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How to Limit Who Can Submit a Form

Online forms are public and can be submitted by anyone by default, but FormSmarts offers a number of options to restrict and control who can submit them.

This article outlines different approaches to limit who can submit a form that are suitable for a number of situations, from restricting a form within a loosely defined group of users at large to sharing a form with team members within the confines of your FormSmarts account. We even show you how a user can share an individual form with someone else so they can complete it together.

Open a Form to Members of an Informal Group

In this first example, we exclusively open a form to staff within a company or a specific group within an organization, like students or staff at a university. User will have to provide their corporate or university-provided email address on the form.

Email Address Verification

To ensure individuals submit their own email address (and to verify their identity), we take advantage of a FormSmarts option that requires someone submitting a form to verify their email address or mobile phone number before they can proceed. FormSmarts verifies an email address or phone number by sending a one-time password (OTP) that the person then has to enter on the form.

Please try this email verification demo.

This FormSmarts feature allows a FormSmarts account administrator to restrict verification emails to addresses on a specific domain or sub-domain, so we can for example selectively open a form to:

• Students at a university or college with an email address on the sub-domain students.example.edu
• Staff at a university with an email address on example.edu
• Staff with a corporate email address on example.com

For help settings this up, contact FormSmarts Support.

Email or Phone Verification on a Registration Form

Although not the subject of this article, FormSmarts members can also use email address or phone number verification to create a signup form for a site or online service.

By Invitation Only: Authorize Each Form Submission

FormSmarts lets you define how to authenticate a form user with their email address or phone number and who is allowed to submit a form.

FormSmarts members can also set the precise rules to authorize or reject users based on their email or mobile number. This is the most flexible option, but requires basic coding skills (we can help if needed).

• When someone submits a form, FormSmarts sends a request to a cloud function or script on your website (webhook)
• The request contains the person's email or phone number and a one-time password (OTP)
• The script or cloud function checks the email or phone number against a list of users authorized to submit the form and sends the OTP to the person so they may complete the form submission.
• It can alternatively automatically authorize the form submission to proceed with a call to FormSmarts API

Please try our this phone verification and custom authorization demos. The custom authorization demo only requires a phone number to be verified the first time it is used on a form.

For help settings this up, contact FormSmarts Support.

Private Form

Make a form private when you want to restrict who can submit it to your teammates.

Private Forms work best in teams and organizations that share a FormSmarts account and each team member has their own FormSmarts sub-user. Learn more about Private Forms.

• A Private Form can only be viewed and submitted by sub-users (invited users) within a FormSmarts account
• The user must be logged in to FormSmarts in order to submit a Private Form
• A Private Form response is associated with the user who submitted it
• The identity of the user who submitted a form entry is visible in email notifications and in reports

Please try this demo with the account alias, username and password given here.

Sharing a Form Submission

Finally, FormSmarts allows an individual submitting a form to share it with someone else — so the second person can, for example, review the information entered and co-sign it.

This is typically useful in application forms.

Posted on Jun 5th, 2020 in online form.
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Tags: collaboration, sharing, team

How to Edit Submissions Made on Your Forms

There are occasionally situations when you need to amend the information submitted on a form:

• A customer reaches out after submitting a form, realizing they had entered incorrect information
• Some time after they registered for an event via one of your forms, an individual contacts you saying they had moved or changed phone numbers

Instead of asking the customer to submit the form again, find the reference number of the form submission and view it online, then use the Edit and Revision History buttons illustrated above to update the relevant data fields.

If you’re viewing the form entry on a mobile device, the Edit and Revision History buttons may be hidden to avoid cluttering the page. Tap Show Editing in the main menu to show the buttons.

Editing & Revision History

When you update a data field, the new value will show online, in PDF documents and in Excel reports. But it's important to understand that the original value submitted and all changes are kept on FormSmarts and can be viewed in the Revision History.

In the example below, we've changed the email address associated with a form entry where Sheryl was mistyped as Sherly, making the address invalid. The characters removed (crossed out with red background) and added (underlined with green background) are clearly visible.

Built for Teams

Each modification made to a form entry is associated with the FormSmarts user (account admin or invited user) who made it, allowing all users to know who made each change. In the example above, the amendment was made by the user viewing the changes, noted as Me. Other users would see that person’s name.

Regulatory & Compliance Considerations

Auditing and Compliance

When an individual submits an online form, they may be under contractual obligation to provide accurate information — or need to certify that the information submitted is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge.

Although FormSmarts allow members to alter the information originally submitted on a form, changes are made in such a way that we preserve the original value submitted and all changes made.

• Changes are append-only, they cannot be undone or retracted
• The precise change is preserved
• Each revision is associated with the user who made it
• A timestamp is kept for auditing

GDPR

If you are processing information about individuals in the European Union, use this feature to allow users to exercise their legal right to rectification (right to have inaccurate personal data rectified) under the GDPR regulation.

Posted on May 4th, 2020 in collaboration.
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Tags: form response, form results, form submission

How to Make a Booking Form

A booking form allows FormSmarts members to offer a fixed number of tickets for booking on a form, like on this demo.

To make a booking form, first create an event on FormSmarts with a preset number of slots (i.e. tickets, seats), then make a standard form with the form builder and add a booking field to it.

Create an Event

To create an event, sign in to the API console and submit a POST request to the URL https://formsmarts.com/api/v1/events specifying:

• An event label like Online Security Class
• The number of slots available for booking
• The date & time of the event and its timezone

We can for example create an Online Security Class event with 100 seats that takes place on June 12, 2020, 1pm Eastern time with the following Request Data:

label = Online Security Class
slots = 100
date = 2020-06-12 13:00:00
timezone = America/New_York

Add a Booking Field

Add a text box to the form, setting its Allowed Content property to Booking.

Guests should now be able to book tickets through a booking widget shown when they tap, click or move the form’s focus to the booking field.

A booking field only allows booking one ticket by default. You can configure the number of slots that can be booked and other settings with the Booking API.

Find Out More…

Read about how the booking system works and how to manage events, view the status of bookings or cancel a booking.

If you would like to create a booking form but your current FormSmarts package doesn’t support this feature, please ask us for a free trial.

We welcome your comments, questions and feedback.

Posted on Jan 7th, 2020 in booking.
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Tags: booking, howto, payment

How to Create a Bill

FormSmarts offers a really simple way to create bills that customers can pay online: just create a billing form like the one below, then use a tool on FormSmarts.com each time you want to generate a bill for a specific client and amount.

Make a Billing Form

We only need to create the billing form once, we’ll then reuse it each time we need to create an invoice.

Here our example has two main input fields: an email field to uniquely identify the customer and a text box for the amount we want to bill them for. You can view and test the billing form. We’ve also made a slightly more elaborate example that allows a client to add a gratuity with a second amount box.

Note how both the Email and Amount Due fields are fixed: the values preset in the pre-filled URL can’t be changed by the client. We’ll cover how to do this in the next section, for now I need to explain how to set up the Amount Due input field so FormSmarts recognizes it as a fee to be paid by the bill recipient.

Add an Amount Box

1. Add a Text Box form control (widget)
2. Name the input field Amount Due ($ USD). The ‘Amount Due’ label can be whatever you prefer, but you must stick to the same format and specify the currency as shown.
3. Set its Allowed Content value to Positive Number
4. If you’ve already configured PayPal integration, you’re all set. Otherwise your need to associate your PayPal account with FormSmarts.

Create a Pre-Filled Bill

When you need to create a new bill, sign in to FormSmarts’ API Console to generate a new Pre-Filled URL with a fixed email and amount. Send the URL to the client in an email or text as a bill.

• Set the Method to POST (Create)
• Set the API Endpoint to https://formsmarts.com/api/v1/forms/Form_ID/prefilled_url, replacing Form_ID with the ID of your form.
• Enter the Request Data as illustrated below and described in the documentation, then submit.

Preset Values & Make Fields Read-Only

We enter the preset value of the email and amount fields under Request Data, and make sure those can’t be modified by the user:

• Pre-fill the first input field on the form (pf_f1) with the value blackhole@syronex.com
• Preset the second input field (pf_f2) to 187.59
• Prevent the user from modifying either fields by making them read-only (pf_ro1=1, pf_ro2=2)

pf_f1=blackhole@syronex.com
pf_f2=187.59
pf_ro1=1
pf_ro2=2

Find out more about how to pre-fill your forms and how to automatically generate pre-filled URLs if you need to create too many bills to do it manually.

Posted on Nov 18th, 2019 in payment form.
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Tags: bill, invoice, payment, paypal, pre-filled url

How Notes Can Help You Manage Form Entries

Notes help you keep track of what you need to do about a form entry. When you access an entry on FormSmarts, notes are listed alongside the information submitted.

Notes are especially useful for accounts with multiple users. A note is associated with the person who posted it and all users can see all notes, so notes allow a conversation between users centered around the form entry.

Who Can Benefit from Notes?

Customers who needs to process or review form responses one by one (e.g. application forms, order forms) can benefit from using notes to:

• Record a decision that was made about an entry and keep track of how a decision was reached
• Highlight elements that require further consideration
• Record the status of an application (“Pending Ann’s agreement.”) or registration (“Paid check, deposited today.”)
• Support a discussion between users about a form entry.

Even when form responses usually don’t need to be reviewed individually like with registration forms, notes can help document exceptions and incidents like “Chargeback after credit card was stolen. Paid by bank transfer.” or “Attendee changed to Jeanette Bowman”.

How to View Notes & Annotate a Form Entry

There are several ways to access a form entry online:

• Click the View online & add notes link in the email notification FormSmarts sends you when a form is submitted
• Use the links in the right-most column of Excel reports
• Scan the QR code from a confirmation email or PDF receipt provided by a customer.

Who Can Add Notes?

All users, both the account owner and invited users in the same account can add notes. If a forms was set up to send submissions to more than one person, a separate user should be created for each receiver so they can log in to FormSmarts and post comments.

• The account owner can create notes, edit their own notes, and delete anyone’s notes
• Invited users who were given access to individual entries pertaining to a given form can add notes and edit their own notes (and delete them provided they have write permission).

Closing Notes…

• Notes have keyboard shortcuts: Create a note with Alt + C, save it in the editor with Shift + Enter.
• If an entry is deleted, all notes associated with it are also removed.

Posted on Nov 1st, 2018 in collaboration.
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Tags: collaboration, email notification, form submission, team

Changing the Color of Form Buttons

The latest version of the Form Builder now allows FormSmarts members to change the color of buttons on their online forms.

The Buttons Color setting only applies to forms embedded on customers websites. Standalone forms accessed via their FormSmarts.com or f8s.co URL use a standard color scheme.

The color of buttons can only be changed on the current version of our forms. If you’re still using the old one, you probably shouldn’t. The current version is more secure and offers a better user experience. Please update your site.

Like most customizations, this functionality requires at least a Starter account.

As part of this form builder update, we slightly reorganized how information is presented in the Form Details screen illustrated above. The form layout and color settings that were in the Basics tab in earlier versions have been moved to a new Layout & Colors tab.

Posted on Aug 24th, 2018 in online form.
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Tags: embed, form design

When Should You Export Forms to Native Excel (XLSX) instead of CSV?

FormSmarts allows customers to collect online form submissions on the cloud and download aggregated entries in a format, CSV, which is supported by all spreadsheet applications (including Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers and Apache OpenOffice) and many other data analysis tools. We’ve recently added the option to export form responses to native Excel format (.xlsx or .xls) instead of the default CSV for Excel.

The main reason we decided to support the new export format is to solve an issue with phone number fields that may not be displayed correctly when Excel opens a CSV file. The Excel XLSX format also has a few other benefits, but we expect most members to continue using the default CSV format in the foreseeable future. Please read on to find out if and when you would benefit from using the new format.

Benefits of the Excel .xlsx Format

Phone Number Fields

Provided you have set the Allowed Content (data type) of phone input fields to Phone Number, FormSmarts stores phone numbers as character strings rather than numbers to ensure any leading zero is not dropped from phone numbers. Unfortunately, Excel interprets character strings that only contain digits as numbers, thus removing leading zeros. Members who collect phone numbers on their forms, especially in locales where phone numbers may start with a zero (some US states and part of Asia & Europe), should set the Export Format to the Native Excel option in the Report Generator settings, as illustrated above.

If you find out when opening a CSV spreadsheet from FormSmarts that leading zeros were dropped from phone numbers, update the export format and create another report. Provided phone input fields were correctly created as phone number fields, the correct information, with any leading zeros, is stored on FormSmarts. No information was lost, any errors is due to the Excel import process and can be easily fixed by generating a new report after changing the export format.

All settings of the Report Generator but the timezone are kept in your browser, so as long as you use the same browser and allow FormSmarts to store information in your browser, your export preference will be saved from one session to the next.

Form Results with Data in a Non Western-European Language

When a spreadsheet contains data in a language other than English or another Western-European language, customers need to make sure when opening an Excel/CSV report from FormSmarts they select the UTF-8 (Unicode) encoding in Excel’s Import Wizard. The content of the spreadsheet may otherwise not be displayed properly. Alternatively, exporting form entries to a native Excel (.xlsx, .xls) spreadsheet removes the need to select the correct text encoding.

Note that FormSmarts stores data with a universal encoding (UTF-8) that supports all languages, so if you find out that a report appears corrupted when opening the spreadsheet, open the file again and select the UTF-8 encoding or switch the export format to Native Excel: no data was lost or corrupted.

Other Benefits

The native Excel format offers a few other benefits and we expect their number to grow in the future:

• The URLs of form attachments are clickable links
• The FormSmarts Reference Number (the penultimate column in the spreadsheet) links to the form response on FormSmarts. Use this link to add a note to a form submission, check where it was submitted from (IP address, approximate location), export it to PDF, print it, delete it and more. As we add more functionality to the page showing individual form responses (like the ability to tag and edit a form response), we expect more and more customers to rely on links in the spreadsheet as part of their workflow.

The native Excel format is supported with Business Plus accounts and above.

Posted on Jul 26th, 2018 in online form.
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Tags: excel, form results, form to excel

Personalize the Payment Confirmation Email

FormSmarts now allows customers¹ to change the text part of the confirmation email we send to form users once their payment has been confirmed, as highlighted below.

If you use FormSmarts for online event registration forms, edit the confirmation message to remind attendees of the date and time of the event, provide information about the venue location, and ask them to print a copy of the message or have it ready for inspection on their phone on the date of the event.

To edit the confirmation message, log in to the form builder and click/tap the pen icon corresponding to the form you would like to edit, then visit the Submit Actions tab.

You can emphasize a section of the text with bold or italics and you may include links and bullet points. The text can be formatted using the buttons provided or with the same Wiki-like syntax you can use elsewhere on your forms.

Use the Preview button to visualize the formatted output of the message.

As always, we value your feedback about this feature.

Note: If you have verified your site and uploaded the logo of your organization to FormSmarts, it will appear at the top of the message.

¹ The confirmation email can only be customized with a Business Plus account or above.

Posted on Sep 22nd, 2017 in payment form.
4 Comments
Tags: confirmation email, e-ticket

How to Issue an Invoice or Support Check & Cash Payments

Your can allow form users to get an invoice by specifying prices, fees and quantities directly on a form. When FormSmarts detects an amount of money on a form, we compute the total amount and show it on the confirmation page, the PDF receipt, and in the confirmation email.

FormSmarts helps you generate invoices and manage check and cash payments by showing the total amount due on the printable Summary Page of a form and in the confirmation email and PDF receipt that users can get on that page.

• Use this to generate an invoice when someone submits an order form
• If you’re using our popular payment form feature to collect online payments on your membership and registration forms, chances are that some of your customers will want to pay by check, cash on site or by any other offline payment methods. Use this feature to offer an offline payment option for your online payment forms.

When a form is set up to show a Summary Page when submitted, users may:

• Request a confirmation email
• Download a PDF receipt
• Print a copy of the information submitted with the form

Fees and priced items must be formatted with the FormSmarts payment integration syntax.

As illustrated above, the printout, PDF receipt and confirmation message all include a QR code to help you process payments more reliably and effectively.

Check Payments

1. Ask users to enclose a printout of the Summary Page with their check
2. Scan the QR code with any phone or tablet to access the corresponding form entry on FormSmarts
3. Update the form entry’s payment status with a tag and add a note to record the check number

Cash Payments on Site

The Summary Page can also help you manage cash payments by allowing guests to show their confirmation email or PDF receipt (a.k.a. e-ticket) on their phone (or their printed receipt), that staff can scan to update the registration on FormSmarts. Since the amount due also appears in form response notification emails and PDFs, check-in staff can also reconcile e-tickets with the list of notification emails or registration PDFs even if there is no network connectivity.

How to Make an Offline Payment Form

1. Create an online payment form with fees formatted as documented
2. When you’re satisfied with the result, make a copy of the form with the Duplicate Form button ( icon) in the Forms Tab of the form builder
3. Rename the form and set On Submission to “Show summary with print, email & PDF options” in the Submit Actions tab of the Form Details screen.

The Summary Page supports the same payment-related features as payment forms (except those for recurring payments), including discounts and discount codes.

Can I Accept Online & Offline Payments on the Same Form?

One of the benefits of FormSmarts payment integration is that we won’t notify you until the person has paid so you don’t have to check this yourself each time. If you have a form allowing both online and offline payments, you won’t know which customers have paid online, so you’ll have to review each and every form response.

For this reason, we recommend that you create a copy of the form specifically for check payments and use the Summary Page setup described in the previous section, especially if there are several charges and fees on the form. You’ll then only have to track payments for entries pertaining to that form. You can make a copy of a form in a click with the Duplicate Form button in the upper right-hand corner of the form builder.

Offering a Check Payment Option on an Online Payment Form

If you are making a simple payment form that has a single payment option, you can alternatively include a check payment option on the form using radio buttons or a dropdown list with two options:

Registration Fee ($30 USD)
Registration Fee (pay by check)

If the user doesn’t select the online payment option, FormSmarts will skip the payment step and send you the form entry immediately.

Note that people paying by check won’t receive any confirmation email.

Posted on Aug 21st, 2017 in payment form.
2 Comments
Tags: e-ticket, payment, pdf receipt, summary page

How to Make a Membership Form

Did you know you can offer paid memberships through a simple online form?

If you thought offering online memberships was challenging because it involved a recurring payment each year (or month), you’d be wrong. Making a membership or subscription form with FormSmarts is (almost) as easy as making a one-time payment form.

Creating a Recurring Membership Form with FormSmarts

What Is a Recurring Membership?

Before discussing how to make a membership form, let’s first define what a membership is: A member of an organization or membership site may take part in the activities or otherwise claim the benefits exclusively offered by the organization or site to its members during the period of time covered by the membership (one year or month or any other period of time) by paying a membership fee. To remain an active member after the initial period of time, a member needs to pay again. Because most members want renew their membership, membership fees tend to be recurring payments.

When someone signs up for a recurring payment, also called subscription, they agree to be charged a fee at the time they subscribe and again after each period of time specified — until they cancel their membership.

How Can I Make a Subscription or Recurring Membership Form?

The short answer is: simply by writing “Recurring Membership ($100 USD/year)” on a form. FormSmarts will understand that the person filling out the form should be charged US$100 each year for a membership called “Recurring Membership”.

Like with other types of payment forms, you may add a recurring fee to a form in a radio button option, check box, drop-down list option or text block.

FormSmarts supports the following recurring periods and (optional) number of installments:

Recurring Period

• Recurring Monthly Subscription ($15 USD/month)
• Recurring 6-Month Membership ($60 USD/6 months)
• Recurring Yearly Membership ($100 USD/year)
• options: day(s), week(s), month(s), year(s)

Recurring Times/Number of Installments

• Quarterly Subscription (4 x $20 USD/3 months)
• Optional, if Recurring Times is not specified, the recurring payment runs until it is canceled
• Think of Recurring Times (4 in this case) as a number of installments

Multiple Recurring Fees

You may allow users to select more than one recurring fee on a form like on the membership form shown on the screenshot above (feel free to try the demo), but all fees must then have the same Recurring Period and Recurring Times.

When someone selects multiple fees, FormSmarts will charge them each time for the total amount.

Offering a Trial Period

Many membership sites offer new members a trial period allowing them to access the site at a low or no cost before having to pay the full membership fee. A fee with terms (i.e. Recurring Period and Recurring Times) different from the first recurring fee listed on a form is interpreted by FormSmarts as a trial period. Our membership form demo has a trial period.

Integration with Other FormSmarts Features

• If cloud storage is enabled, the details of a membership and all associated payments are listed on FormSmarts on the page corresponding to the initial form entry. A link is provided in every email notification.
• FormSmarts sends a confirmation email to the subscriber after each successful payment
• FormSmarts notifies the account owner when a recurring payment is received

Posted on Oct 20th, 2016 in payment form.
2 Comments
Tags: payment integration, paypal

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