The latest release includes enhanced features, new integrations, new templates, style updates, and more. The top enhancements include:
Some form owners have the need to collect uploaded files with their form results, as with registration forms, expense reports, contest entry forms, and many others. The File Upload item allows Formsite form builders to accept attachments with their forms. The most basic use of the item is easy to grasp, but there are some additional considerations and techniques that can be used to increase the usefulness of the File Upload item.
Formsite uses Amazon AWS to host our infrastructure and today they experienced an issue that caused widespread outages across multiple data centers. The AWS outage affected a large number of websites and online services, and the exact cause hasn’t yet been identified.
The architecture Formsite uses is spread across multiple data centers, but the issue impacted multiple data centers and made our outages unavoidable. The effects to Formsite included the inability to connect and log in to Formsite accounts, the inability to upload attachments to forms, and disruption of emails that may not have been delivered during the outage.
Important: The outage did not impact any saved data. Also, for those customers who were able to connect to forms and were able to successfully submit, the results were saved as normal. This outage affected the connections only—not the storage.
We will be evaluating what lessons we can learn and changes we can make to improve our communication during rare events like this. Today’s AWS outage was posted to our social channels at Facebook and Twitter, and our customer support staff stayed on point to communicate the status through the entire event.
A common question is how to make a form with multiple pages, which is easily done by adding Page Break items to the form. That is only the beginning of the possibilities, though. Other questions related to form pages include:
Formsite forms can be fully customized by form owners at all service levels, which allows for complete control over the forms’ appearance. Adding images and logos with a form is a great way to communicate basic brand attributes and set the tone of your form, as well as apply any custom branding requirements like fonts and colors.
There are three basic places where images can be added:
Sending multiple emails with every form response is one of our strongest features that virtually every form uses. Addressing the email messages is done by either manually entering email addresses or by using one of the Email Address items in your form. The Email Routing items are powerful tools that not many know about and they can help you make more efficient and useful notifications.
The To: address in your notifications can be set in two ways:
The standard Email Address item is common and easy to understand, but what about the other available items?
Making an order form is a typical goal for a large number of Formsite account owners and the most common need is to collect credit card payments. We have made it easy and secure by building our payment systems that are integrated with our online credit card order template. Our integration means that collecting the credit card numbers is done by the payment processor, and tracking the transaction status and history happens automatically.
The integrations with PayPal, Authorize.net, and Stripe are built to connect your Formsite form directly to your payment account so that there is no need to collect credit card information. This is important because it completely removes the risk of the payment information falling into the wrong hands.
Formsite makes collecting protected health information (PHI) possible through its HIPAA service, which provides a compliant system for healthcare companies to collect and store form data securely. Accounts at the Enterprise service level are able to request a business associate agreement (BAA) and enable the HIPAA-compliant settings to fully commit to the rules dictated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
Organizations that work with healthcare or personal health-related information are undoubtedly aware of the requirements outlined by HIPAA, along with the need for a fully-compliant system that helps collect and protect health information. Formsite has the ability to enable these organizations to build protected online forms, which can include:
Tables, charts, and graphs are used to show the data as groups of answers so that you can quickly see how each group compares with the others, which assists form owners in improving their forms, optimizing conversions, and targeting the right visitors.
Formsite’s results analytics tools include:
Order forms commonly have advanced calculation needs like adding tax, controlling inventory, or providing discounts, and it’s crucial that they’re easy to use and accurate. Providing discounts is an effective way to increase conversions and adding a Coupon Code item to your form makes it easy.
The basic use for the Coupon Code item is straightforward: Add the item to your form, then enter one or more text codes and their discount amount or percentage. Other settings and uses may not be as clear, such as: