In addition to the information provided in the Getting started article on Adding a form to the workspace, this article will provide more advanced information on using the Forms module.
Forms are created using form components and behaviors. For more information on form components please see the Form components section below.
For more information on form behaviors, please refer to the Form behaviors article.
This article will also describe the different ways that a form can be delivered to the app users, and how to access and view form results.
Important: We strongly recommend that you test your forms prior to sending them out to your audience. Testing the form can help you avoid any errors in the form configuration. This can include:
How the form looks and works, how it is delivered and received, how it is targeted to your audience as well as how your attendees can submit their responses, how the response data is collected, and how you can access or extract the data. The best way for your to test your forms is to send yourself or other people on your team the form to fill in. Remember also that you should reset the form in order to delete any form results that were generated during testing, prior to making your firm accessible to your audience.
Form components
As mentioned above, for information on the Section header, Rating scale, Text input, and Multiple choice components, please refer to the Adding a form to the workspace article. The other components are detailed below.
Budget
The Budget component is used in a form to ask app users their opinion on how to allocate a particular budget resource. Users can allocate to various options, using sliders, checkboxes, and dropdown lists.
More information on using the Budget component is available here.
Date
Use a Date component in a form to allow the app users to select a date as their response, using a date-picker widget.
To configure this, just add the component to the form, then add the question to which the app user need's to enter a date as their response.
Matrix
This component allows you to create a multiple-choice grid for the app user to fill in, using multiple variables and choices. Below is a basic example of how a matrix question could look in a form:
To configure a matrix question, please follow the below steps
- Add the matrix component to the from, and select it.
- Per the example below, fill in the form fields to enter the information needed for the matrix rows and columns (per above this is the sessions and the rating).
There three options available for filling in the rows and columns of matrix questions:
Static
You can define the content freely in the fields, by entering one option at a time and hitting enter. This is what was selected in the above example.
Documents
This option will automatically display all elements of a select type. For example, if you select "Sessions" here, all the sessions that exist in the workspace will be listed automatically.
Links of documents
This option only works when the form is included or linked to another page in the workspace, such as a session page. To set this up, you need to select the document type, i.e. the type of item to which the form is linked, and then the document field, i.e. the field of the document type that will be displayed in the matrix.
For example, when attaching a form to one or more sessions, you can select Session as the document type and then Speaker as document field – in the app the full name of each Speaker will be automatically displayed.
Rank
The rank component allows you to ask app users to order items using a drag&drop interface, based on their priority or preference. Use this block for questions such as "Rank today's speakers, first being the best" or "What topics do you think should be discussed at the next meeting?".
Results of the rank block are displayed in percentage scores. To determine the score:
- Based on the user's response, each item is given a score (the first item has highest score).
- Scores are added up across all responses for each item.
- The average score for each item is calculated and converted into a percentage of the total score.
Image
You can either upload a new image or choose one that has been already uploaded in Backstage from the Image file section. There are 4 options available for the image fitting style:
Fit image to block
The image is displayed to fit the height of the block. This option is recommended for images that will be displayed among other blocks.
Resize image to fill block
The image is automatically adjusted to fill the block space available.
Fit image to full width
The image is adjusted to the height of the block, and the panel is as large as the page view.
This option is recommended for banners.
Resize image to fill full width
The image adjusted to fill the space available, and the panel is as large as the page view.
Randomization from/to
Use this component to define the starting point (Randomization from) and ending point (Randomization to) on a page - all of the content existing between these two points will be randomly ordered each time the user accesses the form.
Slide separator
You can use this component to create several in-form pages. For example, you can use this to have each question in the form displayed on its own separate slide/page.
Alternatively, whenever creating a quiz using the Forms module, you can create two in-form pages - one dedicated to the questions, and one dedicated to the correct/wrong answers and feedback. You can do this by simply placing the separator on the right place on the page.
More information on how to create a quiz is available in the Creating a quiz article.
Form delivery methods
Delivering the form
There are multiple ways that you can deliver the form, or make the from accessible to your attendees:
Form notification
The most popular delivery method for a form is via a notification, using the Send at field in the View form tab.
Form link in an email
You can send an email to your attendees that includes a link to a form. More information
Via the app menu
The Forms section in the app menu contains a list if all forms that the app use has access to.
Via a session page
A form can be added directly to a session's page, to be accessed on a per-session basis. By doing this, a link to the form will appear on the session's page in-app.
To do so, go to the Sessions module, and select the session where you wish to to add the form.
Use the Form field to add the form. below for example, we will add a feedback from:
Name: Name of the form visible in the app.
Deliver form after: The option “Deliver form after“ applies only for the forms list on the app, not for the form within the session page. Note: You cannot schedule the visibility of the form within the session, you can however decide to show/hide it via “Show in page details“ option below.
Delivery delta: Use this field to adjust the delivery time, by X minutes before or after the above "Deliver form after" value.
Remove form after: Select whether you wish to remove the form (no longer make it visible) at the start or at the end time of the session.
Send notification: Decide whether or not app users should receive a notification to fill-in the form.
Show in page details: This option, when enabled, overrides any of the above options, and displays the form immediately on the Session page.
Choosing a delivery method
To ensure that your forms have a high completion rate, it's important to choose the delivery method that will most likely reach the app users.
For example, if a form is being referenced directly during a session, and has to be completed for app users to receive credits for that specific session, then including the form on the session's page would be the most pertinent option.
However, for a more general form that is not specifically linked to a session, it may be more effective to deliver the form via a notification.
Accessing form results in Backstage
Once a form has been created and delivered to the app users, the next step is to receive and process the incoming data (form responses).
To view the options available for working with form response data, go to the Forms module and click on the Results tab, then select the option for what you would like to do with the form data.
Exporting form data
It is possible to export the form results from Backstage into an XLS spreadsheet.
To do so click the "Export XLS" option in the form dashboard in Backstage. A pop-up menu will appear that will allow you to select which app user data to include in the export.
By default the participant ID is always included:
Once you have chosen the fields to include, Backstage will export an XLS file to your computer. Open up the XLS file to see the data from the form.
Note: Make sure that you save the file as .XLS to avoid any character formatting issues, such as special characters displaying incorrectly.
In the exported file, you will see two tabs: in the first one, you can review in detail the results, while in the second one you can access the aggregated data.
Viewing form results
Once app users have answered the form, the results can be seen on a live dashboard page in your browser.
To note, if an app user responds multiple times to a form, by default only the latest response will be visible in the results. Should you wish to show all responses from a same app user, you can tick the Multiple submissions box.
To view the Form results page, the click on View results in the form dashboard in Backstage.
A page will appear showing the responses for each question.
In the Form results page, you can present the results in a Live view, save the dashboard results as a PDF, or set a custom results view for further use.
Filtering form results
Data filters
You can filter form results, by creating one or more data filters. To do so click on Data filters, then on Edit data filters, and use the following options:
Data filter name
Enter here the name of the filter.
Form
Use this option to filter form results based on the form. Only one element can be chosen for each filter, if you need to add more, you can add another filter.
Contextual filters
Contextual filters are also available for ore filtering:
Platform
You can filter by device type (iOS, Android or web app).
Form content
You can filter by the form content. Only one element can be chosen for each filter, if you need to add more, you can add another filter.
Filter by participants
Here you can set rules to include only or exclude specific app users from the form results.
Form or content filters
You can also use either the Form or Form content options to filter results based on how the form was delivered to app users.
Form content
The same form content (template) can be attached and used in multiple forms, therefore by selecting the Form content option as a filter, you can get aggregated data that comes from multiple forms, based on the form content they use.
Form
Select the specific form used to deliver the content to view the results specifically for that form.
Once a filter is set, it can be saved by clicking on Save results view. You can apply the filter to display filtered data by clicking on Apply filter.
Resetting form results
Data that is submitted for a form can be cleared out at any time by using the Reset option in the toolbar on the Form results page.
It’s important to note that once results have been reset, there is no way of recovering the cleared results. Therefore you must be certain you want to clear out the results before moving forward with the action.
Generally, it is advisable to reset results only before sending out the form to app users, in order to remove all test responses.
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