Not every beta should be invite-only. Sometimes you want to open the door, let people raise their hand, and then pick the testers who are the best fit. That is exactly what Applicants is for.
Applicants gives each beta a public application form, a set of rules that triage submissions for you, and a review pipeline where you shortlist, reject, and invite. Below we walk through the whole flow.
In this article
- How Applicants works
- Set up your screening form
- Share your application link
- Auto-triage with rules
- Review and invite from the pipeline
How Applicants works
Applicants is a screening step that sits in front of your tester roster. Instead of inviting people directly, you share a public form, collect submissions, and then promote the right applicants into the beta as testers.
Every applicant moves through a simple lifecycle, and you can see the count for each stage at the top of the pipeline:
- Pending review: submissions waiting on you. This covers brand-new applications as well as any where a rule has suggested a status you have not confirmed yet.
- Shortlisted: an applicant you have approved as a good fit, ready to invite.
- Rejected: an applicant you have set aside.
- Invited: an applicant who has been sent a beta invitation.
- Joined: an applicant who accepted and is now an active tester.
You will find Applicants as its own tab inside a beta, with two views: Setup, where you build and launch the form, and Pipeline, where you review and invite.
Set up your screening form
For a beta that has not started running yet (still in draft or published), a Set up applicants prompt appears right on the beta dashboard, so you can configure it while you are still preparing the beta. It is perfectly fine to start screening later, too: once a beta is running, the dashboard prompt steps aside to keep things uncluttered, and you can begin screening at any time from the beta's options menu (the ••• button), where you will find the same Set up applicants action.
Screening is an optional step, so the first time you land here you will be prompted to Create screening form. From there, a checklist guides you through everything a form needs before it can go live:
- Enabled: when enabled, applicants can submit the form. While disabled, anyone who opens the link sees a closed form.
- Questions: add the questions applicants should answer. You need at least one ready question before you can launch. These are the same question types you already use elsewhere in Stomio.
- Labels: configure beta labels you want to use to segment applicants (for example, by platform, role, or region). Labels make filtering and rules much more powerful later.
- Rules: optionally add suggestion rules that triage submissions automatically (covered below).
- Launched: once at least one question is ready, launch the form to make it publicly reachable.
the screening setup checklist with its Enabled, Questions, Labels, Rules, and Launched steps
You can edit the form, change its thank-you message, and launch it from the form's actions menu at any time.
Share your application link
Your screening form is a public link that does not require applicants to sign in, so it is easy to drop into an email, a community post, or a landing page.
Use the Share link button to copy the public application link instantly. For more options, the form's menu also offers:
- Copy application link: the same public URL, ready to paste anywhere.
- Download QR Code: a QR image of the link, handy for slides, events, or printed material.
As people submit the form, their applications start flowing into the Pipeline tab.
Auto-triage with rules
Rules let Stomio do the first pass of triage for you. Each rule is a set of conditions that, when matched, suggests a status and/or a set of labels for the applicant.
Open Setup, then add a rule under Rules. A rule is made of:
- Conditions: match on a question answer (using operators like equals, contains, exists, greater than, or less than) or on an email domain.
- Suggested status: for example, automatically suggest Shortlisted for strong fits or Rejected for out-of-scope answers.
- Suggested labels: automatically tag matching applicants so they are easy to filter later.
the rule editor showing a condition, a suggested status, and suggested labels
When an applicant matches more than one rule, Stomio combines the outcomes rather than picking a single rule:
- Labels add up. All suggested labels from every matching rule are applied together (de-duplicated), so you never lose a tag because another rule also matched.
- The most cautious status wins. If two rules suggest different statuses, a Rejected suggestion takes priority over Shortlisted. This is intentional and independent of the order you created the rules in: a specific "if this answer, reject" rule will always override a broad "shortlist everyone" rule, so a poor fit is never auto-shortlisted by accident. These are still only suggestions, so you have the final say in the pipeline.
Rule-driven suggestions show up as dashed chips in the pipeline, while choices you have confirmed appear as solid chips. This keeps the distinction clear: a suggestion is something Stomio recommends based on your defined rules, and approving it makes it yours. You stay in control, and nothing is invited automatically.
Review and invite from the pipeline
Open the Pipeline tab to work through your applicants. The status tiles across the top double as filters: click Pending review, Shortlisted, Rejected, Invited, or Joined to narrow the list to that stage.
Each applicant row shows their answers so you can decide quickly. Use the column picker to show or hide individual answer columns and lay the grid out the way your team triages.
the applicants pipeline with status tiles and the per-applicant review grid
From here you can:
- Approve as shortlisted or Reject an applicant, either one at a time or in bulk by selecting multiple rows.
- Invite the applicants you want. You can invite a single applicant directly from their row, or select several and use Invite ready to send invitations in bulk. Invited applicants move to the Invited stage, and once they accept, they appear as Joined and become testers in your beta.
That is the full loop: open the form, let rules pre-sort submissions, review what comes in, and invite the best fits. Because screening is optional, you can use as much or as little of it as you need, from a quick open call to a fully rules-driven intake funnel.