When creating a Form, several attributes can be configured including:
- Form Name
- Form Description
- Visibility
- Business Process
- Start At / End At dates
- Allow Deferred Submission (yes/no)
- Require Approval (yes/no)
- Style
- Layout
- Submit Button Text
- Advanced options
These attributes are explained in more detailed:
Form Name
This is the label displayed at the top of a form when shown to a user.
Form Description
This is a description that is only seen by administrators to understand the intended purpose of a form. Since the form name shown to a user may be very basic “Application Questions”, the description provides a way to understand, for example, what application it was being used for.
Visibility
By default, a new form is available to “All Users”, that is, everyone associated with Texas A&M University (who has a NetID and password for CAS authentication).
Options also exist to make the form only available to people who are defined in Get Involved as members of the organization or to “None”. The “None” option hides the form from the organization’s Forms page in Get Involved, but it may still be used for special purposes such as event RSVPs (which require the user to indicate their intention to attend) or for other custom workflows.
“Public” forms (that don’t require a person to have a TAMU NetID) are not currently available.
Schedule Form
You can schedule a form to automatically activate or deactivate at a specified date and time. You can also designate a message that will be shown when someone tries to access the form before its start time and a different message to show if access is attempted after the form has ended.
Allow Deferred Submissions
This option lets a user save their form data to retrieve and modify at a later time until they finalize it by ultimately clicking the submit button.
It also lets you specify how many times a particular user can submit a form. For a membership application, you probably only want a person to submit one set of responses for a form, but you may want to offer a form to solicit evaluative comments after an event that allows attendees to submit multiple comments.
Submit Button Text
By default the button to submit a form is labeled “Save”. You can change this to better suit your needs. As a best practice, it should be kept short (no more than three words). As an example, you may want the button to say “Submit”. Alternatively, “Next”, “Continue” or “Complete This Form” may be better than “Submit” if the form is just one part of a larger packet required to submit a membership application where “Submit” may suggest the entire packet would be immediately passed on for review.