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Publishing freezes the form as it stands. Everything you do afterwards happens on a working copy, and the frozen version stays exactly as it was until you publish again.

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Publish it

1

Finish the questions

Publishing does not check your wording for you, so read the form through in Preview first. See Build a form.
2

Select Publish

The button is in the top right of the builder. On a plan with a published-form allowance, a form that is not published yet shows how many you have used beside it — for example Publish · 9 of 10. A form that is already published does not take another place, so it just says Publish. A confirmation appears — Publish this form the first time, Publish these changes afterwards.
3

Read what it says before you confirm

On a first publish it reads “The form is frozen as version 1 and can start collecting responses.” On a later one, “A new version is frozen and becomes the one respondents see. Responses already collected are unaffected.”If something is unfinished — no title, a question with no wording, a choice question with no options — the confirmation says so and offers to publish anyway: “You can publish anyway, but respondents will see it as it is.”
4

Confirm with Publish

You get a Published confirmation — “This version is now the one respondents see.” The badge beside the form’s name changes to Published, on the builder and on the forms list.
Your latest edit is stored first, so the version that is frozen is the one you can see on screen and never the one from a moment ago. If that last save fails, the publish stops with “Publish stopped — the latest changes could not be saved, so there was nothing safe to publish.” Fix what the save state is complaining about and press Publish again.

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Publish again after an edit

A published form stays editable. Your changes go to the working copy, the published version carries on unchanged, and publishing again freezes a new one. The button tells you which of those you are looking at. On a form that is live and matches what is on screen it reads Published and sits quiet. The moment you change a question — or the form’s title — it becomes Publish changes: your edit is saved, but the people opening your link are still seeing the previous version until you press it. Changes on the Settings and Design tabs don’t turn it on, because those take effect as soon as they save. On a form that has never gone live it reads Publish. You can keep editing straight after you publish — there’s no need to reload the page first. You can press it in any of those states. If nothing has actually changed since last time, no new version is made and you get Already published instead. That is deliberate: a version is a distinct definition of the form, not a record of a button press. What a version holds is the questions. The form’s own settings are not frozen with them — a change on the Settings tab takes effect as soon as it saves, published or not. See Form settings.

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Close and reopen

Open the form’s three-dot menu on the forms list and select Close, or use Close now under Settings → Collection. Either way you are asked to confirm, and the confirmation names what happens — how many invitations are still open, and that anybody part-way through has 30 minutes to finish. Select Close form and a message confirms it — “This form is no longer accepting responses” — and the same menu entry then reads Reopen. Closing or reopening a scheduled form takes it off its schedule. The confirmation says so first, and its button reads Take off schedule and close (or Take off schedule and open). The dates stay filled in but stop applying until you put the form back on a schedule in Settings → Collection. The badge on the card becomes Closed, and hovering it says why. Closing a form frees its place against your plan’s published-form allowance. Reopening it takes a place again, so if you have used your allowance in the meantime, Reopen is refused until you close or archive another form. Anybody who follows a closed form’s link sees your closed message on a page carrying the form’s logo and colour — or, if you set Or send visitors to this page instead under Settings → Confirmation, is taken to that page. See Form settings.

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Fill in a staff-only form

A form set to Staff only under Who can open this form has no public link. Your team fills it in inside ClinikEHR — an audit, a handover, an incident report.
1

Publish it

Publish the form as usual. A draft cannot be filled in.
2

Open it from the forms list

Open the form’s three-dot menu and select Fill in.
3

Answer and submit

Answer the questions and select Submit. Response saved confirms it. Open responses takes you to it, and Fill in another starts a clean form.
Each response is recorded under the name of the person who filled it in. Filling one in needs the Fill in staff forms permission.

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Check it worked

The form is badged Published on the forms list, and on the Free plan the count under the Forms heading has gone up by one. Reopen the builder: the badge beside the name says Published, and the form is still editable.

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If something goes wrong

The Free plan holds 10 published forms at a time that can be opened from a link — set to Anyone with the link or Public. While all 10 places are in use you cannot publish another form, reopen a closed one, or change a published form’s Who can open this form to either of those. Close or Archive a form you have finished with and its place is free straight away. Or see Change your plan.
A Signature question can be built on any plan but cannot be published on the Free plan. Delete it, change it to another type, or upgrade. A form published while you were on a paid plan is not torn down if you downgrade — the block applies the next time you publish.
On the Free plan a published form can collect one file: one File upload question, set to accept a single file. The Questions tab says so above your questions as soon as the form could take more, so you can fix it before you publish. Delete extra file questions or set the one you keep to accept one file, then publish again — or upgrade to collect more. A form published while you were on a paid plan stays published and keeps collecting answers, but from the day your practice moves to Free each response can attach only one file: somebody trying to attach a second is told the form can take one file.
Yes. Each time your plan stops something — publishing past the allowance, a signature question, a file question — your practice’s audit log gets a Plan Limit entry naming which limit it was. It records the limit, never the form’s content.
The last edit could not be saved, so there was nothing safe to freeze. Look at the save state in the top bar and the red banner under the tabs, fix what it names, then publish again.
Publishing needs the Publish and close forms permission, which is separate from being allowed to edit. Ask an owner — see Staff permissions. It is also disabled on an archived form.
The change was to something that is not part of the form’s definition — a star, or a folder. Those are yours and your practice’s, not part of what a respondent sees, so they do not make a new version.
Correct the form and publish again. The new version becomes the live one, and the earlier versions are kept rather than overwritten.