Easy Forms in U.osu

I use a U.osu site to organize tools, information, and training materials for the Digital Union student staff. Recently, I implemented a form in the site for staff to submit documentation to me in the event that we encounter a particularly unruly guest.

What I’m emphasizing in this post however, is not the topic of the form, but how to make a form, and a few of the really nice features of Formidable, the pre-installed WordPress plugin for building forms in a U.osu site.

  1. If you don’t already have a U.osu site set up, it’s super easy to do.
  2. Once you have your site set up, activate the Formidable plugin.
  3. From there, the best way to learn it is simply by clicking through and test driving it on your own. Refer to Formidable’s knowledge base for more info.
  4. If you get stuck, email U@osu.edu to get connected with support staff.

Previous to learning how to use this tool, I was using an embedded Google Form. This is my first time using Formidable, and I’m pretty happy with how it looks. There are a lot more form field types available than in the Google Form I was using, and way better integration into the site. My coworkers and I have already thought of a lot of potential uses for this functionality, so I’m excited to see what they all come up with! Comment below with your idea …

3 thoughts on “Easy Forms in U.osu

  1. Thanks for sharing Queenie! This is very helpful. Do you find that Formidable covers all your use cases for forms/surveys — or is there still a niche for Google forms?

    • It covers all my uses and more (SO excited about the file upload field). The one exception is that Formidable doesn’t provide an “other” option when it comes to multiple choice/checkbox fields. Maybe the answer is here somewhere? http://formidablepro.com/help-desk/other-option-for-data-from-entries-field/

      I’m currently working on converting all the forms on my DU staff site to Formidable forms at the moment; one of my applications of form use requires the responses to be shown back on the page. I know it’s possible; I just need to tinker to figure out exactly how to implement it the way I want. Documentation on that here http://formidablepro.com/knowledgebase/show-form-responses-on-your-site/

      Actually, one more exception: Formidable doesn’t store responses in a collaborative spreadsheet like G-forms does. So if it’s important for you to be able to collab-edit the spreadsheet of responses on a regular basis, this might be a downside. However, it looks like you can set the form such that other users can edit their own OR others’ entries…so perhaps an equivalent functionality is there; I just haven’t explored it fully yet.

      For the most part, yes, Formidable does everything I need – enough that I can finally fly Mama-Google’s nest…a little 🙂

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