Build and Embed a Customer Feedback Loop

Why Build a Feedback Form in Sigma and Embed for Your Customers?

Building a feedback form directly inside Sigma and embedding it within a customer-facing environment like MyReportPortal bridges the gap between customer input and modern data engineering.

Capturing feedback natively in your analytics stack solves key challenges for two major stakeholders:

The End User Perspective: "Meet People Where They Are"

‍Capturing input from external users of client-facing analytics is essential to driving continuous product value. Traditionally, customer feedback flows informally to line-of-business (LOB) stakeholders—such as account managers and sales teams. By the time this feedback reaches the data team, it is often inconsistently formatted, stripped of context, or lost entirely. This heavily biases product roadmaps toward "the squeaky wheels"—the few customers who complain loudest—rather than representing your full user base.

By embedding a structured feedback form directly alongside your dashboards, you give users a seamless, low-friction channel to share insights while they are actively interacting with your analytics. This captures a broader range of customer sentiments in a standardized format ready for immediate analysis.

The Analytics Engineer Perspective: Eliminating Legacy Form Friction‍

Legacy form applications (such as Google Forms or Qualtrics) introduce significant data engineering overhead. Extracting data out of third-party form tools and landing it into a governed cloud data warehouse (CDW)—like Snowflake or Databricks—requires building, monitoring, and maintaining custom ETL/ELT pipelines.

Furthermore, export formats from traditional form software are notoriously poorly structured and difficult to model cleanly in SQL.
Using Sigma Input Tables as a native form layer completely transforms this architecture:

• Direct Warehouse Write-Back: Submissions bypass third-party APIs and write straight to your cloud data warehouse with zero intermediate ETL.
• Strict Schema & Governance: You control column data types, required inputs, validation rules, and structural formatting at the point of entry.
• Cost & Maintenance Savings: Eliminating extra form software subscriptions and pipeline maintenance simplifies your stack while ensuring form data is instantly joinable with core data models.

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Engaging Before Building

Feedback forms are a concept that stakeholders across your organization—such as customer success, product management, and sales—already understand deeply. Unlike complex SQL queries or data warehouse modeling, designing a form is a highly accessible collaborative project.

Before opening Sigma, lean on these internal domain experts to map out:

• Question Intent: What specific decisions or dashboard enhancements will each question drive?
• Formatting: Which inputs require structured single-select options or numerical scales versus open-ended text areas?
• Logical Ordering: How should questions be grouped so the form feels effortless to complete?

Draft, iterate, and finalize your form copy in a collaborative tool like Google Docs or Notion first. Establishing consensus on the questions before touching the canvas saves development time and ensures your form aligns with broader business goals.

Architecture & Form Field Mapping

Below is the structure of the form we’ll be building together in this guide for the classic Sigma fictious company, Plug Electronics.

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Note that in this guide, I won’t be walking through adding a file upload feature to your feedback form as configuring the file upload functionality is not currently possible in Sigma Public. I strongly recommend including this functionality in your feedback form for a complete user experience. Please review this Sigma documentation to get started.

Once your questions are finalized in your planning document, map each field to its corresponding control type and underlying data structure in Sigma.

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Choosing Your Form Building Approach

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When creating a new form in Sigma, you can choose between two primary creation workflows:

1. Start from a Data Source (Select source): Pre-defines your schema in an existing Input Table first, generating form controls based on table columns.
2. Start from Scratch (Start building - Recommended): Allows you to visually lay out and refine your form controls on the form canvas first, then generate a linked destination Input Table in a single click once you are satisfied with the design.

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Step-by-Step Implementation

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Step 1: Create & Design Form Fields (Form-First Workflow)

1. In your Sigma draft workbook, click + Add element in the left navigation panel and select Form.
2. In the Create new form modal, click Start building under Start from scratch.
3. Select the form container canvas and enter your header content:
   • Title: Please Share Your Thoughts
   • Subtitle: At Plug Electronics, we value your feedback on our analytics offerings. Please select & share your thoughts below.
4. Drag and configure the form fields directly on the canvas:
   • Dashboard Selection: Add a Single-select Dropdown labeled Which dashboard would you like to provide feedback for? with values Executive Summary, Key Metrics, and Sales.
   • Account Health Scale: Add a Segmented Control labeled On a scale of 1-5, how well do you understand the health of your account based on this dashboard? with values 1 through 5.
   • Missing Metric Field: Add a Short Text field labeled Is there a specific metric you expected to see but didn't? with placeholder Enter a specific metric....
   • Stakeholder Clarity: Add a Segmented Control labeled Is this dashboard easy to interpret for your internal stakeholders? with values Yes and No.
   • Open Feedback: Add a Long Text Area labeled Anything else you would like to share? with placeholder Enter your feedback..

Step 2: One-Click Generate Destination Input Table

1. Select the Form element on your canvas.
2. In the Properties panel, click Create Input Table.
3. Select your write-back database connection and name the destination table Plug Electronics Feedback Submissions.
4. Sigma automatically builds a structured write-back table matching all field types and options designed in Step 1.
5. Add Created byand Created at columns to the input table to attribute each form submission.

Step 3: Design and Configure the Confirmation Modal

1. Click + Add element > Layout > Modal and rename it Thank You Modal.
2. Add an Image Element inside the modal and upload the Plug Electronics logo with a thank you message.
3. Select the Form element and open the Actions tab in the sidebar.Submit Button (Primary):
   1. Add row to Input Table > Select Plug Electronics Feedback Submissions.
   2. Clear Form > Select your feedback form element.
   3. Open Modal > Select Thank You Modal.
   Reset Form Button (Secondary):
   1. Clear Form > Select your feedback form element.

Step 4: Publish & Embed in MyReportPortal

1. Open the Plug Electronics Feedback Submissions Input Table properties and enable Allow entry in published view.
2. Click Publish in the top right corner of the workbook.
3. Embed the workbook or element into your MyReportPortal application using Sigma Application Embedding (iFrame/JWT authentication) so end users can submit feedback seamlessly inside your application context.

Setting Up Automated Alerts

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Real-time awareness ensures feedback doesn't sit idle in a database. Configure automated alerts in Sigma so your product and data teams are notified instantly when a customer submits input.

1. Add a Calculated Field to Input Table: Add a calculated field to the Plug Electronics Feedback Submissions input table called New Submissionswhere [Created At] >= DateAdd("day", -1, Today()).
2. Configure Conditional Scheduled Export:
   • Go to Workbook Menu > Schedules & Alerts.
   • Click Create Schedule and choose Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Email as the destination channel.
   • Set the trigger condition to Only send if condition is met (e.g., New Submissions is True) .
   • Schedule the frequency to evaluate hourly or daily.
3. Webhook Integration (Optional): Attach a webhook notification destination to forward new form entries directly to your internal ticketing system (such as Jira, Linear, or Zendesk) for immediate triage.

Synthesizing Submissions into Your Product Roadmap

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Having feedback in an Sigma Input Table makes it straightforward to query, visualize, and analyze alongside your core product metrics inside Sigma.

Build an Internal Feedback Dashboard: Create a internal Sigma workbook built on top of Plug Electronics Feedback Submissions input table via either a Sigma Warehouse View or a new Sigma Tables and chart dashboard ratings over time, average account health scores, and stakeholder clarity distribution.

Categorize Quantitative & Qualitative Themes: Use Sigma formulas (or AI/LLM functions if enabled) to auto-tag free-text responses like Missing Metrics or General Feedback into categorical themes (e.g., Performance, Missing Metric, UI/UX, Data Accuracy).

Prioritize by Customer Tier: Join the feedback submissions table back to your customer account dimension table using the Submitter Email or Tenant ID. This lets you cross-reference feedback with ARR, contract tier, or usage volume to make data-driven roadmap prioritization decisions.

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Closing the Loop: Responding to Every Submission

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The single most critical step in maintaining customer engagement is acknowledging every piece of feedback. When users see that their input leads to real action, participation rates skyrocket.

Set a 100% Response SLA: Establish an internal commitment to respond to every submitter within 48 to 72 hours.

Acknowledge Non-Actionable Input: Even if a requested feature isn't on the short-term roadmap, reach out to thank the user and explain why. Customers appreciate transparency far more than silence.

Ship & Share "You Asked, We Built" Updates: When a missing metric or requested dashboard update goes live in MyReportPortal, query your feedback table for everyone who requested that feature. Send personalized follow-up emails letting them know their feedback directly shaped the latest release.

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