Describe how your team receives new work. Makeform turns that brief into a structured project intake form for goals, scope, stakeholders, budget, timing, dependencies, assets, and approval criteria—so every request arrives ready for a useful first review.
Unlimited free forms and responses·
Editable before publishing·
Conditional questions for different project types·
Route project requests to Slack, Google Sheets, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a complete prompt, tailor it to your workflow, or send it to the Makeform builder. The structure shown here is an example, not a live AI result.
Prompt ready4 formats
Audience
Department leads requesting cross-functional work
Format
Triage form with impact and priority context
Prompt size
471 chars
Brief qualitySends to builder
Example form structure
Triage form with impact and priority context
Prompt exampleEditable in builder
Requester, department, and sponsor
Short answerFirst ask
2
What problem should this project solve?
Long answer
3
Who is affected or must approve?
Short answer
4
Target date and reason
Date & time
5
What would make this complete?
Long answer
Suggested routing tags
Suggested
Needs triage
Ready to scope
Waiting on details
Ask requesters to separate the desired outcome from the proposed solution. That distinction helps reviewers find a simpler way to solve the underlying problem.
Step 1
Request
problem, outcome, scope, and owner
Step 2
Triage
completeness, fit, urgency, and dependencies
Step 3
Scope
deliverables, effort, budget, and sequence
Step 4
Decide
approve, defer, redirect, or request details
Why structured intake matters
A project request should arrive with decision context.
A message that says “we need a new landing page” starts a chain of interviews. A project intake form captures the outcome, constraints, stakeholders, evidence, and timing behind the request before planning begins.
Comparable requests
Every requester answers the same core questions about impact, urgency, budget, ownership, and completion. Reviewers can compare unlike projects without reconstructing the brief from email threads.
Relevant follow-ups only
Conditional sections can reveal website, event, procurement, integration, or campaign questions only when selected. The form stays approachable while specialists still receive the details they need.
A visible handoff
Submissions create a consistent starting record for triage. Route that record to the right channel or sheet with the requester, sponsor, reviewers, requested date, and supporting files together.
Adapt the intake path
One front door for four kinds of project work.
Keep a shared foundation for prioritization, then branch into the language and requirements used by each team. Requesters see one clear place to start instead of guessing which inbox owns the work.
Internal operations
Capture the business problem, affected departments, sponsor, operating constraint, deadline rationale, purchasing needs, and the workflow that should change.
Agency and client services
Qualify the contact, engagement type, audience, deliverables, budget, client review team, brand inputs, desired launch, and source assets before discovery.
Creative and marketing
Ask for objective, audience, offer, channel, formats, campaign dates, tracking plan, reviewers, legal or brand review needs, and copy or design references.
Product and technology
Document users, use cases, systems, integrations, data considerations, dependencies, technical ownership, rollout constraints, and testable acceptance criteria.
Build the intake workflow
Turn an informal ask into a reviewable project brief.
Start with the decisions your reviewers make, then design questions that supply those decisions with evidence. Publish one intake route and refine it as recurring gaps appear.
Tell Makeform who submits work, which teams review it, and the project types you accept. Include the information needed to prioritize, estimate, assign, approve, or redirect each request.
02
Edit fields and branching
Require the small set every request needs, then add conditional paths. A website request might ask about domains and analytics; an event request might ask about venue, capacity, and registration.
03
Publish and route submissions
Share one link with employees or clients. Send submissions to the intake owner and route project types into the appropriate Slack channel, spreadsheet, or connected workflow.
04
Triage against explicit criteria
Review outcome, impact, timing, readiness, dependencies, and ownership from the same structured record. Return incomplete requests with focused questions instead of restarting discovery.
Form vs email vs static brief
Choose an intake method that preserves context.
Email is easy to send but difficult to compare. A document provides space but may omit key sections. A generated online form guides requesters through required and project-specific questions in one repeatable path.
Approach
What arrives
Best fit
ApproachEmail or chat message
What arrivesAn unstructured request with details distributed across replies, attachments, and meetings.
Best fitQuick clarifications after intake, not the durable front door for new projects.
ApproachDownloaded brief document
What arrivesA flexible file that requesters may duplicate, rename, skip sections in, or return through different channels.
Best fitComplex narrative work when an owner will actively guide completion.
Approach
Generated online project intake form
What arrivesRequired core details, relevant conditional questions, uploads, and stakeholder information in one submission.
Best fitRepeatable team or agency intake that needs consistent triage and routing.
Field guide
What a useful project intake form should include.
The best questions reduce uncertainty without asking the requester to perform the project manager's job. Use six focused sections to establish intent, feasibility, ownership, and a clear next decision.
Requester and ownership
Identify who can answer and decide.
A requester is not always the sponsor, subject-matter expert, budget owner, or final approver. Capture these roles separately so the intake owner knows who can clarify requirements and who has authority to settle tradeoffs.
Requester name, team, contact details, and preferred follow-up channel.
Project sponsor, day-to-day owner, budget owner, and final approver.
Contributors, reviewers, affected teams, and external client or vendor contacts.
Problem and evidence
Start with the need, not the requested artifact.
Ask what is happening today, who experiences the problem, and what evidence shows it matters. Keeping the problem distinct from a proposed solution gives the delivery team room to recommend a smaller or more effective approach.
Current workflow, friction, affected audience, and frequency of the issue.
Examples, feedback, baseline data, research links, or previous attempts.
Consequences of doing nothing and the opportunity created by solving it.
Outcome and acceptance
Define what better and done mean.
A deliverable list says what to make; an outcome explains why it matters. Collect both, then ask for observable acceptance criteria so reviewers can test whether the finished work meets the original request.
Desired business or user outcome and how it connects to a team objective.
Requested deliverables, required formats, audiences, languages, and channels.
Specific acceptance criteria, success measures, and post-launch owner.
Scope and constraints
Separate must-haves from useful additions.
Ask requesters to describe essential launch scope, optional work, and explicit exclusions. Then surface the rules a team cannot casually change, such as brand standards, technical environments, accessibility needs, or vendor dependencies.
Must-have scope, optional scope, and what is explicitly out of scope.
Brand, content, technical, operational, accessibility, and localization constraints.
Systems, integrations, platforms, vendors, source files, and required access.
Timing and dependencies
Ask why the date matters.
A date without context appears equally fixed whether it is tied to an event or merely preferred. Capture the deadline rationale, intermediate milestones, predecessor work, review windows, and people whose availability controls the schedule.
Desired completion date, launch date, and the event or commitment behind it.
Required milestones, review rounds, blackout periods, and decision dates.
Upstream inputs, downstream work, external dependencies, and scheduling risks.
Budget and priority
Give triage enough context to make tradeoffs.
Priority labels are more useful when paired with impact, readiness, and cost context. Ask where funding comes from, whether a range is approved, what other work competes for attention, and what makes the request urgent now.
Budget range, funding status, cost center, and procurement or vendor needs.
Expected impact, audience size, strategic connection, and urgency rationale.
Known risks, assumptions, open questions, and readiness of required assets.
Related tools
Connect intake to the rest of the project lifecycle.
Use a focused request, onboarding, change, or feedback form when the work moves beyond initial triage. Each tool below addresses a neighboring step without overloading the main intake form.
Practical answers for team leads, project managers, operations teams, and agencies designing a clearer front door for new work.
What is a project intake form?
A project intake form is a structured questionnaire used to submit new work for review. It captures the requester, sponsor, problem, desired outcome, scope, stakeholders, timing, budget, dependencies, assets, and acceptance criteria in one record. Teams use that record to decide whether a request is complete, aligned, feasible, ready to scope, or better handled through another process.
What questions should I include in a project intake form?
Start with who owns the request, what problem exists, who is affected, what outcome is wanted, and why the work matters now. Then ask about deliverables, must-have scope, exclusions, target date and rationale, budget, reviewers, approvers, dependencies, constraints, available assets, risks, and measurable acceptance criteria. Use conditional sections for specialist details instead of making every requester answer every possible question.
How is project intake different from a project brief?
Intake is the entry and triage step: it gathers enough consistent information to evaluate and route a request. A project brief is usually refined after acceptance and can include the agreed strategy, plan, responsibilities, deliverables, milestones, and working decisions. The intake submission can seed that brief, but it should not require a requester to solve all planning questions before the team has reviewed the idea.
How do I keep the form detailed without making it too long?
Make identity, problem, outcome, ownership, deadline context, and core scope universal. Put technical, creative, event, procurement, or client questions behind a project-type choice. Prefer examples and short guidance over vague questions such as “provide details.” Let people upload an existing brief or source files, while still requiring the few structured answers reviewers need to compare requests.
Can one form serve multiple departments or project types?
Yes. Begin with shared triage questions and ask the requester to select a department or project type. Conditional logic can then show a relevant path for marketing, operations, technology, creative, events, or client services. Keep common priority and ownership fields consistent so the intake team can compare demand, while routing each submission to the people who understand that category.
How should a team prioritize project intake submissions?
Choose criteria that match how your organization makes tradeoffs, such as strategic fit, user or business impact, urgency, effort, risk, readiness, dependency load, and available funding. Ask for the evidence behind priority rather than only offering “high, medium, or low.” The form supplies comparable inputs; the team should still apply its own review process, capacity constraints, and decision ownership.
Is this project intake form generator free?
Yes. Makeform provides unlimited free forms and responses, so you can generate, edit, publish, and use your project intake form without a response cap. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge. You can revise questions as your triage process develops and keep a single published intake link for requesters.
Where do project requests go after submission?
Responses arrive in the Makeform inbox. You can notify an intake owner and connect submissions to Google Sheets, Slack, or other workflows through Zapier. A practical routing record includes the request title, project type, requester, sponsor, desired date, triage status, and a link back to the full submission, while uploaded assets and detailed requirements stay attached to the original response.
Give every new project a clear starting point.
Generate a project intake form your team can actually triage.
Unlimited free forms and responsesConditional project pathsGoals, stakeholders, scope, and timing together
