Managing Forms:

• What's a Form?
• How Reason Forms Work
• Creating a Form
• Attaching a Form to a Page
• Restricting Access to Forms
• Viewing Database Form Data
• Modifying Database Backed Forms
• Exporting Form Results

What's a Form?

Web forms allow your site visitors to fill out information and submit it, all in their browser. You define a series of fields, and when someone fills out the form the information entered by your site visitor gets saved to a database, sent in an email to you, or both.

Web forms are handy for many things—signing up for events, requesting information, providing feedback, or even completing short surveys.

How Reason Forms Work

Here's what happens when a site visitor interacts with your form:

1. Visitor enters information into form. Depending upon the setup of the form, some information may be pre-populated for users that are logged in.
2. Visitor clicks on submit button.
3. Depending on how you set up the form, either an email is sent to a specified email address, the results are stored in a database for later retrieval, or both
4. Visitor sees a thank you message that you supplied, and if the option is enabled, a copy of the information submitted.

Creating a Form

Before you create a form, make sure you have the Forms content type on your site.  If you see "Forms" in the Content Types menu on your Site Admin Page, everything is set. If you do not, you will need to have forms added to the site by your web administrator.

1. Click Forms from the Content Types menu.
2. Click Add Form.
3. Fill out the basic form fields:
   • Name: An internal name for the form. This will help you find the form later.
   • Save to Database: Enter "yes" if you would like to save the results of the form to a database.
   • Email of Recipient: Enter either netids (link to glossary) or email addresses of the people who will receive the form submission. If you want the results of the form to be sent to multiple people, you can separate them with commas.

   • Form Content: This where you will build your form.

     When you create a new form, the Form Content text area will have two form elements already in place: Submit and Clear. These are required and can't be removed. You can, however, edit the text that these buttons display by clicking Edit above each button.

     To add form elements, click the buttons at the top of the Form Content text area. When you add an element, a box pops up that allows you to enter information about the form element. Here are each of the form elements you can use, and the options available for each:

     Text Field: For entering a single line of text

     Label (Required): The label appears next to the text field, telling users what the text field is for.
     Default Value: Optional text that will be pre-filled in the field for site visitors.
     Required Field: Makes this field required.  The form will not submit until the user has filled out all required fields.

     
     Text Area: For entering multiple lines of text.

     Label (Required): The label appears next to the text area, telling users what the text field is for.
     Default Value: Optional text that will be pre-filled in the field for site visitors.
     Required Field: Makes this field required.  The form will not submit until the user has filled out all required fields.

     
     Checkbox Group: Prompts visitor to select one or several options, using checkboxes.

     Label (Required): The label appears next to the checkbox group and tells the user what the checkboxes are for.
     Default Values: Enter the checkbox options here. Add options by clicking on the + button; move them up and down by clicking on the arrows, and delete them by clicking on the X button. You can select an option as checked by default if you click the checkbox to the left of the option.
     Required Field: This will ensure that a visitor checks at least one of the options.

     
     Radio Button Group: Prompts visitor to select one—and only one—of several options, using "radio buttons." This is best for when there are only a few options, and only one should be answered, like "Yes", "No", or "Maybe".

     Label (Required): The label appears next to the radio button group and tells the user what the radio buttons are for.
     Default Values: Enter the options here. Add options by clicking on the + button; move them up and down by clicking on the arrows, and delete them by clicking on the X button. You can select an option as selected by default if you click the radio button to the left of the option, but only one option can be selected by default.
     Required Field: This will ensure that a visitor chooses an option in this group.

     
     Select Field: Like the Radio Button group, this element allows the visitor to select only one of several options, but it uses a dropdown menu instead of radio buttons.

     Label: Same as Radio Button Group
     Default Values: Same as Radio Button Group
     Required Field: Same as Radio Button Group

     
     Hidden Field: Places information into the email without it being visible on the form. This can be useful for providing instructions to the recipient of the email.

     Value: Whatever text you want to be included in the email.

     
     Text Description/Comment: Places information on the form. This can be useful for breaking up your form into several sections, or for providing more instructions than will fit in an element label.
     
     Value: Whatever text you want to be displayed on the form.

     
     Edit Elements: Modify already created elements by clicking on their Edit buttons.

     
     Sort Elements:  Move elements up and down in the form by clicking on their up and down arrow buttons.

     
     Delete Elements:  Delete elements by clicking on their X buttons.

4. Select an Autofill Option.

   Select None to disable autofill.  

   Select Autofill (Editable) or Autofill (Not Editable) to fill in certain specially named fields for logged in users. If you choose the Autofill (Editable) option, the user will be able to change the pre-filled information.

   Below is a list of field names that are available for autofill.  You must use these field names in the "Label" of your text field.

   • Your Full Name
   • Your Name
   • Your First Name
   • Your Last Name
   • Your Department
   • Your Email
   • Your Home Phone
   • Your Work Phone
   • Your Title
5. Fill out the Thank You Note section.
   • Thank you Message: After submitting a form, visitors will see this message. This is a required field.
   • Display Return Link: Toggles whether or not to place a link after the thank you message which allows the user to return to the form.
   • Show Submitted Data: Toggles whether or not to display a copy of the submitted data on the thank you page.
6. Select optional Advanced Options.
   • Choose Thor View:
   • Custom Thor View Path:
   • Are Submissions Editable by the Submitter?
   • Allow Multiple Submissions Per User?
   • Email Form Results to Submitter?
   • Include Edit Link When Possible?
   • Include Submitted Data in Emails?
   • Include Empty Fields in Emails?
7. Click Save and Continue Editing
8. Check your work.
9. Click Finish to return to the forms listing page.

Attaching a Form to a Page

1. Cick Pages from the Content Types menu.
2. Click Add New Page or Edit an existing page.  
3. In the left sidebar menu, click Associate a Form with this Page.
4. Click Select in the row corresponding to the form you'd like to attach.  The form will appear at the top of the page, under the Selected heading.
5. Click Edit in the left sidebar menu.
   • Note: If you do not have access to the Form page type, contact a member of the Web Team for assistance.
6. Select Form from the Type of Page drop-down selector (right above the Content text-box).
7. Click Save and Finish at the bottom of the page.

Restricting Access to Forms

Reason allows you to easily and securely restrict access to forms to a specific group of users. To restrict access you must 1) create a "Group" and 2) grant access to only that group.

Note: Your site must have Groups enabled in order to restrict access. If Groups is not listed in the Content Types Menu on the Site Admin Page, contact your web administrator.

Create a Group

To create a new Group, see Groups.  

Restrict Access

To allow only a particular group of users to view/submit the form, follow these steps:

1. Click Forms from the Content Types Menu.
2. In the left sidebar menu, click Choose group that can fill out the form.
3. Select an existing group or create a new one.

Once access to the form is restricted, the form page will prompt the user to log in if they are not logged in, and only show the form to individuals who are in the related group.

Viewing Database Form Data

You may associate a Reason Group to a database-backed form in order to control who can see the submitted data. If you do not associate a group, only the Reason site managers and anyone who receives the form results via e-mail will be able to view submitted data. Note that you need to have Groups available on your site (and a form that saves to a database) to setup access privileges to form data.

How to set up privileges to view submitted data:

1. Click Forms from the Content Types Menu.
2. In the left sidebar menu, click Choose group that can see all results.
3. Choose an existing group or create a new one.

When logged in, the individuals in this group will see a link to "enter administrative view" when looking at the form on the public website. Doing so displays the form data within the live page and offers a link to export the stored data.

Modifying Database Backed Forms

Once a form that saves to a database has data, the form is no longer editable. To make changes to the form, you will need to export and delete the data currently stored by the form.

Before exporting and deleting form data, it is a good idea to unlink the form from the page or to change the "save to database" option to "No." This is to make sure that data is not submitted between the time you delete stored data and modify the form.

1. Click Forms from the Content Types Menu.
2. Edit the form.
3. Select No next to Save to Database? (This step ensures that no data will be submitted to the database between the time you delete stored data and modify the form.)
4. Click Save and Continue Editing at the bottom of the page.
5. Click View / Delete stored data above the Form Name field.
6. Use the links provided to visit the page on your site where the form exists.
7. In the data view, choose the option export as .csv.
8. Return to the View / Delete stored data screen (steps 1 and 2, above).
9. Click Delete stored data.
10. Confirm the deletion.
11. From the form Add/Edit screen you should now be able to modify the form.  When you're finished editing the form, make sure to re-select Yes next to Save to Database? if you'd like your new form to save to the database.

Exporting Form Results

1. Click Forms from the Content Types Menu.
2. Click Edit in the row corresponding to the form you want to edit.
3. Click View / Delete stored data above the Form Name field.
4. You now can view the form results or export the data to the computer. There are also options to sort the data by form inputs or even delete the stored data.