In our last blog post, we told you what was different about Forms compared with Forms Manager. In this post, we’re going to spend some more time with the brand-new features and just plain cool stuff you can do with Forms now. Who knew that forms could be fun, am I right? I’ll have you convinced by the time you finish reading this post!

Accepted dates in the Date field

The Date field is a handy way to schedule an appointment, but obviously you don’t want to give people carte blanche for booking your time. No meetings on Sunday morning, for instance! In Forms, the Date field lets you pick dates and days that your form will accept. Just pick a window of dates, then click on the circles to disable days that you want to mark off-limits. The date picker on the form will be grayed out accordingly.

Where Used function

Have you ever had a parent fill out a really outdated form and wondered, “Where the heck did they even find that?” I think we’ve all been there. Forms prevents that in two different ways. First of all, it’s easy to deactivate an old form so anyone visiting the page will only see a message that the form is unavailable, and you can tell at a glance which forms are still active. But if you still need the form for some people and not others, you can click the Where Used icon to find out exactly what pages and banners have that form on it. Seek and destroy! Those rogue Form elements, that is. Just look for the icon in the bottom-right of the form screen.

Allowed choices for Multiple Select

We’ve all seen that cheeky student who selects four checkboxes on a form that clearly states “Select a maximum of three.” Some of us have been that cheeky student. Well, that’s a thing of the past! Now you can make that limit part of the form, rather than just a suggestion. (We still recommend saying that you can only pick three, just so they don’t email you asking why your form is broken.) Just enter a number in the “Allowed Choices” field.

Usage stats on Dashboard

How many forms do you actually have? And how many responses have you gotten? With Forms, you’ll know! And you might want to think about how long it’s been since you’ve cleaned out the cobwebs on those old submissions with personal info that you probably ought to delete. We’ll keep adding widgets to the Forms Dashboard as we go along, so the Dashboard is sure to feature some interesting tidbits of information down the road. If there’s a stat you would love to see, make sure to mention it on finalsiteideas.com, too.

Conditional admin notifications

And speaking of Finalsite Ideas, here’s a really awesome feature that came from many of you! With conditional rules on admin notifications, you can send a form response directly to the band director only when a prospect says they’re interested in music, or send late submissions directly to the program organizer, or more! There’s really so much you can do with this feature, just click on the star next to the person’s email address and get creative.

Transaction Email template

You have to admit, the Forms results email is much prettier than the Forms Manager one was. And the really cool part is that, using Messages, you can make it your own! Replace our logo with yours, and change the color of the top banner. We don’t let you go too crazy, though, because you only get one template. It still applies to any domains you may have on Composer. You can find this template in Messages > Templates > System > Transaction Template.

Conclusion

I may not have turned you into a fully fledged Forms fanatic, but I do hope I’ve demonstrated some of the thought and care -- and advice from you all -- that went into designing the new Forms module. Make the switch today and have some fun with your forms!