One of the lesser-known but incredibly powerful features in FormAssembly is real-time data transformation. This behind-the-scenes magic helps you anonymize and prep your data on the fly, making it ready for analysis without compromising privacy or data integrity. In today’s data-driven world, capturing insights quickly and securely is key, especially when working with sensitive or complex data sets.
Read on for an overview of real-time data transformation, or watch the clip below from our annual virtual user conference, FormFest 2025, to take a closer look at how this works.
What Is Real-Time Data Transformation?
Simply put, real-time data transformation lets you manipulate form data as it flows through your workflow. Instead of sending raw, unfiltered data straight into your systems, you can clean it up, categorize it, or anonymize it instantly. This makes downstream reporting and analysis much easier and safer.
A Practical Example: Sentiment Analysis Workflow
Let’s say you’re collecting customer feedback through a sentiment analysis form. While Salesforce captures all the detailed data, you want to prepare a clean, anonymized version for analysis in Google Sheets.
Here’s how you can do it with FormAssembly’s workflow native Google Sheets connector:
- Map form fields to spreadsheet columns: Each piece of feedback gets mapped to a specific column.
- Use formulas for binary flags: Create columns that automatically mark feedback types – like support, sales, or product – with 1s and 0s, making it easy to run correlation analyses.
- Anonymize data: Instead of names or emails, you can push a workflow response ID, keeping personal info private while maintaining a link for filtering or dashboard building.
This method ensures your analysis-ready data is clean, anonymized, and well-organized – perfect for building visual dashboards and spotting meaningful patterns.
Pro Tip: Using the Form Connector for Basic Needs
If you’re not ready to dive into workflow connectors, you can still anonymize data with FormAssembly’s form-level Google Sheets connector. While it’s less customizable, a smart way to use it is by protecting the raw data tab and running your analysis in a separate, secure sheet. This setup keeps sensitive information safe while giving your team clean data to work with.
Beyond Privacy: Enriching and Categorizing Your Data
Real-time data transformation doesn’t just protect privacy; it also helps you enrich data by categorizing it or triggering other tools in your workflow. Whether you’re preprocessing data for deeper insights or simply streamlining what information gets passed along, this feature opens up lots of possibilities.
Final Thoughts
Not every piece of data you collect needs to stick around forever. Sometimes you only need essential info for a specific purpose, like event catering orders or quick analysis. Using the workflow native Google Sheets connector to send only what you need reduces clutter, streamlines your data, and delivers focused insights to the right people.
