Add a custom module and name it after the call. Its own entry creation flow is the application form, so the questions become the entry's fields — there is no separate form to build, link or keep in sync. Every submission arrives as an entry you can filter, sort, export and connect to the rest of the platform. Where a call has distinct categories, giving each its own module keeps every form short.

Not around your own org chart. Take the criteria the reviewers actually score against, and make each one its own field, in the order it will be assessed. Applications then arrive already in the shape of the decision, and nobody has to hunt through a long free-text description for the answer to the third criterion.

Two required confirmations, deliberately kept apart: the terms of participation as the first section after the title, and the privacy notice as the last. Each is its own field, each is stored on the entry, and each is provable afterwards — which a tick-box buried in a form footer is not.

Anything that decides whether an application qualifies at all should be a choice rather than a sentence. Size, stage, location, sector — offer the bands or the list the rules actually test against, so the answer can be filtered and counted instead of read and interpreted. One short question on how the applicant heard about the call is worth adding too: the cheapest marketing attribution you will ever collect.

A yes/no question can open a whole follow-up block and keep it hidden otherwise. Partners, consortium members, earlier applications, funding already received — each only needs to be asked of the applicants it applies to. The form stays short for the simple cases and goes deep for the complex ones, without you maintaining two versions of it.

Pitch decks, supporting documents, photos — each as its own upload field, images with a caption field beside them. They sit on the application, where the reviewers already are, instead of in a mailbox or on a drive somebody has to be granted access to. Ask for press material at application time, while the applicant is still motivated, rather than chasing it after the decision.

Draft mode lets applicants save and come back until the deadline, which is what people expect of a serious process and what stops half-finished submissions. Then tell them: the Innovationspreis success page states the deadline and promises the application stays editable until then. The setting and the sentence belong together — one without the other is either an undocumented feature or an empty promise.

The Innovationspreis page states the deadline, explains that a jury reviews everything before anyone hears back, gives an address for questions, and says plainly that no confirmation email will follow. One well-written screen removes most of the "did it arrive?" traffic that trails every open call.

If you would rather send a mail as well, an AI agent can do it on submission — but write the success page first, because that is the moment the applicant is actually paying attention.

Add a section only the reviewing team can see, holding a status field and whatever else the decision needs, and restrict it by role — read for the people who assess, write for the people who decide. The applications never leave the platform, and the pipeline stays visible without a spreadsheet running alongside it.