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How to generate AI analysis on form submissions without showing it to respondents in Formaloo

Learn how to use Formaloo's AI Analysis field to generate private AI analysis on every submission, stored in the response row and hidden from respondents.

What you'll build

By the end of this guide, you'll have a form with one or more AI Analysis fields that automatically generate AI-powered analysis, like a lead quality score, a sentiment summary, or a risk explanation, the moment someone submits your form. The output is stored in the response row and shows up as its own column in your Responses table, but the submitter never sees it. You'll write the AI prompt using the same answer piping menu you already know from ending pages and email templates, so the analysis reads based on exactly what that person submitted.

The AI Analysis field is available on the Business and Enterprise plans.

When to use this

  • You want to score or summarize a submission for your team, but the ending page is visible to whoever fills out the form, so you can't safely show your internal read on them there

  • You've been using Magic Emails to run an AI prompt on new submissions, but the output never gets stored as row data you can filter, sort, or export

  • You want a quality or risk score sitting next to every lead, application, or support request without exposing that judgment to the person who submitted it

  • You want more than one AI take on the same submission, for example a lead score and a sentiment read and a suggested next action, without duplicating your form

  • Your team currently copies submissions into a separate AI tool to get a read on them, and you'd rather have that analysis appear automatically in the Responses table

Adding the field in the form editor

The AI Analysis field lives in the form's Add field panel like any other field type, but it behaves differently once it's on the canvas: the submitter never fills it in. Instead, it sits quietly in the background and generates its value only after the form is submitted.

1. Open the Add field panel: In your form editor, click Add field and look for AI Analysis. If you're starting from scratch, Magic Create can build the rest of your form's fields first, so you can drop the AI Analysis field in afterward.

2. Add the field to your form: Click AI Analysis to drop it onto the canvas. It arrives admin-only by default, with no visible position on the form respondents will fill out.

3. Write a starting prompt: Open the field's prompt box and write what you want the AI to analyze, for example "Summarize this lead's intent and urgency." You can pipe submitted answers straight into the prompt using the @ menu, the same way you would on an ending page or in an email template. The next section covers writing the full prompt and answer piping in detail.

4. Give it a clear title: Name the field for what it's actually analyzing, for example "Lead quality analysis," "Sentiment summary," or "Suggested next action." This title is what you'll see as the column header in the Responses table, so make it specific.

5. Repeat for each analysis you need: A form can hold multiple AI Analysis fields. Add one for each distinct read you want on the same submission, for example one field scoring lead quality and a separate field summarizing sentiment, rather than trying to fit everything into one prompt.

6. Publish your form: Once your prompts are written, click Publish in the island bar at the top of the editor to make the field live.

Field settings and writing the AI prompt

Each AI Analysis field opens into the same AI box you already use on ending pages and in email templates, so the writing experience is consistent even though the output behaves differently here.

  • Field type, ID, and visibility: the top of the settings sidebar shows the field type and an editable field ID. Unlike other fields, Admin-only is locked on for AI Analysis and can't be turned off. There's no toggle to expose the output on the form itself.

  • The AI prompt box: write the instructions that tell the AI what to analyze, for example "Analyze this submission and summarize the user's intent, urgency, and quality as a potential lead." This is the same prompt editor used on the ending page and in custom email templates, so if you've written an AI prompt in either of those before, this will feel familiar.

  • Answer piping inside the prompt: click the @ menu inside the prompt box to insert any submitted field by reference, instead of typing field names from memory. A prompt like "Based on @company_size, @industry, @budget, and @use_case, decide whether this is a high, medium, or low quality lead. Explain your reasoning in one short paragraph" pulls in the respondent's actual answers at submission time.

  • Where the output shows up: once generated, the AI Analysis output behaves like any other field's data. It appears in your project's data block alongside the rest of the response, downloads with everything else when you export to Excel, syncs over if you've connected the form to Google Sheets, and is included in any webhook payload triggered by that submission.

Visibility: what respondents actually see

This is the part that makes AI Analysis different from every other field type: respondents never see it, and you can't change that.

  • The field does not appear anywhere in the live form. It's not on the last page, it's not on a hidden page, it's simply not part of what a respondent fills out or scrolls past.

  • Because Admin-only is locked on, there's no setting anywhere that exposes the AI Analysis output to the person who submitted the form.

  • The output is accessible to your team based on your existing response access permissions in the workspace, the same permissions that already govern who can see other admin-only fields.

  • Adding an AI Analysis field doesn't change how your ending page behaves. If you're already running an AI prompt there, both can exist on the same form independently.

💡 Want internal fields, like status, assignee, or scores, invisible to the person filling out the form? What are admin-only fields and how they help is the foundational guide to that mechanism, and it's exactly what AI Analysis builds on, just permanently on instead of optional.

How AI Analysis runs after a submission

Every AI Analysis field on a form runs automatically, every time, right after someone submits. There's no manual trigger and, in this version, no way to make only some of them run.

  • The moment a respondent submits, Formaloo creates the response row first, then triggers every AI Analysis field on that form.

  • If a form has more than one AI Analysis field, Formaloo sends all of those AI requests at once instead of working through them one at a time, so you're not waiting on field two because field one is still generating.

  • Each field's output is saved to its own column independently. If one AI Analysis field takes longer or fails, it doesn't hold up or break the others, they still complete and save normally.

  • Because outputs can land at slightly different times, the Responses table updates each column as its result comes in rather than waiting for every AI Analysis field to finish before showing any of them.

Responses table and error states

Each AI Analysis field shows up as its own column in the Responses table, right alongside your regular fields.

  • While generating: if a respondent just submitted and the output isn't ready yet, the cell shows a Generating… state rather than sitting empty with no explanation.

  • If generation fails: the cell shows a Failed to generate state along with an internal error indicator, so you know to investigate rather than assuming the AI simply had nothing to say.

  • Once complete: the cell displays the plain-text output exactly as the AI generated it, ready to read, filter, or export like any other field's data.

💡 Want to see only the submissions that matter right now? How to sort and filter your submissions data covers filtering and sorting on any field in the same Responses table, including AI Analysis columns.

Using AI Analysis output in email templates and PDFs

Because AI Analysis output is stored as real row data with its own field ID, it's fully supported in answer piping wherever piping already works, not just inside the Responses table. Set an ID on the AI Analysis field, then recall that same value anywhere with @field_id.

  • Custom email templates: reference the AI Analysis field's ID in the body of a custom email template using @field_id. Since AI Analysis is always admin-only, use it in an internal notification you send to your own team, not the confirmation email that goes to the respondent.

  • PDF templates: reference the same field ID in the PDF template using @field_id, so an internal review PDF can display your AI Analysis output right next to the raw answers it was generated from, useful for a reviewer packet or an internal case file.

See how to create and send custom email templates and how to create PDF templates to turn responses into documents for the full setup on either.

What you now have

You now have a way to run AI-generated analysis on every submission that stays entirely internal, without touching the meaning of your ending page or relying on Magic Emails that never stored their output as real data. Every response gets its own AI read, or several, sitting right in the Responses table where you can sort, filter, and export it. Your team gets that analysis automatically on every submission, and the person who filled out the form never sees the internal judgment you formed about their answers.

What's next

  • Route submissions based on your AI Analysis output Once you have a lead score or risk read stored on every response, you can use advanced logic to notify the right person or update a status field when that output crosses a threshold you check for manually. → How to add advanced logic to your form

  • Keep your ending page AI output separate from your internal analysis If you're also running an AI prompt on your ending page for the respondent's benefit, it's worth understanding how that box works independently from AI Analysis so the two don't get confused. → How to use answer piping in Formaloo

  • See a full AI-scored workflow end to end For a complete example of AI analysis driving a real workflow, from scoring through routing, this walks through the pattern in detail. → How to build an AI-powered lead qualification system

Ready-to-use templates

Don't build this from scratch, we've already put it together for you. None of our current templates are built specifically around the AI Analysis field, but these are the closest starting points if you're building an AI-scored intake or review workflow.

Learn more how-tos

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