monday.com People Column in Forms — Not Supported (And Why)

title: “monday.com People Column in Forms — Not Supported (And Why)” meta_description: “Can’t add People Column to monday.com forms? WorkForms restricts it for security reasons. Learn why People Column isn’t supported in public forms and workarounds that actually work.” keyword: “monday.com people column forms”

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Some column types just don’t work in forms. People Column is one of them.

Can you use People Column in monday.com forms? If you’ve tried adding a People Column to a monday.com WorkForm — or looked for a way to let form submitters assign tasks to specific team members — you’ve discovered that People Columns aren’t supported in public forms. Not in WorkForms, not in most third-party form tools, and not in BoardBridge either.

This isn’t a feature gap we’re avoiding. It’s a structural limitation of how monday.com’s People Column works. Here’s what’s actually happening, why it’s hard to solve, and what workarounds exist.

Why monday.com People Column Isn’t Supported in Forms

Pain Point #27: People Column in forms forces board to restricted access mode when included

monday.com’s official documentation explains the People Column restrictions:

“The People Column question is only for individual person selection and is only available if the form is restricted to account members only.” — WorkForms question types Source

“You will need to change the permission settings within the Administration section of your account to make the People Column question in your form public.” — WorkForms settings and permissions Source

Even if you enable it (via Administration > Customization > Features), monday.com flags a security warning:

“User information, such as names, titles, and photos, may be accessible to external individuals.”

The Technical Reason

People Columns reference internal monday.com user IDs and team IDs. When you assign someone via the People Column, monday.com stores a payload like:

“json { "personsAndTeams": [ {"id": 12345678, "kind": "person"}, {"id": 87654321, "kind": "team"} ] } “

For a public-facing form to populate this column, it would need to:

1. Expose your workspace’s user list to external form submitters (a privacy and security issue)
2. Let external users browse and select from your team members (which reveals org structure, names, roles)
3. Handle team IDs in addition to person IDs (teams are groups of users with their own IDs)

This is why even monday.com doesn’t allow People Columns in public forms by default — it would leak internal user data.

Other Unsupported Column Types in monday.com Forms

People Column isn’t alone. Several monday.com column types don’t work in public forms:

Column Type	Why It’s Not Supported
People	Requires user ID references; leaks internal user data
Dependencies	Requires item-to-item relationship mapping; complex API format
Time Tracking	Tracks logged hours over time; doesn’t fit form submission model
Connect Boards	Requires special {item_ids: [123]} format; cross-board item linking
Mirror	Read-only computed column; pulls data from connected items
Formula	Auto-calculated; can’t be written to
Auto-Number	Generated by monday.com; can’t be manually set

BoardBridge supports 10 field types: text, long text, email, phone, number, date, dropdown, status, checkbox, and location. These are the field types that map cleanly to public-facing form inputs without requiring access to internal workspace data.

What the Community Says

From monday.com community threads:

2020 (5+ years of unresolved requests):

“Connected board columns (and people columns, mirror columns, drop-down columns, country columns etc) are not supported in forms. It is important to be able to support these column types, as currently the forms are pretty useless without being able to support them.” — Community thread: Support for connected board columns in WorkForms

August 2022:

“My organization has a handful of boards that are used by the entire company (>50 people) to submit transportation or supplies requests. We are struggling to make these effective as the majority of our team does not have…” — Forms Supporting People Column

January 2022:

“If you are specifically trying to [add a People column to a form], it only works if all of these three conditions are met: The user needs to have access to that specific board…” — Can a “People” column be inserted in FORMS?

July 2025 (Most Recent):

“I am looking for a solution to be able to assign people to subitem in form is there any way / workaround?” — Workaround to assign people column via subitem in monday form

“The People Column question is not supported for required columns and WorkForms.” — monday.com Support: Required columns

Pattern: This feature request has been open for 5+ years with zero progress. Users trying to build intake forms with People assignments hit this wall constantly. The most common request: “I want clients to select a project manager from a dropdown, and that should populate the People Column.”

It sounds simple. It’s not.

Workarounds That Actually Work for People Column in Forms

Since People Column can’t be populated directly via public forms, here’s how teams handle assignment:

Workaround 1: Dropdown + Automation

Setup:

1. Add a Dropdown column (or Status column) to your board with team member names as options: “Alice”, “Bob”, “Carol”
2. Create a form field that maps to this dropdown
3. Set up a monday.com automation: “When Dropdown changes to Alice, assign Alice to People Column”

Pros:

• Works with any form tool (WorkForms, BoardBridge, JotForm, etc.)
• External users never see internal user IDs
• Clean UX — form shows names as text options

Cons:

• Requires one automation rule per team member (10 team members = 10 automation rules)
• Dropdown list needs manual maintenance when team members change
• Consumes monday.com automation actions (though minimally — 1 action per form submission)

Best for: Small teams (under 10 people) where assignments are common

Workaround 2: Text Field + Manual Assignment

Setup:

1. Add a Text field to the form: “Who should be assigned to this project?”
2. Form submitter types a name or selects from a dropdown
3. Someone on your team manually assigns the person via the People Column after reviewing submissions

Pros:

• Zero automation needed
• Works for any team size
• Allows submitters to write notes (“Assign to Alice if available, otherwise Bob”)

Cons:

• Not automated — requires manual follow-up
• Slower — assignments don’t happen instantly

Best for: Low-volume intake (under 10 submissions/week) or cases where assignment needs judgment

Workaround 3: Email Field + People Column Automation (monday.com Only)

Setup:

1. Add an Email field to the form
2. Form submitter enters the assignee’s email address
3. Use a monday.com automation: “When Email column changes, assign the person with that email to People Column”

Limitation: This only works if monday.com can match the email to a workspace user. External emails (clients, vendors) won’t map.

Best for: Internal forms where all assignees are monday.com users

Workaround 4: Pre-Assign on Board, Update Via Form

Setup:

1. Manually assign team members to items before sending the form link
2. Send a form that updates other columns (status, notes, dates) but leaves the People Column untouched
3. BoardBridge’s “protect existing data” toggle ensures the People Column isn’t overwritten by later form submissions

Use case: Client intake where your team pre-assigns a project manager internally, then sends the client a form to fill in project details. The assignment stays intact.

Best for: Update-existing-item workflows where assignment happens before the form is sent

Need help setting up monday.com workflow customization with automated People Column assignment? TaskRhino offers implementation support.

Why Third-Party Apps Don’t Solve This Either

SuperForm — monday.com’s most popular form app with 10,222 installs — also does not support People Column in public forms. It supports Connect Boards, Mirror, Formula, Dependencies, and other advanced column types, but People Column is excluded for the same security reasons.

From SuperForm’s feature list:

“Supports Connect Boards, Mirror, Formula, Subitems, Dependencies, Tags, Hour, WorldClock, Week, and Item ID column types”

Notice what’s missing: People Column.

Fillout and JotForm also don’t offer native People Column mapping in their monday.com integrations. The security and API complexity make it a no-go for public-facing forms.

When monday.com People Column Actually Works in Forms

There’s one exception: internal forms restricted to workspace members.

If you configure a form to require monday.com login (restricting access to your workspace), you could theoretically let users select themselves or their teammates from the People Column. monday.com WorkForms allows this when you enable the People Column feature and restrict form access to account members only.

But this defeats the purpose of public-facing forms — clients, vendors, and external contractors can’t access workspace-restricted forms.

What BoardBridge Doesn’t Do (And Won’t Pretend To)

BoardBridge does not support People Column, Dependencies, or Time Tracking columns in forms. We’re transparent about this because:

1. Security matters. Exposing user IDs to external form submitters isn’t something we’re willing to do.
2. Workarounds exist that are often better UX anyway (dropdowns with readable names vs. user ID lookups).
3. API complexity. Supporting these column types would require handling team structures, user permissions, and constantly shifting user IDs — fragile and unreliable.

We’d rather be honest about what we don’t support than ship a half-broken feature.

What BoardBridge Does Support

While we can’t handle People Column, BoardBridge does offer several capabilities WorkForms doesn’t:

• Update existing items (not just create new ones) — the #1 requested WorkForms feature for 6+ years
• Conditional logic (AND/OR operators, 5 comparison types) on any monday.com plan — Enterprise-only in WorkForms
• Dual-board mapping — one form writes to two boards simultaneously
• Rich text HTML emails with CC/BCC groups — not possible in monday.com email automations
• Custom SMTP sender — emails come from your domain, not noreply@monday.com
• 10 field types including file upload, location, and long text

For the column types we support, we support them fully — with pre-fill, conditional logic, overwrite protection, and cross-board mapping.

Common Questions

Q: Can People Column be added to monday.com forms? A: Only for forms restricted to account members (workspace users only). For public forms, People Column is not supported — it would expose internal user IDs and team structure to external submitters. Use Dropdown + automation as a workaround.

Q: Will People Column support ever be added to BoardBridge? A: Unlikely. The security trade-offs (exposing user data to external submitters) aren’t worth it. Dropdown + automation is a safer, more maintainable approach.

Q: Can I use People Column if I restrict the form to workspace members? A: In theory, yes — but BoardBridge is designed for public-facing forms that update items. Restricting forms to workspace members defeats the purpose. If your use case is internal-only forms, monday.com WorkForms may be a better fit.

Q: What about Connect Boards column in forms? A: Also not supported, for similar reasons. Connect Boards requires item ID references from other boards, which creates complex cross-board dependencies. It’s possible to build, but the UX is poor (users would need to know item IDs or search across boards). Better to use Dropdown or Status columns with readable labels. See monday.com Connect Boards and Mirror Columns for details.

Q: Can BoardBridge pre-fill a People Column’s existing value into a form field? A: No. Since we don’t support People Column as a writable field type, we also don’t read it for pre-fill. If you need to show “currently assigned to Alice”, use a Text or Status column that mirrors the assignment.

Q: Why does SuperForm support so many advanced column types but not People? A: SuperForm has the advantage of running inside the monday.com workspace with app-level permissions. Even then, they avoid People Column for public forms. The column types SuperForm supports (Connect Boards, Mirror, Formula) are read-only or reference-based — they don’t expose user identity data.

Q: Is there a way to bulk-assign people after form submissions? A: Yes. Collect submissions as items on your board, then use monday.com’s built-in bulk actions to assign people to multiple items at once. Or set up an automation: “When Status changes to ‘Ready for Assignment’, assign to [Person]”.

Q: Can I use email addresses to auto-assign people? A: Only if the email matches a workspace user’s monday.com account email. External emails (clients, vendors) won’t map to People Column. This is a monday.com platform limitation, not specific to forms.

Q: Can you assign people in WorkForms? A: Only if the form is restricted to account members only (workspace users). Public WorkForms cannot include People Column without compromising security. You can only assign people if they are members or guests in your monday.com account.

Who This Matters To

This limitation affects teams who:

• Need client-facing forms with project manager assignment
• Want vendors or contractors to select an internal point-of-contact via form
• Expect external users to assign tasks to internal team members
• Assumed People Column “just works” like Dropdown or Status columns

If you’re building internal forms (workspace members only), monday.com WorkForms might handle People Column. But for public-facing forms, Dropdown + automation is the standard workaround.

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Need advanced monday.com forms with conditional logic, dual-board mapping, and update-existing-item workflows? BoardBridge by TaskRhino handles what WorkForms can’t — with honest limits on what we don’t support. Book a free 30-minute consultation at https://calendly.com/rp-spaceo/call-with-rakesh-est-timezone