How to build a confidential workplace harassment and retaliation investigation tracker with AI-flagged case severity in Formaloo

A restricted-access complaint intake that lets an employee report harassment or retaliation either anonymously or with their name attached. The moment a report comes in, an AI Analysis field reads the incident description and flags the case's severity, so your HR and Legal team open every case already knowing where it stands instead of triaging by hand. From there, the case moves through a Kanban investigation pipeline with automated status emails, generates a locked-down internal case file PDF, and rolls up into an AI-generated pattern report that flags repeat respondents and complaint clusters for leadership.

This is the intake form an employee fills out when they need to report harassment or retaliation. It captures what happened, who's involved, and what outcome they're hoping for, while giving them the choice to stay anonymous. It also feeds everything the AI severity read needs to work. The fastest way to build it is with Magic Create, Formaloo's AI form builder: describe the form in plain text and it generates the fields for you.

1. Open Magic Create: From your Formaloo homepage, click Magic Create.

2. Describe the form: Paste a prompt describing a confidential harassment and retaliation complaint form, covering the type of concern being reported, whether the reporter wants to stay anonymous, the reporter's name/email/department (only relevant if they're identified), who the complaint is about and that person's department and working relationship to the reporter, when the most recent incident happened and whether it's ongoing, a detailed description of the incident, any witnesses, whether the reporter has experienced retaliation, a place to describe that retaliation, an upload for supporting evidence, the outcome the reporter is hoping for, consent to be contacted for follow-up, and an acknowledgment that the report will be handled confidentially. Also describe the admin-only fields: a case status dropdown, a case severity dropdown, an assignee field for the investigator, a repeat-pattern flag, a field for related case references, investigation notes, an interview log, a final decision dropdown, corrective action taken, a case closed date, and an AI Analysis field that reads the incident and flags severity.

3. Click Create: Formaloo builds the full form for you.

4. Verify your fields: Your form should look like this. Magic Create will have generated most of it. Verify each field and field ID matches exactly.

5. Set up the AI severity analysis field: Open the AI Analysis field's settings and point it at the fields it should read: complaint_category, incident_description, is_ongoing, retaliation_experienced, retaliation_description, and relationship_to_respondent. Give it a prompt asking it to classify the case's severity as Low, Medium, High, or Critical, based on factors like any physical safety risk, whether the behavior is ongoing, the power difference between the reporter and respondent, and any retaliation described, and to explain its reasoning in 2 to 3 sentences. Turn on Allow AI to update records and select case_severity as the field it's allowed to write to, so the dropdown updates automatically alongside the written analysis. Set it to run when the form is submitted. The field stays admin-only by default, hidden from the reporter, and writes its output directly onto the submission row.

6. Publish your form.

This is what keeps the form from asking every reporter the same questions regardless of their situation. Contact fields only show up if the reporter chooses to be identified, the retaliation detail only appears if they say they've experienced it, and evidence becomes required only when they're asking for formal discipline.

1. Open Advanced logic: In your form editor, open the Advanced logic panel on the right side of the screen and go to the Logic tab.

2. Open Magic Logic: Click Magic Logic in the top right corner.

3. Describe your rules: Paste a plain-text prompt describing all three rules at once: show "What's your full name?", "What's your work email address?", "What department do you work in?", and "Do you consent to being contacted for follow-up during the investigation?" only when "Would you like to file this report anonymously?" is "No, include my name and contact information," hidden by default; show "Describe the retaliation you experienced" only when "Have you experienced retaliation for raising this or a related concern?" is Yes, hidden by default; and require "Do you have any supporting documents, screenshots, or messages?" only when "What outcome are you hoping for?" is Formal disciplinary action, optional by default.

4. Generate and review: Click Generate Rules. Review each rule AI previews, and approve, redo, or cancel as needed.

5. Save your logic: Once approved, make any manual adjustments, then click Save in the top right corner.

Note: Anonymous reports simply have no value in reporter_email, since that field never shows for them. Keep that in mind in Part 4, since any notification tied to that field only ever reaches identified reporters.

This workflow needs six emails: a confirmation to the reporter, an internal alert to the investigations team, an urgent internal alert for anything the AI flags as Critical, and three status updates as a case moves through investigation, resolution, and closure. Build all six as custom templates first, then wire up the triggers in the next Part.

1. Open Custom Email Templates: Click your profile icon, go to Apps and Integrations, and find Custom Email Templates.

2. Add a new template: Click Add New Template, name it "Report received confirmation," and set the subject to We've received your report (CASE-@rowid).

3. Generate the body with AI: Clear the body field, add an AI block, and paste this prompt: "Write a calm, reassuring confirmation email to @reporter_name letting them know their report has been received and will be reviewed by a member of the HR and Legal investigations team. Reference the case number CASE-@rowid. Reassure them that retaliation for making a good-faith report is prohibited under company policy, and let them know they'll receive updates as the case progresses. Keep it to 3 to 4 short sentences, calm and factual, no promises on timelines. Design it with a white background, a single centered column at max-width 560px, an Inter or system-ui font, a small status badge reading 'Received,' and a muted footer in #999."

4. Repeat for the remaining five templates, using the same steps with these names, subjects, and prompts:

5. Save each template.

With the templates built, the next step is telling Formaloo when each one fires, so a case moves through review, investigation, and closure without anyone manually sending updates.

1. Turn on respondent notifications: In your form editor, open Notify in the right sidebar, then Send email to respondent. Turn on the toggle and select the "Report received confirmation" template. This fires on submission for identified reporters, since @reporter_email is the form's Email field. Anonymous reports leave that field blank, so no confirmation email goes out for them, which is expected.

2. Turn on admin notifications: Go back and turn on Receive email notification, then route it to the "New complaint alert" template so your investigations team's inbox gets notified the moment a report comes in.

Beyond submission, the remaining four emails only need to fire when an admin-only field changes, which calls for conditional logic rather than a static notification.

3. Open the On Update logic tab: In Advanced logic, switch to the rule set that runs when an existing record is updated.

4. Add a rule for AI-flagged severity: When case_severity changes to Critical, send the "Critical severity escalation alert" template to your HR Director's or Legal Counsel's email address. Because this update runs through the same path as a manual edit, the rule fires whether a person or the AI Analysis field set the value, so a Critical case escalates the moment the AI flags it, before anyone has manually opened the case.

5. Add a rule per case status: Add three more rules, one per status: when case_status changes to Investigation in progress, send "Investigation update" to @reporter_email; when it changes to Resolved, send "Case resolved" to @reporter_email; when it changes to Closed, send "Case closed (internal)" to your assigned investigator or a static investigations team address.

6. Save your logic.

Every case needs an internal record that a reviewer can print, archive, or hand to legal counsel, one that includes the AI's severity read alongside the reporter's own submission and everything the investigation adds afterward. This is a self-contained HTML template Formaloo turns into a PDF for every row.

1. Open Custom PDF Template: Click your profile icon, go to Apps and Integrations, and click Custom PDF Template, then Add New Template.

2. Switch to HTML view: Toggle the editor to HTML and paste the code below.

3. Name and save: Give it the name "Confidential case file" and click Save.

The case reference and submission date come straight from Formaloo's own variables, @rowid and @created_at, piped directly into the template text, no extra field required.

4. Attach it to a notification: Since this is an internal record rather than something sent to the reporter, attach it to the "New complaint alert" email so the investigations team receives the case file the moment a report comes in.

Employees need a way to submit a report and, if they chose to be identified, check on it later, without a public sign-up page open to anyone who finds the link.

Here's how the reporter group of pages is laid out:

1. Start your project: Start from Form so your complaint form is already attached, then open the project's Settings (gear icon) and select Activate Portal.

2. Set up the user directory: Click Manage User, open the Setup Wizard, and create a new user directory (this is what lets identified reporters sign up and log in). Configure login, sign-up, and any bot protection you want, then connect the profile to your complaint form. Since this is a workplace-only workflow, limit sign-up to your company's email domain so only employees can create an account.

3. Add the "My report status" page: Add a table page and point it at your complaint form's data, showing only the case status and submission date columns, nothing else. Switch to Edit Mode, click Options, scroll to Manage Access, select the profile field in the dropdown, and toggle on Allow users to view only their data.

Note: Anonymous reporters never sign up to this portal, since there's no email tied to their submission to match a profile against. "My report status" only ever surfaces for identified reporters, and it never shows internal fields like severity, investigator notes, or the AI's analysis, only the status and date they submitted.

Your HR and Legal investigators need their own pipeline, completely separate from what a reporter sees, with a way to spot a respondent who's been named more than once.

Here's how the investigations team group of pages is laid out:

1. Make investigators workspace members: Add your HR and Legal investigators as workspace members, and group them into an "Investigations team" if you use teams.

2. Add the "All cases" Kanban: Add a Kanban page grouped by Case status. Open the page's three-dot menu, click Access, and restrict it to Internal users → Specific teams, selecting your Investigations team.

3. Add "My assigned cases": Add a table page, restrict its page Access to Internal users → Specific teams the same way, then switch to Edit Mode, open Options → Manage Access, select the Assigned investigator field, and toggle on Allow assignees to view only their data. Each investigator now sees only their own assigned cases.

4. Add "New & under review" and "Investigation in progress": Duplicate the pipeline table, filter one by Case status = New or Under review (newest first) and the other by Case status = Investigation in progress or Interviews scheduled (oldest first), same page access restriction as the rest of this group.

5. Add "Repeat respondent check": Add one more table with no filter, grouped and sorted by Respondent name instead of by date, same page access restriction. Since an AI Analysis field only ever reads the submission it's attached to, it can't tell you on its own that a respondent has been named before. This page is how your investigators catch that manually: before opening a new case, they scan this view for the respondent's name, and if a pattern turns up, record it in repeat_pattern_flag and related_case_references on the new case.

6. Add "Resolved & closed": One more table, filtered to Case status = Resolved or Closed, for a historical record of finished cases.

Leadership doesn't need to read every case individually, and they're in a better position than any single investigator to notice patterns across the whole case history. This is where the AI severity read you set up in Part 1 rolls up into something they can actually use.

Here's how the reports group of pages is laid out:

1. Add the "Case overview" page: Add one more table page with no filter, showing every case regardless of status, and restrict its Access to Internal users → Specific teams, selecting your leadership group.

2. Add the "AI case pattern report" page: Add a new reference page and insert an AI Analyze block, pointing it at your complaint form's data.

3. Prompt the report: Ask it to break down cases by severity level and category, flag any respondent named in more than one case description, identify departments with clusters of complaints, and summarize the average time from submission to case closure. Formaloo generates charts and a written summary from your live data, reading across every case on file rather than just the one in front of you, which is what makes it able to surface a pattern a single investigator working case by case might not connect.

A single confidential intake that lets an employee report harassment or retaliation on their own terms, anonymously or not, and gets an AI severity read the moment it's submitted instead of waiting in a queue to be triaged by hand. Investigators work from a Kanban pipeline that emails reporters automatically as a case status changes, a dedicated page to catch a respondent who's been named before, and a locked-down internal PDF for every case that leaves behind a proper audit trail. Leadership gets a live, AI-generated view of severity trends and repeat-respondent clusters across your entire case history, all without anyone building a tracking spreadsheet by hand or exposing a case to more people than it needs to reach.

Don't build this from scratch, we've already put it together for you.