Understanding flows

Key Concepts

Formsort uses a few foundational concepts that work together to help you build, manage, and optimize form flows. Here’s how they connect:

Flow

A flow is a full form experience, like a signup, onboarding, or lead capture journey. Think of it as the container for everything the user sees and interacts with. Each flow lives in the Studio and serves a distinct purpose.

Example:

• signup-flow

• onboarding-flow

Variant

A variant is a version of a flow. Every flow begins with a Main variant, but you can duplicate and modify variants to test different user experiences.

Variants all aim to achieve the same goal but may include different steps, logic, or copy.

Group

Groups are optional, but useful for organizing complex flows. A group is a collection of steps within a variant, helping you logically separate sections of a form.

Groups are not visible to responders—they’re for internal organization only.

Step

A step is a single "page" of your flow. It organizes questions into digestible sections, guiding responders through the form experience.

Steps live inside groups (or directly inside a variant if no groups are used).

A step with a question

Question

Questions are the form fields that collect user input and stores them into variables —like name, email, or file uploads. You can drag-and-drop questions to reorder them, move them across steps, or display them side-by-side.

Example: collect first name and last name in a single row.

Variable

A variable is a reference to the responder's answer for a specific question in your form, used to store and retrieve their responses within Formsort and your external systems. In addition to question variables, other types of variables exist, such as those provided externally, calculated inline, or retrieved through API lookups and system libraries — all of which are automatically saved as part of your form responses, and sent to your data integrations.

Variables have a wide range of configuration options—check out the section Understanding variables below to explore them all in detail.

Responder

A responder is your end user—the person going through your flow and submitting answers. All session data and responses are tied to the responder.

Conditional logic

Conditional logic allows flows to adapt dynamically to responder inputs, enabling a personalized experience without the need to create multiple flows. It can be applied to control the visibility and behavior of questions, steps, groups, and redirects.