What happens when I add a profile from a new form submission to my database?
Overview
When someone submits a form for the first time, they are not in your database yet. Their submission sits in the Forms module until you do something with it. Adding them to your database turns what they already gave you into a full profile, with no data entry on your side.
Whether that happens by hand or automatically is worth deciding deliberately, because it decides what your database is a list of: everyone who ever filled in a form, or the people who actually completed your process.
1. What does adding a profile actually do?
It creates a profile in your database from the information already on the submission. Name, email, phone number and every other profile field they filled in carry across, so there is nothing to retype.
The action is only offered when no existing profile in your database has the same email address. If someone already has a profile, there is nothing to create, and you would be looking at a duplicate instead.
2. How do I tell whether someone is in my database yet?
The Database status column on the form's submissions view. It tells you, for each submission, whether that person is a profile in your database or still only a form response.
If this is the first form they have ever submitted, and Auto-add to database is off in the form's automations, they will read as not in your database. That is the default, and for most organizations it is the right one. Question 6 covers why.
3. Is the person notified when I add them?
No. Adding a profile to your database is silent. Nothing is sent, and they see no change on their end.
They are only notified if you assign them to a sequence or an opportunity, which you can do in the same step. The notification follows the thing that actually asks something of them, not the filing.
4. Can I do more than just add them?
Yes. The same popup lets you pre-assign profile tags, sequences, opportunities and shifts as you add the profile, so someone can go from a submission to enrolled in onboarding in a single action.
Profile tags are the one worth reaching for. Anything on the submission you will want to search or report on later, and that has no field of its own, can become a tag right here. The profile then arrives in your database already carrying it, instead of you coming back to tag it once you have forgotten why it mattered.
5. Can Vome add people to my database automatically?
Yes. Auto-add to database is a setting in the form's Settings and automations. With it on, anyone who submits the form becomes a profile in your database straight away, without you touching it.
The same setting also exists on sequences, applied when someone is marked as finished. Where you put it is the decision in question 6.
6. Should I turn Auto-add to database on?
Only if you have no onboarding process.
If you run an onboarding sequence, leave Auto-add to database off on the form and turn it on at the end of the sequence instead. Applicants then stay in the funnel until they have actually finished onboarding, and they arrive in your database on the day they are ready to work with you.
If you have no screening or onboarding process at all, the form is the right place for it, and turning it on saves you a step you would otherwise repeat on every single submission.
Either way, you can still add any profile by hand whenever you like. Turning the automation off does not take the manual action away.
Best practices
- Leave Auto-add to database off on your application form if you screen people, and switch it on at the end of the onboarding sequence.
- Work your queue from the Database status column rather than guessing who has been filed already.
- Assign the onboarding sequence in the same action as adding the profile, so the person is notified once and lands where you want them.
- Tag as you add. A tag you meant to apply later is a tag that does not get applied.