form as a partner sees it, the submission in your inbox, the record in your CRM with the right owner and the right partner attributed, the notifications that fired, every outcome exercised, and both the test submission and its CRM record removed afterwards.Before you start
1
Finish the form and its automation
Test after the CRM automation is configured, not before.
A form with no automation will pass this test and still be useless.
See Build and publish a form and Connect a form to your CRM.
2
Pick a partner to test as
Use an internal partner record, or a real partner you have an actual relationship with, not your largest one.
You are about to create and delete a record attributed to them.
See Create a partner manually.
Steps
Submit it the way a partner will
1
Take the partner link, not the general link
Go to Forms, open the form and choose Share form.
On the Link tab there are two links, and the difference matters for the test.
- General link is anonymous. Nobody is attributed, and the submitter has to type their own details.
- Partner link is scoped to one partner you select. The submission arrives already attributed to them, and the standard submitter fields resolve their contact and company on their own.
2
Open it in a fresh browser session
Open the link in a private window or a different browser, so you see it as an outside visitor rather than as a signed-in admin.
Check the obvious things while you are there: does the form explain itself, is the field count something a partner will actually finish, and does every required field deserve to be required.
A field you cannot justify out loud is a field to cut, since every one of them costs you submissions.
3
Submit realistic values, then submit bad ones
Fill it as a partner would and submit.
Then submit a second time on purpose badly: leave a conditionally required field blank, put a value in a picklist-backed field that is not one of your CRM’s options, and use a date or amount format your CRM is fussy about.You are looking for two behaviours.
A validation error the partner can act on is the good outcome.
A submission that lands in Error means it reached Introw but your CRM refused to write it, which is almost always a required property or a validation rule on the object.
Better to find that now than on a partner’s first registration.
Follow it all the way through
1
Confirm it landed with the status you expect
Go to Submissions and find it.
Check the status is the one your configuration implies: Pending if you set an approval gate, Auto accepted if you did not, or Accepted once you approve it.
Check the partner column names your test partner rather than being empty, since an unattributed submission cannot be bulk accepted and will not credit anyone.
2
Open the record in your CRM
This is the step people skip and the one that catches real problems.
Open the record the submission created and check it field by field:
- Every field the partner filled arrived, in the right property, in a usable format.
- The record is on the object and pipeline you intended, at the stage you intended.
- The owner is the person who should be working it, not whoever the CRM defaults to.
- The name follows your convention rather than reading as an ID.
- The partner is attributed by whichever method you configured, so reporting and commissions will resolve.
3
Check who got told
A form nobody is alerted about is a form that waits.
Confirm the on-submit alert reached your team, including the partnership-manager fallback if no team member could be resolved, and that it arrived on the channel you expect rather than only by email.
See Configure the chat integration.
Exercise every outcome
1
Return it and check the partner's side
Return the test submission with a specific comment, then reopen the form as the partner.
Their previous answers should be prefilled and your comment shown with them, and their edit should update the same submission rather than creating a second one.
This is the outcome worth rehearsing, because a returned submission with a vague comment is the one that never comes back.
2
Decline it, then reopen it
Decline it and confirm the partner receives your decline message rather than a bare status change.
Then use Reopen at the top of the declined submission and confirm it returns to Pending and re-enters the approval gate from the first step.
3
Accept it last
Accept it only when you are done, because accepting is the one outcome you cannot undo.
It runs the CRM automations and tells the partner yes.
See Choose how submissions get approved.
Clean up properly
1
Delete the test submission
Select it in the inbox and choose Delete.
This permanently removes the submission and tells no partner anything, which is exactly what you want for a test.
It is not a decline, and it cannot be undone.
2
Delete the CRM record separately
Deleting the submission does not delete the record it created in your CRM.
That record is real, it is in someone’s pipeline, and it will show up in a forecast if you leave it.
Delete it in your CRM as a second, deliberate step.
Verify it worked
You have seen the form render as an outsider, one submission arrive attributed to the right partner, one clean record in your CRM with the right owner and name, an alert reach your team, and a return arrive back with the partner’s prior answers intact. Nothing is left in the inbox and nothing is left in the pipeline. Do this again after any change to the form’s fields or its CRM automation. It is the cheapest test in the product and the only one that covers the whole path.Related
Build and publish a form
The build this test verifies.
Connect a form to your CRM
The mapping most test failures come back to.
Choose how submissions get approved
What each outcome does to the partner.
Implementation reference
Full configuration options.