A Complete Guide To Form Settings

Franklin Alves

July 17, 2023 19:26

A comprehensive starter's guide to creating and customizing form settings.

The Forms function of Presence allows you to digitize and streamline many of your current processes. Not only will Forms replace outdated paper processes, they can also combine multiple forms into one by using conditional logic.

First, let’s look at how to access Form Settings. Later, we'll dive into some of the form settings available for use.

Start a new form by hovering over the left navigation menu and click on Create. You can also choose to edit an existing form.

Once the form is open, click on the Settings button, found in the upper right corner:

The Settings button will open up a menu of options:

Click the title or the > to expand and collapse additional options for each section. Below is a deeper dive into each of the form setting categories.

Details

Form Name: This is where you can name your form. Ex: Homecoming Elections. The default for this field will always be “New Form”. We are highly confident that you have way better ideas in mind for names.

Form Description: This field allows for a more in-depth description of what your form will be doing. Ex: “Please use this form to vote for your favorite T-shirt design. Voting will close on October 3rd, 2020.”

Category: This allows you to choose from a list of Form Categories that have been created on your campus. Ex: Survey

Status: You have two options for the status of your form: Active or Draft. “Active” forms are visible within the system depending on the visibility settings you have chosen (more on this below.) “Draft” means you are still working on the form and it cannot be seen by anyone other than you (and us...we can totally see it).

Allow Revisions: After a form has been submitted, any user with access to the response can make revisions and resubmit. Please note, in order to enable revisions, you will need to turn on the "Require Login" setting under the Visibility section.

Note: When re-submitting a revision of a response, it will go through the approval stages again unless the "Skips Approval On Revision" option has been selected for the field that has been revised.

Responses

Response Title: When you are building a form, users with access to the form will be able to see the responses from those who complete it. The Response Title allows owners to choose a specific question from the form as the title of the response. The response title defaults to the responder’s name (which can either be a name or anonymous.) However, you can choose any of the fields on your form to be the response title. For example, if the field “Name of Organization” is a question on your form, you can have the responses show the name of the organization on the response page.

Hide Empty Fields: Fields that are left empty upon submission will not appear on the form response.

Success Action: This field allows you to control what a user sees after they submit the completed form. There are two options:

Success Message: Design a custom message that shows after the form is submitted. The message can be simple text or you can use images, links, and YouTube videos to create eye catching messages.
Success Page: Redirect responders to the website of your choice. Hosting an SGA election? Redirect voters to the SGA Organization page!

Visibility

Require login: When checked, responders will be required to log in before completing the form. If you wish to allow for edits to the response, Require Login must be selected.

Anonymous: When checked, the respondent’s answers are made anonymous so that you can collect data without having names associated with responses. (Great for feedback forms and elections!)

Location: This section allows you to choose how visible your form is to other users.

Respond From Admin: Allows users to respond to the form from within the admin Dashboard instead of just the student portal.
Attached to Organization: Attaching to an organization will make the form visible on the organization’s Presence page. You may attach the form to multiple organizations. Once an organization is selected in this field, you can choose whether or not membership in the selected organization is required in order to view/complete the form.
Attached to Event: Attaching a form to an event will cause a link to the form to appear on the event page. When viewing the event on the Student Portal, viewers can easily click a link directly to the desired form. You may attach the form to multiple events.
Campus Wide: This setting will make the form visible for all campus users and can be found under “forms” on the student portal. Only Campus Administrators can make a form Campus Wide.

Form Sequencing: This option allows you to choose another form for respondents to complete before the current form can be completed and approved. Want your students to complete a pre-registration form before they can fill out an evaluation form? This would be a way to create that workflow.

Availability

The Availability settings allow you to dictate when a form will be available.

Limit Responses

Per User: This limits the number of times a single user can complete the form.
- Note: This can be limited to one. If the single user's response is deleted, they will be able to submit a new response.
Per Form: This limits the number of total responses that can be received. For example, if you want to limit a registration form to the first 25 responders, you would set this field to 25.

Date/Time: This allows you to set time limits on when responses will be accepted for a form. If these fields are left blank, the form will be available immediately and remain open indefinitely.

Access

The Access settings allow you to control who can access and edit your form and its responses.

Who: When granting access to forms, you can decide who can view your form in one of three ways, provided they are active users with administrative permissions in the system:
User: Selecting “User” will grant access to your form to a specific individual. This permission can be granted to multiple users provided they are active in the system.
Role: Access to a form can be granted by Roles including Campus Administrators, Category Administrators, Organization Administrators, or users with Campus View Access. Please note, when granting access to a form based on Role, all users who have this role in the system will have access to your form.
Member Type: When granting access to a form based on member type you will be able to decide what officers of a particular organization will be able to access your form. Once member type is selected, you will then be prompted to choose the officer type from a certain organization in which you would like to grant access to the form. This access will change as the officers change for the organization.

Access Choose the level of access you wish to grant to the selected user(s).

Form Owner: When you create a form, you are automatically designated the form “owner”. Form owners can share, change, or transfer ownership to any active user they choose. They can remove access as well, even from other form owners! It is advisable to select your form owners with care. Choose...wisely.
View: Those granted access are able to view the form and its responses. They cannot make changes to either the form nor the responses.
Edit: Allows those granted access the ability to edit both the form and its responses.
Edit & Share: In addition to View and Edit permissions, those granted Edit & Share access can give access to others. Sharing is caring, after all. Those with Edit & Share can only share access up to the level of access they themselves have.

Approvals & Notifications

Ordering Approvals: You have the ability to either order your approvals or leave them unordered. If you order your approvals, “Person A" will have to approve the response before “Person B” gets notified that they have a form to approve. If you choose unordered approvals, all approvers in the workflow will receive a notification at the same time. The entire form response will be approved when all designated approvers have completed their step. These approvals don't have to happen in a sequenced manner.
Adding Stages: When you click on “add stage” a box appears with a list of actions that will allow you to build an approval workflow. Click on “What” to start creating an approval stage.

User: allows you to choose a specific user to be notified or serve as an approver for the form.
Role: Like the Access section above, this allows you to choose a specific role - Campus Admin, Campus View, Category Admin, or Organization Admin - to approve responses to your form.
Field: The Field option will appear if an Email field has been utilized in the body of the form. An approval request will be sent to the email address or individual linked with the field selected.
Email: A notification or request for approval will be sent to the email address you provide in the approval workflow.
Officers: You will be able to set the officer type (President, Advisor, Treasurer, etc.) as well as the organization you want to be part of the workflow.

Approve vs Notify: The final part of the workflow is determining what the user will need to do. “Approve” asks the user you have selected to approve incoming submissions. “Notify” means the user you selected will simply be notified via email that a submission has been received.

You can further customize the workflow two ways:

Message: Create a custom message for those who are part of the workflow.
Logic: Logic allows you to create approval workflows when specific conditions are in effect. Check out our article on Conditional Logic for more details on this feature.

You can delete any approval stage by clicking on the "X" or you can reorder approvals by using the up and down arrow and dragging the box to your new desired location.

And that's it! You've successfully chosen settings for your new form!