How To Create Simple Forms

After creating a form, in order to determine (or modify) its settings, you should click on the "Edit" icon within its row of the "Forms" table.

From here, click on the form's "Settings" tab, where you can begin to customize the form by giving it a name.

Form Details:

In order to assign a name to the form, simply click on the "Edit" icon in the bottom-most table, labeled "Form Details."

Once clicked, you will be presented with a window like the one pictured below, in which you can enter the desired name and click "Save" in order to assign it to the form.

The next steps in creating a new form are to add fields and determine where submitted forms will be stored.

For detailed instructions on how to proceed, please see the following sections:

• Form Fields
• Form Integration

In order to maximize the efficiency and ease with which you create forms, you can make use of a number of pre-set commonly used fields that are stored within the system.

In order to add some of these common fields to your form, simply click on the "Add Common Fields" icon in the "Form Fields" table of the form's "Settings" tab.

From here, you can take your pick of a wide variety of fields, such as "Name," "E-Mail," and "Upload File."

In order to include them within your form, simply click within the "Add" box located in the desired field's row.

You can also specify if you would like the selected fields to be required and whether or not you would like the information entered into the fields to be displayed in the list of submitted forms by checking the appropriate boxes in the selected fields' rows.

In addition to the system's pre-set fields, you can include a variety of custom-made fields designed to fit the individual needs of your company and the form in question.

Creating New Fields:

In order to create a new field, simply click on the "Add Custom Field" icon located in the upper-right hand corner of the "Form Fields" table.

In the window that appears, simply enter an appropriate name for the field (as you would like it to appear in the form) and select the type of field you would like to create from the drop-down menu listing all of the data types that have been added to the system.

In addition to specifying the field's name and type, you can determine if you would like the field to be required and whether or not it should be displayed in the listing of all submitted forms by checking the appropriate boxes.

Should you wish, you can also determine the field's visual settings by entering a desired width and height for the field, which will override any default visual settings specified in the form's overall template.

Once you have finished outlining the field's details, just click "Save" at the bottom of the screen, and the field will be added to the "Form Fields" table.

Special Cases With Data Types:

Pictured above is an example of using the "Short Text" data type to create a custom field (titled "Department Name") in which users can enter the name of the desired department, so long as the text does not exceed 250 characters (or whatever length was specified in the creation of the "Short Text" data type).

Unlike the "Short Text" data type, however, some data types will need to be created each time you would like to use them in a form.

List:

One such data type would be the " List," as when adding these data types to the system, you must specify the particular items that you would like to be included in the list.

Thus, every time you would like to include some list of options in a form, you will need to first access the " Data Types" section of the module, and create a list that includes all of the specific options that you would like to be displayed. You will then be able to select this cutomized data type from the "Type" drop-down menu when adding custom fields to your form.

Resource:

Another special case is the " Resource" data type.

When creating "Resource" data types in the module's "Data Types" section, you can choose from a list of pre-set fields such as "Timezone," "Hair Color," and "Gender."

Thus, when adding custom fields to your forms, you will not see "Resource" as an option within the "Type" drop-down menu. Rather, you will see the specific resource data types, such as "Timezone" and "Gender," that you have actually added to the system .

In order to create a new data type, access the "Data Types" section of the XForms module, and click on the "Add" icon in the upper right-hand corner of the "List of Available Datatypes."

In the window that appears, enter a unique name for the data type and then select the type of data that you would like to be entered into fields of this type from the drop-down menu.

Depending on what type you select, you will then have to determine some more specific details.

For more information on how to complete the details of the various kinds of data types, please see the following sections:

• Text
• List
• List (multi-select)
• Resource
• SQL Table List
• Checkbox
• E-mail
• Date
• Number
• File
• Image
• CRM-Industry
• Analytics URL
• User's IP
• IP2Country
• User Agent
• RMS User ID
• RMS User Name
• Current Language
• Preferred Language
• Variable Connector - request
• Variable Connector - session

In determining the appearance of your form, you have the option of making use of the system's pre-set default layout.

Form Layout:

In order to apply the default layout to your form, you should first specify which language you would like to create the format for by selecting the desired option from the drop-down menu in the upper-right hand corner of the window (different layouts can be assigned to each of the individual languages that your site supports).

Once you have selected a language to work with, simply click on the "Insert Default Layout" link at the top of the "Form Layout" screen, and HTML code will automatically be inserted into the window, making use of the fields and errors that your form contains, in order to determine the content and layout of the form.

"Thank You" Page Layout:

After setting the form's layout, you can move on to insert a layout for the "thank you" page, which will be displayed to users upon submitting your form.

In order to do so, simply click on the "Insert Default Layout" link at the top of the "Thank You Page" window, and HTML code will automatically appear in the window, with variables for the fields within your form such as "First Name," which will be filled in with the details of the user in question each time the page is generated.

Once layouts have been assigned to both the form and the "thank you" page, click "Save" at the bottom of the screen, and the settings will be applied to the system.

The "Listing" tab allows you to view a list of all the submissions made by users who have completed your form.

The individual columns of data that appear in this table (such as "Company Name" and "Address") will depend on which fields you selected the "Display In Listing" option for when adding fields to your form.

Should you wish to view the full details of a particular submission and/or modify some of the data, feel free to click on the "Edit" icon at the far right of the desired submission's row.

Should you wish for particular submissions to be disregarded, you will also have the option of marking them as junk.

In order to do so, simply click on the "Mark/Unmark As Junk" icon in the row of the desired submission. Once clicked, the submission will be highlighted in order to set it apart from the others. In case you would like to restore the submission to its normal state, so that it will no longer be labeled as junk, you can just click on the "Mark/Unmark As Junk" icon again (which will have turned red).

In addition to all of the features mentioned above, there is also the option of using a search filter to narrow down the list of submissions and of exporting submissions to a CSV file.

For detailed instructions on how to go about using these two features, please see the section on the "Export" and "Filter" icons.