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:

• How to make an intro page?
• How to require a login after the intro page?
• How to disable going back to a previous page?
• How to skip pages based on answers to questions?
• How to repeat pages based on an entered number?

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.

Adding Logos & Images

There are three basic places where images can be added:

1. Form items:
   • The Image item is the easiest way to add an individual image.
   • Image List items are used to include images with a radio button or checkbox item.
   • The Heading item allows you to add a text box with your image as a background image.
   • The Formatted Text item lets you add images along with your text.
2. Form Header/Footer:
   • The Header/Footer link in the Form Editor lets you add text or images that appear on every page of your form.
3. Page or Form Background:
   • The Style page allows you to add images for the page or form background using the tools on the Customize page.

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.

Email To: Field

The To: address in your notifications can be set in two ways:

1. Manually add one or more complete email addresses separated by commas
2. Connect to an Email Address or Email Routing item from the Email Items area in the form editor

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:

• Medical history forms
• Patient registration forms
• Prescription forms
• Medical and dental record request forms
• Appointment requests
• Referral forms
• Healthcare payment forms

Collecting orders, registrations, and other information is the primary purpose of forms and surveys. In addition to the answers collected, broader data is available like demographics, popularity, etc. This is where the analytics tools are helpful in quickly displaying that data in a visual and useful way. 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:

• Number of results per day
• Technical statistics
• Duration & Fall-off statistics
• Individual Item Summary
• Inventory & Scoring analysis
• Cross-tabulation

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:

• What about discounting only certain items?
• Can it do conditional discounts like require a minimum amount?
• Is there a one time use coupon option?

There are times when form owners want to limit the number of selections or only allow a max number of selected choices. There are a few methods to set answer limits depending on the kind of items used and whether you want to limit a single question’s answers or multiple items in your form.

For example, items that ask for multiple answers can frequently use the built-in min/max settings to limit the number of answers allowed. If you have a need to limit the number of chosen answers for other types of items, however, you will need to use another method.

The first consideration is whether you’re using a Radio Button or Checkbox item:

The end of the year is the perfect time to perform some account maintenance and review your forms. Overall activity is typically slower for many people, and the year end is a convenient and memorable time to make changes.

Some recommended changes and useful tips include:

• Verify contact information
• Results backup & maintenance
• Review integration settings
• Check for Mass Email Permissions
• Refresh form content & styles