Forms

The Forms app in Aiir makes it easy to access all of the forms on your website. It's also where you can create Form Templates, if you need to re-use the same form structure over and over. Plus, there's a section for blocking nuisance IP addresses from being able to submit forms.

Jump to:

• What's a form?
• Creating a form
• Constructing a form
• Emails
• Closing a form
• Reports
• What appears when you submit
• Form Templates
• Blocked IPs

📥 What is a form?

A form is a type of component that you can embed in a page in Page Manager. Forms let you collect information from a visitor, store it for use later, or have it emailed to anywhere you choose.

Forms are very flexible - you choose what information to collect, what kinds of fields you use, and in what order.

📝 Creating a form

If you're already editing a page in Page Manager, the easiest way to create a form and drop it into your page is by tapping the + button at the top and choosing Form.

From here you can create a new form or select an existing one. You can build or edit a form without leaving the page you're working on.

Alternatively, you can create a new form from the Forms app in the main menu.

There are two options for creating a form: 

• Blank canvas - start with a blank form
• Form Template - start with a template, either the default one provided, or create your own in the Forms app.

☑️ Constructing a form

A form is constructed by adding form items to a list and editing their properties to suit the purpose of the particular form. 

To add a new field to the form, click the green plus icon where you wish to insert the field. 

For a brand-new form, there is a green box to click to insert the first field. 

For example, to add a 'Name' field, click New Item, select Text Box and click the 'Full Name' option. 

Items can be re-ordered by dragging the handles on the right. The required state of a field can easily be changed by clicking the toggle button on the right. 

The submit button and optional reset button can be modified using the section at the bottom of the form. 

These following items can be added to a form: 

Options for items

All items have a  Name option, which usually appears alongside the control.

Many items have a  Required field option, whichensurese the field is completed otherwise the form cannot be submitted.

The  Publish option means the data will be shown if a submission is published underneath the form.

Certain items can be associated with personal data. This means three things:

• The information entered in these fields is personally sensitive and will not be available to Aiir users unless they have the Data Controller privilege.
• If you have made it possible to register for the listener club using the form, the information will be used as part of their membership record. You must have name and email address fields for this to be possible.
• If a person is logged in to the listener club, these fields will be pre-filled using the data in their member record.

File Uploads

Completed  File Upload fields deposit the uploaded file into the selected Media Manager folder. 

Thumbnails are generated for all images uploaded. JPGs are compressed and resized automatically. The maximum size for each file is 10 MB. 

Submission Handling

When a form is submitted, one or many emails can be sent, and the results can be recorded in a database. 

To toggle recording submissions, go to the Submissions section and enable the Record submissions option. Reports for the submissions are available further down the Submissions tab. Stored submissions can also be published, so that they appear underneath the form. Only fields with the 'Publish' option selected will appear publicly. 

✉️ Emails

You can add multiple emails to a form, all of which are sent when the form is submitted.

An email can go to defined recipients, where you enter the email addresses, or the value of a field, where the email will be sent to the address entered by the person submitting the form.

When choosing the field containing the email address, you will only be able to select from text fields or select/radio buttons where  Email Recipient Selector is enabled.

Each email can contain either the results of the form, which is an automatically generated email, or your custom email.

If you choose the custom option, you can include values from form fields in your email. For example, this would allow the email to greet the person by nam, if name is one of the fields in your form.

You must create both an HTML version and text-only version of your custom email.

❌ Closing a form

If you would like to prevent further submissions to a form, you can close it. An alternative message will be shown in place of the form fields. 

Closure can be enabled on the Submissions tab, where you can also edit the message that is shown.

You can also schedule a form to be closed at a specific time. If you enable this, you will have the option to receive a notification when this happens. The notification will appear at the top of Aiir - click the bell symbol and you will see a message, which if clicked will take you directly to the form editing page. Any user can choose to receive this notification.

📃 Reports

If the Record submissions option is enabled, the Submissions tab lets you view submissions.

There are two basic reports; Anonymous Data and All Data.

Anonymous Data is available to everyone, whereas All Data is only available to Data Controllers. Fields which have associated personal data are not included in the Anonymous Data report.

If a form contains fields with pre-defined choices, such as radio buttons, a  Charts report is available, which gives you pie or bar charts. It can only show data for specific field types, and not text boxes for example, where anything can be entered.

Contests

If a form contains a multiple-choice quiz field, two extra sections become available;  Contest Reports and Winner Selection. 

Here you can view a report of submissions with correct answers, and a report for the selected winners. There is a box which assists with selecting random winners, using specific criteria.

Winners can be locked so that  All Data becomes available. Winners can only be unlocked by Data Controllers, so this cannot be misused. 

Filtering

If you wish to discount multiple submissions from the same person, you can enable filtering. You'll see options to choose which submission per person is shown, and how those submissions are selected; based on email address or IP address.

It is worth noting that multiple submissions can legitimately be made using the same IP address, as they are often shared across devices and computers, for example in office networks and mobile phones.

If filtering is enabled, winners will be selected from the filtered submissions. For example, if you have filtered to only use the first submission by a person, and that person has submitted twice, firstly with the wrong answer, then later with the right answer, the filter will pick out the first submission only, so their second submission cannot be selected as a winner.

📤 What appears when you submit

Any content can be specified to appear when a user successfully submits a form. 

Field placeholders can be used to insert values that were entered by the user. 

Alternatively, a URL can be entered, which the form will redirect to when it is successfully submitted. 

Spam prevention

Forms have several hidden methods to try and prevent automated submissions. 

Traditional captcha controls can often present accessibility issues, where a person has to try and copy the text shown in an obscured image.

To try and prevent automated submissions, we currently: 

1. Block a submission if it is made too quickly - we expect people to at least take a few seconds to fill out the form before clicking submit.
2. Have a hidden empty field which looks to a computer just like any other field. Automated bots tend to just complete all fields regardless, whereas legitimate users can't see the field anyway so they can't complete it. 

You can also enable Google's ReCAPTCHA field on a form. This usually presents an "I am not a robot" field, and potentially further checks to ensure a person is a legitimate website visitor. You can set this up in Site Settings, in the CAPTCHA section.

🗂️ Form Templates

Form Templates allow you to easily reuse the same options and configuration when creating new forms.

A default template is provided with some common fields - you can edit this if you wish.

You can convert a form into a Form Template if you want to use it in this way.

You can preview a form template on your website, and share them with sites in your group.

⛔ Blocked IPs

If you're seeing repeated nuisance submissions from the same IP address, you can block them from being able to submit any more.

Go to the Forms app in the main menu and go to the Blocked IPs section. Any IP addresses you add here will also be blocked from registering for listener club membership and submitting events to the Events Calendar.