Using Google Forms actions in action flows


Before you can include external actions in your action flows, you must connect the action builder to the external system.


What's my plan?







All Suites

Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus










Support

Team, Professional, or Enterprise







Summary: ◀▼
You can connect action flows to Google Forms to automate workflows involving form lookups and response searches. Use a dedicated service account for connections and authorize necessary scopes. Available actions include looking up forms by ID or name and searching survey responses with filters. This integration helps streamline collaboration and data retrieval from Google Forms within your support processes.




By connecting the action builder to external systems, such as Google Forms,
admins can integrate Zendesk with external systems in automated workflows, improving
collaboration and maintaining a seamless experience across multiple platforms.
Note: The steps associated with external systems in action flows are
referred to collectively as external actions.

This article contains the following topics:
Connecting Google Forms to action builder
Using Google Forms actions in action flows




Connecting Google Forms to action builder

Before you can include external actions in your action flows, you must connect the
action builder to the external system.
When connecting to external systems for use in action flows, the following best practices are recommended:
All external actions performed by an action flow are attributed to the user who connected the
external system. Therefore, it's a best practice to use a dedicated service
account rather than personal credentials when connecting to each external
system.
All integrations request access to necessary scopes. However, it's important that you review and validate the scopes before authorizing the connection to the external system.
When managing credentials for API key-based tools, such as OpenAI, it's best to store keys in a secure vault or credential manager.



To connect action builder to Google Forms
In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Actions > Action
flows.

Create or edit an action flow.
Open the step sidebar.
Under External actions, click Google Forms.
Click Connect.
Follow Google Form's prompts to authenticate and complete the
connection. The forms.body.readonly,
forms.responses.readonly, and
drive scopes must be authorized during the
connection process.

Note: All external actions
performed by an action flow are attributed to the user who connected the
external system. Therefore, it is a best practice to use a dedicated
service account rather than personal credentials when connecting to each
external system.



After you've connected to the system, you'll see an indicator that it's connected and
details about the instance you're connected to, as well as the actions available for
Google Forms.



Using Google Forms actions in action flows

Google Forms action steps can be used to look up forms and search for survey
responses.
The following Google Forms actions are available:
Lookup form
Search responses




Looking up forms

Use the Lookup form action to look up forms.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Form ID or Form
name (at least one is required)


Output
Form details








Searching for responses

Use the Search responses action to search for responses on the survey.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Form ID Optional:
Response since, Response
count, Page
token



Output
Response details as an array of objects. You can use the
“Custom code” node to parse and extract information from the
response.








{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "TechArticle",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10558742987162-Using-Google-Forms-actions-in-action-flows",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10558742987162-Using-Google-Forms-actions-in-action-flows",
"headline": "Using Google Forms actions in action flows",
"description": "You can connect an action builder to Google Forms to include external actions in automated workflows, enabling form lookup and response search within action flows after proper authentication and scope authorization.",
"articleSection": "Extending Zendesk",
"datePublished": "2026-04-16T16:43:22+00:00",
"dateModified": "2026-04-23T15:56:28.736320+00:00",
"inLanguage": "en-US",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10558742987162-Using-Google-Forms-actions-in-action-flows"
},
"author": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Zendesk",
"url": "https://www.zendesk.com"
},
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Zendesk"
},
"isPartOf": {
"@type": "WebSite",
"name": "Zendesk Help",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us"
},
"about": {
"@type": "SoftwareApplication",
"name": "Zendesk"
}
}
//
const ai_summary_style = document.createElement('style');
ai_summary_style.innerHTML = `#styled-article-body{padding:0 0 0}#article-body #docs-ai-summary{background-color:#f3f3f3;border:1px solid #d3d3d3;padding:10px 10px 6px;margin-bottom:16px}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-toggle{font-size:.9em;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:4px;cursor:pointer;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-toggle #up-triangle{margin-left:auto;padding-right:10px;display:none}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-toggle #down-triangle{margin-left:auto;padding-right:10px}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-content{font-size:.9em;padding-left:25px;padding-right:25px;margin-bottom:12px}`;
document.head.appendChild(ai_summary_style);

const toggleAISummary = () => {
const summary = document.getElementById("docs-ai-summary-content");
const upTriangle = document.getElementById("up-triangle");
const downTriangle = document.getElementById("down-triangle");
if (summary.style.display === "none") {
summary.style.display = "block";
upTriangle.style.display = "none";
downTriangle.style.display = "inline";
} else {
summary.style.display = "none";
upTriangle.style.display = "inline";
downTriangle.style.display = "none";
}
};

document.getElementById("docs-ai-summary-toggle").addEventListener("click", toggleAISummary);
//

