Three Secrets of Form Builder

Oh that Form Builder...

Webforms, as you know, are the way in which your constituents interact with your Databank. By creating your webforms and directing your constituents and donors to them, you can do amazing things and gather exactly the data you need.

But there are secrets in the Form Builder (and only cat gifs can help me explain properly) 

Learning to use these "secret features" will help you bring your Form use to a whole new level.

1. Form Redirects

Here's the scene, you have a special fundraising campaign proceeding through the end of the month. The campaign ends at precisely 11:59:59 pm on the last day. After that, you want the fundraising campaign sunsetted, and any further donations to go to your standard fundraising efforts. How do you handle this?

The first option is to stay up, staring at the clock, and change the campaign in your form at precisely 11:59:59 pm. In other words, this...

But there is a better way.

Use the Form Expiration field to give your form a day and time to expire. By default, this just gives anyone arriving at your form an expiration message.

Form Builder Secret:

Use the the Form-Expired Message field to redirect to another one of your forms! How do you do this? Write in the Form-Expired message field, "Redirect to [form name]". 

Boom! That's it. You now have a form which will expire at a precise moment, and all following traffic will be redirected to the form of your choice.

The Form Expiration controls are found by clicking the Properties Tab in your Form.

2. Find out when anyone changes their record through a form

The ability to have records updated through interactions with your form is a huge boon. It helps ensure that your Databank has the most up to date and accurate information available. Letting the program handle these changes is a great option for the majority of your records, but for major donors you probably want to know when their records change. 

Luckily, you can. 

Form Builder Secret:

Every Form has a Advanced Options section where you can enter in an email address to learn of changes to member records. Further, when this option is enabled, all changes to the personal information is recorded in a Contact Record as well.

Now go back to your bad, strategizing self and don't worry about those major donors.

The Advanced Options are found at the bottom of the page when clicking the Personal Tab in your Form.

3. Personalized Contact Notes

The default contact note from filling out a web form is the name of the Form itself. While this is usually sufficient, when someone has a long history with your organization, their contact record can get a bit overwhelming and soon you start looking like this when faced with the prospect of a contact record query.

We have your back.

Form Builder Secret:

Customize the contact record generated by the Form. By customizing the Contact By, Type, Method and Note fields, you can create very specific Contact Records in your records. Using these Contacts, you can more easily parse, query and segment your records based upon the Forms they have completed.

The Contact Record generated by your Forms can be configured in the Contact Tab of your Form.