Scheduling forms pose a wide range of challenges for form owners, like how to show dates and times and preventing double-booking. A new feature for Formsite forms adds the ability to show Calendly events and collect appointments from form visitors. For forms that allow visitors to schedule appointments and meetings, Calendly provides easy tools for event managers.
A popular request from form builders is how to set validation patterns for text input fields. For example, with a Short Answer item the form owner can set the Validation setting to collect answers that match a preferred format.
The list of validation patterns includes:
Formsite’s Calendar item lets form owners collect dates from a monthly calendar popup. Other settings like minimum and maximum dates and the ‘today’ variable makes the Calendar item powerful already. A recent enhancement now lets the Calendar item disable and enable specific weekdays.
Examples of forms that use the Calendar include:
Formsite’s Calendar item has settings that let form owners collect dates in the preferred format. Editing the item shows a format setting with a list of common date formats. The date format automatically shows the selected date in the correct format so it’s saved in the result correctly.
Another setting lets form owners set a minimum and maximum date allowed. For example, entering July 1, 2022 as the min date only allows for choosing that date or a date after. Setting the max setting to Aug 31, 2022 would prevent choosing any dates after.
The ‘today’ variable allows for setting dates relative to the day the visitor is completing the form. A common use for the variable collects the date of the result by adding a Calendar item with the default value set to ‘today’.
Using the variable with modifiers lets form owners set default and min/max dates relative to today. For example, setting the min to ‘today-30’ only allows for entering dates up to 30 days in the past. Setting the max value to ‘today+7’ allows for 1 week from today.
For age restrictions, calculate the number of days like 21*365 to see how many days for a 21-year old (7665). Using that as the max setting on a Calendar item for their birthday allows only those who are 21 years old and older.
The Calendar item recently received an enhancement to let the form owner choose which days of the week to show. That lets form owners only allow days the organization is open, like Monday-Friday.
To disable weekends or any weekday, simply uncheck the box in the Calendar item and those days will not allow selections.
Formsite online form builder is fast and easy form building software for collecting information online. Some customers have asked for a way to save or print their forms for future reference or as a backup. As a result, forms now have a Preview Link on their Share pages that make printing and saving easy.
The Preview Link opens the form with all items and pages visible, which allows the viewer to see every item without having to complete the form. For Pro 2 and higher service levels, the Preview PDF creates a PDF version of the same thing.
Formsite’s powerful Workflow functions let form owners pass data from one form to another through an emailed link. This feature is essential for many processes like approvals and any other arrangement that requires input from more than one person. A common behavior is to collect all Workflow data from each step into the final result as a record or receipt.
For example, a typical approval process looks like this:
Formsite account owners at all paying service levels are now able to use two-factor authentication (2FA). Two-factor authentication lets account owners set up a second requirement for allowing access to an account. The first method requires a correct username and password combination, and the second requires a correct code.
The code gets provided by an application on a mobile device or computer and resets after a short time to guarantee that the device is present. The account owner sets up the application with Formsite to provide the unique code as the second factor for authentication.
Notification emails send after submitting forms and can use conditional logic to know which ones to send. For example, a form owner can set up several identical emails that send to different account owners based on an answer chosen in the form. Many form owners choose to make a copy of the email and set logic to tell when to send each one, but there’s a better way. See how routing Notification emails with Email Routing items works.
Notifications are emails sent by Formsite after every new form result gets successfully created. Form owners send emails for many reasons and the Notification formats vary depending on the desired outcome. Example Notifications include:
Many forms have the need for collecting multiple entries from a single source. For example, registration forms with one or more registrants need the ability to repeat fields for each one. Formsite provides a few ways to set up forms for repeating fields and pages for entering multiples.
Examples of forms needing repeat fields include:
We covered this topic a few years ago and it deserves an update due to changes in both systems. For form owners who want to send reminder emails to form visitors or an email list, this shows one way to do that. This technique requires a Formsite account at the Pro 1 or higher service level and a Mailchimp account.