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

Some column types just don’t work in public 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 available on public WorkForms by default, and BoardBridge doesn’t support them 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 Public Forms

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

“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

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 who fill out these forms.”

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:

{ "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:

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

What Has Changed Since 2020

Community requests from 2020 listed People, Dropdown, Country and Connect Boards columns as unsupported in forms. That is dated: all four are now WorkForms question types, though People needs a members-only form and Connect Boards needs sign-in (monday.com Help Center). What each plan adds to forms is in our form features by plan breakdown, and our guide to monday.com Enterprise form features without an Enterprise plan covers the add-ons.

One gap remains in monday.com’s own docs: “The People Column question is not supported for required columns and WorkForms.” (monday.com Help Center)

The request that stays open is People in public forms. A typical version: let clients pick a project manager from a dropdown and have that fill 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:

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

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 an automation or app that matches the email to an account user and fills the People column (monday.com’s help centre doesn’t document a built-in recipe for this, so check what your account offers)

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:

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.

What Third-Party Apps Offer

SuperForm lists the People column among the columns it supports that monday.com forms don’t, along with Connect Boards, Subitems, Datetime, Tag, WorldClock and Hour; it also works with Formula, Mirror, Item ID and Dependency columns (Spot-nik). Its page doesn’t say how People questions behave on public forms, so test that before you rely on it.

We haven’t found People Column mapping documented for Fillout or JotForm’s monday.com integrations. See our comparison of monday.com form alternatives.

When monday.com People Column Actually Works in Forms

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

If you restrict a WorkForm to account members, you can add a People question so signed-in users pick themselves or a teammate. On a private or shareable board the list shows that board’s members; on a main board it shows every account member.

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 account changes — 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)
• Conditional logic (AND/OR operators, 5 comparison types) on any monday.com plan — WorkForms supports OR rules only
• Dual-board mapping — one form writes to a primary and one secondary board
• Rich text HTML emails with CC/BCC groups
• Custom sender — emails come from your domain (monday.com’s Send an email action can also send through a connected Gmail or Outlook account, per monday.com Help Center)
• Field types including text, email, phone, number, date, dropdown and location

For the column types we support, we support them fully — with pre-fill, conditional logic, overwrite protection, and dual-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: BoardBridge doesn’t support it. WorkForms offers a Connect Boards question, but only with Require login and only for submitters who can access the connected board. 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.

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: 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’s native forms 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.

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