Google Forms is a free, easy way to collect responses — but its default email-only notifications are slow and easy to miss. With PingBell wired in, every submission rings a bell on every team phone and ticks a live counter on whichever screens your team uses.
This guide covers the full flow: the one-tap Google Forms add-on, the Zapier alternative, and customizing the counter display.
What is PingBell?
PingBell is a web and mobile app that lets you create custom notifications for events on websites and apps — including Google Forms. Every event you wire in becomes three simultaneous broadcasts: a push notification, a counter increment, and a graph point.
Step 1: The one-tap path — the add-on
The fastest route is the official add-on:
- Install Mobile Push Notifications for Google Forms from the Google Workspace Marketplace.
- Open your form and pick Set up notifications from the add-on menu.
- Click Turn on notifications.
That’s the whole setup. The add-on creates a counter named after your form, wires the form-submit trigger itself, and hands you a link into PingBell — already signed in as you. Every submission rings the bell from that moment on. If you used the add-on, skip straight to Step 3.
Step 2: The Zapier alternative
Prefer to route through Zapier (say, to filter responses or combine forms)?
Create a Zap. Sign in to Zapier and click Create Zap.
Pick the trigger. Search for Google Forms and choose an event like New Form Response.
Connect Google. Sign into the Google account that owns the form. Pick the specific form, then test the trigger to confirm Zapier can read responses.
Set the PingBell action. For the Zap’s action, search for PingBell and select Notify PingBell.
Get your API key. In PingBell, open Settings, click Show my API key on the API key card, and paste it into Zapier when prompted.
Pick which source to notify. Create a source on PingBell’s Sources page first if you haven’t, then select it in the Zap.
Submit a test form response and your phone should ring within a few seconds.
Step 3: Customize the counter display
Your counter lives on a board — a full page you design and cast to a TV, embed on a website, or use as a live broadcast graphic.
Open the board. From the Boards page, click Edit on the board that came with your form’s counter (or create one from a template and bind its counter block to your form’s source).
Make it yours. Pick a background color, gradient, or image; move and resize the counter; set fonts and colors; add a goal bar for a response target. Every change previews live and updates every paired screen instantly.
Set the counter baseline. If you want the counter to start at a non-zero number (say, your existing total submissions), set the counter block’s Start from value.
Step 4: View analytics
Open the Activity page and pick your form’s source to see how often it fired — today, the last 7 days, or any range back to all-time. Useful for spotting trends and verifying your form is converting.
Try it
Now you can route Google Forms submissions to your phone, a TV in the office, or a counter embedded on a landing page. Start a free 7-day trial and your next form response will ring a bell.