Article Forms

Forms are useful for pacapturing feedback from your site visitors, as a booking form and as a way users can email you a question. Note:Online booking that involves taking payment online should be done through the payment group application.

Creating an Article Form

• Step 1 - Create an article
  
  To create a form begin by creating an article as explained step-by-step in the articles guide.
  
• Step 2 – add form fields to your article
  
  Add any introduction text to your form in the contents view.
  
  When you've added your introduction text, click in the contents pane where you wish to begin adding the form fields you require. Next choose the type of field that's appropriate for the information you wish to capture from the available options on the toolbar at the top of the document editor window.
  
  
  
  Here's a description of what each form toolbar button does in the document editor:
  

  	An editable text field to capture the name of the user.
  	Inserts editable text fields to collect address information.
  	A field to capture telephone number information.
  	A field to capture an email address.
  	Inserts a checkbox that can be either selected or not. Useful for simple yes/no responses.
  	Inserts a radio button which is useful for giving the user a pre-defined list of responses to select from.
  	Inserts a simple text field which can be used to capture entered text up to 255 characters long.
  	Inserts a textarea field which can be used to capture lengthy sections of text e.g.comments.
  	Inserts a selection field that displays a drop-down list of options you set. This has a similar use to the radio button option but works better for a longer option list.
  	Inserts a send button that when pressed will submit the form.

  Note: You won't be able to publish a form until it has a send button added.

  Click on the relevant form toolbar icons to add them to the page.
  

• Step 2 – set the form properties – select the properties tab and configure the options as required. The options common with all articles are described in the articles guide. Some additional options are added for forms to the properties tab. These are described below:
  
  

  Form Response Notifications	Enter the email addresses on separate lines that you require the form response to be submitted to. Form responses will, in addition, always be submitted to the Web Office, see viewing form responses section below.
  Form Response Message	Upon submitting a form users are directed to a page displaying a message saying their response has been saved. To configure this message enter the text here.
  Form User Redirection After Completion	Set where the user is re-directed to after reading the response message. By default they are retuned to the group homepage.

• Step 3 – publish the form! - As with standard articles, once you are happy with the content of your form set the publishing status at the top of the document editor to published.

Click the save button to commit your changes and return to the documents view.

Viewing Form Responses

• All form responses are stored in the Web Office for viewing and export.
• You can add notifications to your group to email the form response to the users you specify. To set up an email notification watch the admin notification video.

• Select the  group folder the symbol appears next to, which is the same area th form was published in.
• Select the documents tab.
• On the row of your published form, towards the right-hand side, there will be a '# response' text with a View link. Click on the View link to list the responses.
• Review the response and change its Status to one of the options supplied in the drop-down.
• If you wish to export the information select the required format from the list of Tasks at the bottom of the page.
• If you would like to delete the response(s), check the box of the responses you wish to remove.
• When you've reviewed the responses, set the Status as required and select any responses you wish to remove, click Save Changes to commit them.

Tips

• A form can be used for web site visitors to contact your organisation without you publishing your email address. This will help to reduce the spam email you receive.
• Although form responses can be exported as a CSV file and imported into a group to create user accounts this will create a duplicate account (if the user already exists in your database) and is also time consuming. To allow logged in users to register their interest in a group use the Join a group component or use the profile editor component to capture information on their user profile.