If this was a bread recipe, now would be the time to start mixing your favourite ingredients, kneading the dough and shaping loaves. 🍞😋 It's an imperfect analogy, but one which parallels the beginnings of creating a form: combining the right ingredients and being a little artistic (just put more picturesquely for inspiration).👨🏻‍🍳 Accordingly, this article will touch upon three topics: how to establish the core parameters of a form, design the input fields and set up automations to do stuff better and faster.

Thankfully, the one thing form creation and baking don't share in common is that the former is fast, easy and clean – but read along to see for yourself! 😃

➜ How do I start a form?

➜ How do I configure the settings of a form?

➜ How do I design the data entry area of a form?

➜ How can I automate follow-ups and leverage form submissions?

To create a new form, access the Forms overview and click Create a new form on the upper right-hand corner. A pop-up will be opened with one variable: NAME – so insert a name, tap Create form and add more info and you'll be immediately thrown into the Details tab of your new form.

Another thing you can do, to cut corners, is duplicate a saved form. Again in the Forms overview, click the icon Duplicate form, name the copy, and press Duplicate form and add more info. Likewise, you'll be redirected to the Details tab of the duplicate.

You can learn more about the Forms overview here. Once you know how to create forms from scratch, it follows that you’ll also be able to edit existing ones, so let's now go through every step of creating a brand new form. 💪

The Details tab is where you provide the basic details of your form:
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​Name — Official name of the form, to be displayed in the Forms overview and in the landing page. Pick a name that's unique enough to be told apart from similar forms.
​Success message — Define a custom success message to be displayed to users when the form is submitted.
​Redirect to — Redirect users to another page after the form is submitted (e.g., your school's official website, etc.) by inserting the URL.

Image — Upload a background image to go behind the form on the landing page. If no image is uploaded, the system will use the same one as in the login page. More information here.
​Submissions open on —  Choose the date from which submissions are open.
​Close submissions? —  Schedule a date to close the submissions, or leave blank if you want the form to remain permanently available (particularly useful for brochure requests, to give one example).
​Default source category — Pick a source category to represent the leads originating from form submissions, as the system automatically creates profiles for submitters whose email addresses aren't yet registered. Tracking and measuring the source of your leads lets you know what's working and what's inefficient. Learn more about tracking profile source here. 📊
​Created by — Author of the form (auto-filled and not-editable).
​Created at — Time of creation (auto-filled and not-editable).

The Schema tab is where you go to create the numerous entry fields that you want to include in your web form. In other words, the schema is the actual form, in the traditional sense of the word. ✏️

Sections help you divide the content into specific blocks of information, while standard and fancy fields offer a variety of elements you can employ, such as radio buttons, checkboxes, dropdown lists, etc. The fields First name, Last name and Email address are compulsory, but other than that you're free to execute your vision.

The gist of building a schema is to drag and drop fields into place from the field palette, configuring the details on the left panel (Field title, Instructions for the user, Who can edit this field?, etc.), and then clicking Save. However, we have a whole article on this area, which is a highly recommended read if you wish to venture into the world of schema creation: How schema fields work. You can preview your work as you make changes by clicking Open landing page on the top right-hand corner.

The Automation tab gives you the opportunity to automate a variety of tasks to take place when a specific trigger event occurs. For instance: Send email to profile, Add profile to class, Send notification to, etc. Thus, you can send automatic replies to brochure requests, acknowledgement emails to Contact Us forms, and so on. Such automations are commonly referred to as automated workflows, because they consist of a sequence of selected activities in which one action (the trigger) directly causes another (the outcome).

For forms, the primary trigger is always the submission of a form, but you can stipulate additional conditions based on the responses received to one or more questions in the schema.

Not only is this a strategy that maximises efficiency by being less error-prone and more immediate, but it also frees you from repetitive work – 'cause you gotta set yourself free before releasing the form into the world! 🎵😜 Back on a serious note, we invite you to read this article to learn more about automated workflows.
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PUBLISHED: February 18, 2020
​LAST UPDATED: January 21, 2021 at 4:55 p.m.