Creating a Form and Managing Form Fields

Overview

The Forms Manager allows you to set up any number of forms for different purposes that can then be used and reused on any number of web pages on your web portal.  For more information on setting up a web portal page to display a form, please see the article on Using the Web Portal Forms Manager

Generally, these forms can contain any of the following:

• General Attributes (all types are supported) - You may add an attribute category in one entry, or, individual attributes.
• Auto-Update Attributes - These attributes can auto-update with a date when the page is saved.
• HTML - HTML may contain instructions or information as well as HTML text formatting information - see our primer on Basic HTML.
• Document Upload widgets - These are used to have the guest upload a document to the document library in their profile.

Additional features that can be utilized for fields include:

• Specify a Page Number to support multi-page forms.
• Specify whether the field is a required response.
• Add Help-text below the field to assist with input.
• Specify a default value to save into the field unless overridden.
• Show or Hide individual fields to allow invisibly setting hidden fields.

The Forms Manager

The forms manager is accessed from Gnosis Pro under "Settings > Administration | Website & System Administration > Dynamic Form Management.

Running the forms manager opens a browser window that looks like the following:

On this management page, you may create new forms, edit existing forms, preview form content and delete unwanted forms.  As the form manager does not directly manage attributes, you may include the attributes in the form, but editing and deleting the form will not affect any attributes or attribute data.

Editing a Form

With a form open, you may use the form controls to adjust the content and behavior of the forms:

1. Form action buttons to display and navigate forms and add new form fields.
2. Page selection for multi-page forms
3. Form Field Move & Delete options (you may also change field order by grabbing the move handle to the left of each field and dragging it to a new location).
4. Field Action Options - Edit, move to a page, and delete.

Adding Attributes and Other Form Elements

Forms created with this tool primarily consist of Attributes, HTML Text, and some special-purpose fields such as the Document uploader.  To add a form element, press the "Add Item" button.  This will present the following options:

• "New Attribute" requests that you identify the attribute to be added by ID number or Alias Name.
   
• "New Attribute Bulk" allows you to add multiple attributes at the same time by adding Attribute Category Alias Names or IDs, each separated by a comma. If you are adding an attribute category, you also have the following two options:
  
  • A Single Category Entry: The forms manager can reference a specified category and automatically display all attributes in the category when a person is filling out the form.  This option does not allow you to set up individual attributes with respect to the way they appear or the text associated with them but does make it easier to build the form by only having to manage category-level entries.
  • Check on the "Replace categories with individual attributes" checkbox to have the form manager automatically insert each individual attribute in the specified category(s) rather than have them all represented by a single category-level entry.  This approach allows you to set up options such as Auto-fill, default values, read-only, completion required, and override for standard attribute prompts.
    
    
• "File Upload" supports the web visitor uploading a file to their personal document library in their record.  You can pre-set the category and file name that you want the file to use when uploaded.
  
  
• "New HTML Block" allows you to specify (using HTML) formatted text and images to add to the form.  To use this feature, you will need a basic knowledge of HTML (see our primer here), or use a Third-Party external HTML editor to create the HTML for the content to be displayed.  As shown below, for this above-referenced editor, simply enter and format content as desired and then copy/paste the HTML code on the right into the form field.
  

Using the Auto-Set Options

When adding date or drop-down list attributes to a form, sometimes you may want to automatically set the value without asking for user input. A typical scenario where this is used is to record the most recent online update date for the form.  You can do this using the "Public Auto Set" option on the Attribute settings popup.  The three options are:

• None: The attribute will not be auto-set
• Always: The attribute will be set to a new value every time the form is submitted
• Only If Not Set: The attribute will only be set if it does not already have a value.  This might be used to record the first time the form is submitted.

When an Auto-set option is set, you will also select a value for the "Auto Set Value" - either a format of date/time or a list item if the attribute is a select from list type.

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