E-form Responses Summarizer

The E-form Responses Summarizer writes a plain-language summary of what people answered on one E-form, across every record checked ON or the entire search returned if you did not check any. Where the Search Results Summarizer covers the records' own index fields — vendor, amount, status — this one covers what was filled in on the form itself: the answers, the free-text notes, and the questions nobody answered.

Use it when the substance of what you need is inside the forms rather than in the fields on the record. "What are people actually writing in the damage description?" is a question the index fields cannot answer, and reading fifty forms one at a time is the only alternative.

How to access it

Run a search on a Record Type, then choose Summarize E-form Responses from the AI Actions button on the search toolbar.

You need a Record Type search rather than a Global Search, and results on screen. Not every form can be summarized, so the option only appears when one of the forms used by that Record Type is available for it. If you expected the option and do not see it, ask your administrator.

Choosing the form

If more than one form qualifies, the dialog asks which one you want summarized. A summary always covers exactly one form. When only one form qualifies, the dialog skips the question and goes straight to the summary options.

Summary styles

Choose one of:

Overview — what these responses say as a whole: who answered, who did not, and the main breakdowns.
Trends — how answers differ across groupings and across the period covered.
Outliers — what stands out: extreme answers, groups much larger or smaller than the rest, and questions people skipped.
Custom — you provide your own instructions for a tailored summary.

Asking for something specific

Every style has an Anything Specific To Look For? box, not just Custom. This is the box that makes the feature worth using. Scanning many short answers for one thing — "which of these mention water damage", "who reported an injury", "which ones say the work was already started" — is exactly the job that takes an afternoon by hand, and you can ask it alongside an overview rather than instead of one.

Records with no form are counted, not ignored

If your search returns fifty records and only thirty-eight have the form, the summary says so. Which records are missing the form is very often the most useful thing in the whole summary, so it is reported as a finding rather than buried in a footnote.

The same applies within a form: a question that most people left blank is called out. That is different from a missing form, and the summary keeps the two apart — "twelve records have no intake form" and "twelve people skipped the estimate question" mean quite different things.

If a record was filled in more than once, only the most recent submission is counted, so each record counts once. The summary tells you how many earlier submissions were set aside.

Not every field is summarized

A form can be set up to report on only some of its fields rather than all of them. Sensitive answers in particular are often left out, and some fields are reported only as answered or not answered, without the answer itself.

So if a summary does not mention something you expected it to, that is usually why. Ask your administrator if you need a field covered that currently is not.

The result

The summary opens in a dialog showing the style used and the form it covered. You can Copy it, Download PDF to keep or share a copy, or Re-summarize with a different style or a different question. There is no "Save to Record" option, because a summary spanning many records has no single record to save into.

Every summary you run is also listed in My AI Activity, and opening it there brings back the complete narrative along with the same Copy and Download PDF options. There is also an Open Search button that reopens the search the summary was built from in a new tab, so you can go from the summary to the records it describes. Because the summary was saved when it was created, re-opening it costs nothing and uses no tokens — going back to an earlier summary is worth doing rather than running a new one when nothing has changed.

How it runs

The summary runs in the background rather than while you wait on a locked screen. You will see a progress message as it works, and a Cancel button if you change your mind. The result comes back to you when it is ready.

Limits on how many records can be summarized

This summary supports fewer records than the Search Results Summarizer does, because each record contributes a whole form's worth of answers rather than a single row of index values. If your search returns too many, the dialog tells you how many it returned and how many are supported, and asks you to narrow the search. Nothing is charged.

Because the search is re-run at the moment the summary is built, the results reflect what matches right then and which forms you personally have rights to see. Two people summarizing the same saved search can legitimately get different answers if they have access to different records.

TIPS

Narrow the search first. A summary of a focused set is far more useful, and it will quote individual answers rather than only group totals.
Use the Anything Specific To Look For? box even on Overview. A general summary plus a direct answer to your actual question is usually better than either alone.
Outliers is a quick quality check on the forms themselves — it will surface questions people routinely skip, which often means the question needs rewording.
If the summary reports a lot of records without the form, that is worth acting on before drawing conclusions from the ones that do have it.
Download PDF is the easiest way to hand the summary to someone who does not have access to the search.

NOTE ON (AI): Summarizing E-form responses sends the answers on those forms to the AI and consumes tokens. This requires the Send Data to AI setting to be on, and may incur extra fees. Check with your sales rep for more information. Please verify all results, as AI can make mistakes.