Documentation

Using Advanced Forms, forms are created and managed from the Advanced Forms page on the Dashboard.  You can then display the forms you have created on pages on your site using the Advanced Form block.

Basic Functionality

To Create a New Form [Video]
From the Advanced Forms page on the Dashboard, click "Create a New Form."  Depending on the type of form you would like to create, select one of the options.  The option that you select only determines how it will walk you through the process of creating a form - you can always go back and change the settings later.

To Create/Manage Form Fields [Video]
From the Advanced Forms page on the Dashboard, click the "Fields" button on the form for which you want to create/manage fields.  From here you can add, edit, sort, and delete fields.

To Manage Form Records [Video]
From the Advanced Forms page on the Dashboard, click the "Records" button on the form for which you want to manage records. From here you can view, edit, approve, add, edit, and delete form records.  You can also index data from fields that have been marked as searchable (without this, searching does not work), and clear the records cache.

To Manage Permissions
From the Advanced Forms page on the Dashboard, click the "Permissions" button on the form for which you want to manage permissions.  Editing/deleting ownership permissions pertain only to installations that are also using Data Display.

To Setup Conditional Notifications
Conditional Notifications allows you to send email notifications to specific address when certain criteria are true.  To do so click the "Notifications" button on the form on which you want to specify conditionals.  Switch to the conditional notifications tab and click "Add Notification."  Specify your criteria and click save.

To Setup User Confirmation
User confirmation allows you to send an email to users when they submit the form.  To do so click the "Notifications" button on the form on which you want to setup user confirmation.  Specify the field to which the email should be sent, a from name, a submit, and the message that should be sent.

To Approve Records
Approving records can be used for multiple purposes.  Primarily it is used when integrating with Data Display via a publicly accessible Advanced Form.  For example, if you had an Advanced Form setup to post comments to a page of your site but you wanted to approve those comments before they were displayed on your site, you could setup your Data Display block to only show approved records.  Then to approve those records, you would simply go to the records page of the form and click the gray check circle in the Approve column of the records table.  Approved items will show a green check icon.

To Export Records
You can export all form records to an CSV file which can be opened in Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet applications.  To export, go to the records page click the dropdown box at the bottom of the records table.  Select "Export Records" and click go.  You can also export a records summary which will give you more statistical data regarding fields with options in your form

To Convert Basic Forms (core form block) to Advanced Forms
Any forms you have created using the core form block (including those created using the previous version of Data Display) can easily be converted to Advanced Forms, including all their data.  To convert a form, go to Advanced Forms -> Tools form the Dashboard.  Select the form you want to convert in the dropdown under Form Converter and click "Convert."

To Add an Advanced Form to a Page
Simply select the Advanced Form block when adding a new block to an area.  Select the form and style you would like to use.  If you are gathering secure data (such as credit card information) on your form, you should select the option to require SSL.

To Import Data Into a Form
Go to Advanced Forms -> Tools from the Dashboard.  Under "Import Data from CSV", browse to the CSV file on your computer (if you created it using Excel for Mac, make sure you save it as "Windows Comma Separated"), select the form that you would like to import into and click "Import."  Match the columns in the CSV to the fields in the form and then click "Import."

Form Settings

To access a form's settings, click on the form name.  The following settings are available:

Form Name
Used to identify the form on your site.

Send E-mail Notification
Option whether or not the form should send an e-mail when it is submitted.

Include Form Data in E-mail
Useful if you only want to send a notification that the form was submitted, but do not want to include the data.

Send E-mail From
This should be a friendly name (such as a person's name or the website title, not an e-mail address).

Send E-mail To
Where the e-mail should be sent.  Separate multiple addresses with a comma.  Individual e-mails will be sent to each person (no need for cc, bcc)

Subject
The subject line of the email being sent.

After submitting form
Option to display a message, redirect to a page within your site, or redirect to an specific URL after the form is submitted.

Thank you message
Message displayed after the form is submitted

Page to redirect to
The page within your site that the user should be redirected to after the form is submitted

URL
The full URL of a specific location to redirect the user to after the form is submitted.

CAPTCHA
Option whether or not to require CAPTCHA verification before the form is submitted (to prevent form spam)

Submit label text
The text display on the submit button

Notify user upon approval
Sends an email to the user that submitted the specific form record whenever that record is approved by an administrator, notifying the user that the record has been approved.

Payment Gateway
The payment gateway that should be used when items are being sold with your form.  Paypal is included in the package, but other gateways can be created.

Maximum Order Price
The maximum amount to charge a user, even if the actual total of their order exceeds this amount.

Message before processing e-commerce
Processing a form with sellable items is a two step process.  The first step is filling out and submitting the form.  The user is then shown a confirmation screen before the payment is processed.  This is the message shown on that confirmation screen.

Required field indiciator
The symbol (or text) that is used to indicate that a field is required

Required field color
The hexadecimal RGB color of the required field indicator.

Disable cache
When integrating with Data Display, the add-on can cache records in order to speed up page load times.  This can be especially helpful when a form has a large number of records (around 500+).  If you are using an expiration field, you will want to disable the cache.

Create a new page when the form is submitted
When integrating with Data Display, you can have the form automatically create a new page.  This can be especially helpful for SEO purposes when using Advanced Forms/Data Display for a blog or news.

Create page as a child of
The parent page of the page that will be created when new records are added.

Page Type
The page type of the page that will be created when new records are added.

Name/Alias/Description/Meta Title/Meta Keywords/Meta Description
The field from the form to map to the properties of the new page

Exclude from Nav
If set to yes, the page created when new records are added will have "exclude from nav" checked.

HTML Structure

When creating styles for Advanced Forms, it's helpful to know how the HTML is structured and what classes are assigned to each element.  The HTML output of the Advanced Forms block is structured as follows:

  • The form element has the class sem-form.
  • Each field is wrapped in a div with class sem-field-container (with the exception of hidden fields, which have no wrapper).
  • All fields except for checkboxes and radio buttons have basically two parts: the label (with class sem-label) and the field element.
  • Checkboxes and radio buttons have a single fieldset element (with class sem-fieldset) inside of the sem-field-container div.  Inside of the fieldset are multiple elements:
    • a legend element (with class sem-element) that is the name of the field.
    • a label field (with class sem-radio-button-label or sem-checkbox-label) for each option.
    • Inside of the label element is the radio/checkbox input element (with class sem-radio-button or sem-checkbox) and the label for the option.
  • All input elements have the class sem-field
  • Input element classes are as follows:
    • Text (single-line) - sem-text
    • Text (multi-line) - sem-textarea
    • Number - sem-text
    • Email Address - sem-text
    • Dropdown - sem-select
    • Multi-select - sem-select
    • Radio button - sem-radio-button
    • Checkbox - sem-checkbox
    • Date - sem-date
    • Time - sem-select
    • File Upload - sem-file
    • File from File Manager - sem-file-seletor
    • WYSIWYG - sem-field-wysiwyg
    • Sellable item - sem-text, sem-select, or sem-checkbox (depending on setup)
    • Credit Card - sem-text
    • Hidden - sem-hidden