Platform
People Outside the Pod
Contacts, web chat visitors and forms: how a pod answers people who are not its members, and what they can reach.
Three kinds of people
Members belong to the pod and act as themselves. Contacts are people the pod knows but does not let in — a customer on WhatsApp, a lead who confirmed their email — identified by the channel they wrote from. Anonymous visitors chat on a website or fill in a form without saying who they are. Contacts and visitors never sign in to Lemma and are never billed as seats; what they cost comes out of the organization's budget, under a monthly contacts cap an admin sets.
What each can reach
| Who | Reads | Writes |
|---|---|---|
| Member | What their role allows | What their role allows |
| Contact | What the pod made Public, and their own rows of contact-owned tables | Rows of tables opened to contacts or to anyone; functions opened to contacts |
| Visitor | What the pod made Public | Rows of tables opened to anyone |
Where they reach the pod
- The pod's own bot, privately: set the bot to answer members only (the default), its contacts, or anyone. A stranger answered under "anyone" becomes a contact with their first message.
- Email: only mail its sender's domain vouched for is answered; anything else waits for a member.
- Web chat: a script tag with a public key, or a link to a page Lemma hosts. A visitor becomes a contact by confirming an email code, or when your own site signs them in with the widget's secret.
- Forms: any page that adds a row to a table opened to people outside — see below.
Collect responses with a form
A form is not a separate object. It is a table opened to people outside, and any page that adds its rows.
- Open the table: in the table, choose Collect responses, pick who can answer — anyone, or only people who confirm their email — and which columns they fill in. Columns the table needs stay open.
- Share the link Lemma hosts, paste the script tag into a website, or use your own HTML form marked with data-lemma-table. A column's description is the question people see.
- For a design of your own, ask the pod's agent to build a form app; it uses the lemma-form skill.
- Each answer adds one row, as the member who opened the table, with only the open columns. Workflows and schedules that react to new rows react to answers.
The chat beside every form
A form page carries the pod's chat. Visitors can ask questions, answered from what the pod made Public, or tell it their details and have the form filled in for them. It fills fields only; the person checks them and presses Send.
Add a row from your own page
<script src="https://api.lemma.work/public/web/widget.js" data-lemma-key="pk_..." async></script>
<script>
Lemma.addRow("signups", { full_name: "Ana Ruiz", email: "ana@example.com" })
.then(() => showThanks())
.catch((error) => showError(error.message));
</script>
What a page can never do
Write a column the table did not open, read rows back, or name somebody else as the sender. On a contact-owned table the sender's contact is attached by Lemma. Never ask for passwords or card numbers in a form, and never put a widget's signing secret in a page.