Adding conditional forms to your registration page

Before reading this article, please make sure that you are familiar with the registration page capabilities by reading the 20 - Enable registration to build your audience.
To find out exactly how to create your registration page in Backstage, please refer to the following articles:
Set up a public - open registration page
Set up a private - RSVP registration page
Set up a combined public - open & private - RSVP registration page

How do additional or conditional forms work?

A registration page is always made up of a landing page that includes the "event details", and a main  form" page that will always be visible to all the attendees that go through the registration process, whether private (RSVP) or public (open).

You can add more forms (i.e. pages with form fields) to the registration process, beyond the "main form" page. These additional forms can be left visible to all attendees (like the "main form") or they can be conditional.

By "conditional", we mean that they use targeting to make them visible to attendees based on the responses that they provided in the main form (for public registration page) or the main form + any additional forms (for registration pages that are private - RSVP or private & public combined).

Examples of how conditional forms can be used

Conditional forms are great for asking targeted questions to your registrants based on the information they have already provided during the previous steps of the registration process. This can include, for example:

• Asking only the attendees that are joining in-person or that answered YES to the RSVP, for their travel details, logistics for accommodation, food allergies, etc.
• Asking only the attendees that answered No to the RSVP "why are you not attending"?
• Asking only attendees that are joining in-person for their travel details.
• Asking only attendees that are joining in-person, and from abroad, for their information in view of requesting visas or making any other travel documents.
• Displaying different legal documents in the based on your attendee's selected country during registration for them to accept.

Let's look at a basic example of how this looks and works.

Imagine that you want to send something via the post, to attendees that have registered and indicated that they will be attending in person, via a public (open) registration page.

In the main form, in addition to the mandatory fields, you will add an "Attending" field to the main form, requesting that your registrants specify whether they will be attending In-person or Virtually.

Then, based on whether they select "in-person" or "Virtually" in the "Attending" field in the main form, you create additional forms that will be displayed/targeted to the attendees, depending on whether they will attend in-person or not:

This allows you to tailor the attendee registration journey. In this case, you will have collected the information you needed from the attendees who will be joining in person.

Note: Additional or conditional forms are optional. You can create as many additional or conditional forms as you need.

Important: Remember that for open (public) registration, targeting for conditional forms can only be applied based on responses to fields that are present in the main form. For private (RSVP) and for Private & public registration, targeting for conditional forms can be applied based on responses to fields that are present in the main form and and additional/conditional forms.
Targeting can only be applied based on fields that are dropdown choices or checkbox (boolean). Targeting cannot be applied based on free flow text fields.

Please see below how to add conditional forms to your registration page.

Adding conditional forms

By default, your registration page "main form" is already configured on the registration page, and (in the case of a public registration page) has three mandatory fields: first name, last name, email address:

Let's imagine that you want to add a dropdown here in the main form, so that attendees have to choose between attending in-person or virtually. To do so, click on the Add a field + button and select the Attending field type:

The Attending field is now added to the main form, and here we have checked the "Mandatory" box for this field to make sure that attendees always complete this field when registering for the event:

Now, we will add a "You are attending virtually" conditional form, that will appear only to the attendees who will select that they are attending virtually.
To do so, click on (1) Add form, enter a name for the form (here we have added "You are attending virtually", then click on (2) Create:

The conditional form is now created and visible beneath the main form:

We want this form to only be displayed to the attendees who selected that they are attending virtually in the main form, so we need to add targeting. To do so, click on Add targeting:

Here, in the Visible to section, we will select the Attending field, and for the field value we will select Virtually. Remember to click Save to finalize the changes.

Important: Remember that for open (public) registration, targeting for conditional forms can only be applied based on responses to fields that are present in the main form. For private (RSVP) and for Private & public registration, targeting for conditional forms can be applied based on responses to fields that are present in the main form and and additional/conditional forms.
Targeting can only be applied based on fields that are dropdown choices or checkbox (boolean). Targeting cannot be applied based on free flow text fields.

Note: You can create more complex targeting by selecting multiple fields (from multiple forms) and their corresponding values within the same rule (by clicking on the + button to add more fields), or by creating multiple rules that are applied to the conditional form (by clicking on Add rule.). 

The conditional form is now created, and in this example will only be visible to attendees who select Virtually in the Attending field in the main form:

Now, in this particular case you will also need to create a "You are attending in-person" conditional form, that will only be displayed to attendees that selected "In-person" in the main form.

To do so, simply follow the same steps as above, but for building the "You are attending in-person" conditional form:

• Click on (1) Add form, enter a name for the form (here it would be "You are attending in person", then click on (2) Create.
• In the new conditional form called "You are attending in person" click on Add targeting.
• in the Visible to section, select the Attending field in the dropdown, and for the field value select In-person this time.
• Add any fields you want to the "You are attending in person" conditional form, based on what info you want to collect from your in-person attendees. This could be travel information, food preferences, or any logistical information for the in-person experience. Attendees who selected "Virtually" in the main form will not see this form at all.