Gravity Forms

Accessing Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is a plugin installed on the department WordPress sites (departmentname.kzoo.edu)

To start working with forms, click on one of the Forms icons, either on the dashboard menu (located on the left sidebar) or top the top toolbar

What to Expect

Form Creation

To successfully add a form on your website, let’s learn the essential steps in form creation as an SCE. The following steps outline the three high level steps that need to happen to make your form accessible to your users. Next, we’ll get into the details with the form creation guide.

  1. You will first create a form
  2. Adjust settings using Gravity Forms (there will be many settings to adjust)
  3. Create a page for the form to live on you might want to title the page the same or similar to your form title.
  4. Finally, on that page you’ll use the Gravity Forms block to embed the form on the page.

Entry Management

Form Management

Use the c

Guide to Form Creation

1. Create a New Form

You will first create a form from scratch or by selecting a template.

Be prepared to pause and adjust settings using Gravity Forms (there will be many settings to adjust) before adding fields.

2. Adjust and Tailor Your Settings

Critical Information

SCEs will not receive emailed form submissions unless they adjust notifications and confirmations among other desired settings.

Form Notifications

Notifications tell the SCE or department (otherwise known as recipient) when someone has completed their electronic form.

All forms will start with a pre-filled admin notification so it is imperative that you specify notification recipients for each form that you create. If you do not adjust these settings the form submission will go to Web Services.

Listed below are the steps to adjust the recipient of notifications and how to personalize notifications as well.

  1. After selecting the “Form Settings” option select the Notifications tab
  2. Name: If you would like, feel free to alter the notification name.
  3. Send To Email: Under “Send to Email” all notifications will be pre-filled to {admin_email}. You will need to change this to the email(s) that should be receiving this notification. To add multiple e-mail addresses be sure to separate each one with a comma.
  4. From Name: Set the name displayed to the recipient when receiving the notification. SCEs can use the merge tags options (located to the right of the field) to select which fields from their form to insert.
  5. From Email: Insert the desired email that will be listed as the sender within the notification. If it is kept as {admin_email} the recipient can expect to see WebServices@kzoo.edu as the from email.
  6. Subject:This is the subject that will appear to the recipient when receiving the notification.
  7. Message: The message will start with the {all_fields} option which will display all of the form options set. SCEs can also customize this message and use merge tags as well.

Form Settings

Great job, taking care of those form notification settings! You have ensured that user submissions will go to the appropriate party.

A nice feature of Gravity Forms is that you have the opportunity to customize each form that you create. Why is that important? Because having the ability to customize gives you as an SCE more control to make your process what you need. Now let’s learn about more general form settings.

Confirmations

Confirmations tell the SCE or department (otherwise known as recipient) when someone has completed their electronic form.

All forms will start with a pre-filled admin notification so it is imperative that you specify notification recipients for each form that you create. If you do not adjust these settings the confirmation will read, “Thanks for contacting us! We will get in touch with you shortly.”

Instruction
  • Confirmations List Page – The Confirmation list page allows you to see all the confirmations for a particular form.
  • Configuring Confirmations – Instruction to change your confirmation message, as well as create custom confirmation messages based on the content that is submitted.
  • Conditional Logic for Confirmations – Instruction to use conditional logic to display information to users that is dependent on their selections within the form.
Best Practices
  • Tailor your confirmation messages – Each form has a default confirmation message that states “Thanks for contacting us! We will get in touch with you shortly,” but be sure to adjust that accordingly. Useful information for a user includes:
    • Consider using a merge tag to address the user directly.
    • State that their form has been submitted successfully
    • Next steps
    • Point of contact for questions

3. Make the Form Available to Users

  • Create a page for the form to live on. You might want to title the page the same or similar to your form title.
  • Assign the appropriate parent page to this page.

4. Embed & Share Your Form

Use the Gravity Forms block to embed the form on the page. To share your form simply provide the user with the URL to this particular page.

Critical Information

The Gravity Forms block automatically assigns the form title on your page as an H3. If you do not have an H2 leading to the form, you will need to hide the title through the Gravity Forms block settings (located on the right sidebar). You can do so by:

  1. Uncheck the Form Title toggle option. You’ll notice the title disappear in the editor view.
  2. Manually add an H2 above your form. A common option for this heading title is the same as the the form itself.

Guide to Entry Management

View Your Form Entries

Setting up your form is only part of the form process. What you probably want most from that form are “submissions”, or what Gravity Forms refers to as an entry. Explore the documentation that covers all the basics of finding, reviewing and manipulating your entries.

Entries Instruction and Documentation

Check Spam

It’s a

  • Information on when something is considered spam and what to do about it.

Export and Download Entries

  • How you can do it and walk through the entire interface

Gravity Forms Further Instruction

These links go to Gravity Forms documentation on various topics

It’s all in the details…

Gravity Forms offers many settings to make your field just right. Here are some settings that may improve the user experience for both your user and your department receiving the information.

Helpful links

Settings Reference – https://docs.gravityforms.com/category/user-guides/settings-reference/

Requiring Users to Log into your Form

To require a user to log into your form go to Form Settings and check the “require user to be logged in” box under the Restrictions section. Add a login message such as “Please [login_link] to use this form”. The shortcode [login_link] will be replaced by a link to the login form that will bring the user back to the form after logging in.

Please note: if you would like to restrict your form to be completed by Faculty and Staff ONLY, you will need to restrict access to the page that the form is on.

Exporting Form Entries

  1. Hover over Forms on the left side navigation menu and click on Import/Export.
  2. Be sure the Export Entries tab in selected and select the form you would like to export entry data from. You may only export data from one form at a time.
  3. Under Select Fields check the fields you would like to include in the export
  4. If you would like to filter the entries by adding conditions do so under the Conditional Logic section.
  5. Select a date range (optional). Setting a range will limit the export to entries submitted during that date range. If no range is set, all entries will be exported.
  6. Click the Download Export File to export your entries into a .csv file.

Gravity Forms Extensions

Various extensions are available to make Gravity Forms work even harder for your site. Options include configurable workflows, connected forms, exporting entries as PDFs, Zapier connections and other web hooks, and more. Please contact Web Services for advice, installation, and customized training.