One question I often hear is, “How do I insert my tracking code, such as Google Analytics, into my form?”  I did a blog post last year telling you how to embed basically anything into a form using a Section, but now we have Description Area fields as well, which can be even more useful for embedding things like videos, widgets, tracking codes, etc.

Once you have your Google Analytics or other tracking code that you want to insert, open your form in build mode and click on “Add Field”.  You will want to then choose “Description Area”.  In the description area field, you will see a link under “content” that says “use plain text editor”.  Click on this text to switch to plain text editor mode.  Now paste in your tracking code here and hit the “Save” button.

Your code has now been added to your form, although the field and code won’t visibly show up in the form builder or on the form.  You can switch the description area back to rich text if you like and add text to that field as you normally would, or you can leave it blank.  Either way, the code is now on your form and should begin tracking hits.

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While we allow pre-population of form fields, using the JavaScript embed method while pre-populating fields is a bit inflexible by default. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could pre-populate fields in an embedded form via the query string (mimicking the behavior of non-embedded forms)? This has been a popular request recently, so I have written a simple, custom “JavaScript Embed” method that does just that:


<script type="text/javascript">

var form = “423214″; // replace this with your form’s id.
var viewkey = “aWhgE32sa3″ // replace this with your form’s viewkey.

// build the url
var url = “http://www.formspring.com/forms/js.php?form=”;
url += form;
url += “&viewkey=”;
url += viewkey;
url += “&style_version=2″;
url += location.search.replace(‘?’,'&’);

// create the script element.
var s = document.createElement(’script’);
s.setAttribute(‘type’,'text/javascript’);
s.setAttribute(’src’, url);

// get the script’s ‘outer html’ and add it to the document.
var t = document.createElement(‘div’);
t.appendChild(s);
document.write(t.innerHTML);

</script>

To use the above script, you will need to modify the ‘form’ and ‘viewkey’ variables so that they are set to the form you wish to embed (if you don’t know how to find your form’s id and viewkey values, please view the link above). Then, simply copy and paste this script into your HTML, just like you would the regular embed code.

After you embed the script, simply append data to the query string to ensure that the fields are pre-populating. For instance, if I have a name field on my form with the label ‘name’, I could pre-populate it by the following url:

http://www.example.com?name-first=foo&name-last=bar

In review, while pre-populating embedded forms with the default embed script is possible, it can be inflexible in certain situations. In these situations the above JavaScript can make the pre-population more dynamic by populating form fields from data in the query string.

Update: After I wrote this blog post, I discovered that this method no longer works in IE for most forms, due to how IE fetches and loads external JavaScript files. We recommend (and only support) the pre-population methods found here. If you do try and use the embed method outlined in this post, be sure to test in IE.
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A common request we get here at FormSpring is for a way to embed form data on another website for anyone to see.  While we give you a Share URL that you can link to, embedding this URL doesn’t always work and it doesn’t give you the freedom to pick and choose which fields from your data you want to share with your site visitors.  This is where one of our integrations may come in handy.

Using our Google Spreadsheets integration, you can populate a Google Spreadsheet with data submitted via a FormSpring form.  You can then share this spreadsheet by embedding it on your website.

To embed a Google Spreadsheet on your website, browse to that spreadsheet and click on the Share button in the top left corner of the screen.  Choose “Publish to the web” and then “Start publishing”.  This will give you a link to your data that looks like this:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t3V7Z-Lu3KLQyRvtBUZOtpg&single=true&gid=0&output=html

To embed that page on your site, you would want to use an iframe.  Your iframe code would look something like this:

<iframe src =”http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t3V7Z-Lu3KLQyRvtBUZOtpg&single=true&gid=0&output=html” width=”300″ height=”150″></iframe>

And the spreadsheet on your site would look something like this:

This is just a basic example using an anonymous comment form, but this would definitely work with more complicated forms as well, allowing you to embed FormSpring form data on your websites, blogs, Tumblr pages, etc.Recent Posts:

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Today we have a guest blog post from Kenan L. Farrell, Attorney-at-Law on the legal aspects of electronic signatures.

FormSpring customers often ask about collecting electronic signatures via FormSpring’s web forms. Here are some examples of the types of questions customers are asking:

• Does your product offer a way to do verifiable signatures? My client wants to post job applications online which will need this functionality.
• Our company is looking to add an online enrollment form with an electronic signature on our web site. Is this something you can help with?
• We have a contract that we want to get up online but are not sure of the most efficient way to do it. The majority of it is in a word document and we’d like to add payment integration and some contact info input and a digital signature.
• We have a waiver, disclamer, and legal notice that we need to have a digital signature on before they submit payment via PayPal. Can I do this?

FormSpring does a wonderful technical job of making these options available to their customers, and I’ll leave it to them to explain how they work their magic. But they’ve asked that I help explain the legality/enforceability of electronic signatures. Ultimately, being legal or enforceable means that a court would accept a electronic signature collected via your form as admissible trial evidence should there ever be a dispute that requires court intervention.

First, I’ll preface this post by saying that Adobe previously ran an excellent series of blog posts on the topic of electronic signatures. These posts are definitely worth a read if you’re interested in more information on electronic signatures:

“So what is an electronic signature anyway?”

“Trust Us!” – Electronic Signatures and Assurance

“This is legal, right?” – Electronic Signatures & The Law

I’ll address some of those points here as they pertain to web forms. First, what is an electronic signature, and how does it differ from a traditional pen-to-paper signature? Obviously it’s electronic and not ink, but there’s more to it than that…or is there?

In commerce and the law, a signature on a document is an indication that the person adopts the intentions recorded in the document. Accordingly, an electronic signature is any legally recognized electronic means that indicates that a person adopts the contents of an electronic message.

The historical legal concept of “signature” is broader. It recognizes any mark made with the intention of authenticating the marked document. Hence, an “X” can often suffice as a proper signature.

Courts will accept an “electronic signature” as a “signature” so long as it meets the definition set forth by precedent and law (in other words, the definition varies by jurisdiction). An electronic signature and a pen-to-paper signature are equivalent in most respects, and can admissible in trial.

That being said, all signatures (whether electronic or old-school) intended to be entered into evidence in a trial need to be assessed for “admissibility.” Some of the threshold evidentiary questions are: Does it represent the intent of the signatory? Has the document/form been altered? Who had the right to sign this document/form? How was the signature derived, and what controlled access to the document for its signature? These questions come into play no matter the type of signature.

Higher assurance signature methods that better authenticate the signatory, such as encryption or username/password requirements, are more likely to be accepted than signature technologies which provide lesser assurance. While an electronic signature may be a legal signature, it can still be held inadmissible if the judge feels that the signature process did not provide the appropriate level of assurance.

Electronic Signatures and Records Association, an organization which seeks to expand knowledge on both electronic signature and records, plays an active role in public policy on these topics. Check them out for additional information on the legality of electronic signatures.

In the next installment, I’ll discuss the difference between electronic signatures and digital signatures. See you then.

Kenan L. Farrell advises business owners, non-profits, entrepreneurs and artists on business and intellectual property (copyright, trademark, patent) issues. You can read more from him over at the Indiana Intellectual Property & Technology Law Blog. Follow on Twitter @klflegalRecent Posts:

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We give you a lot of options when it comes to using your FormSpring form, and while providing a lot of freedom, sometimes having so many options can get a bit confusing.  If you’re wondering what URL Link, Embed and HTML mean on the Use page of your form, this blog post is for you.

The URL Link is a direct link to your form, hosted on FormSpring.com.  This should be used if you do not want to embed the form in your own website (or if you don’t have your own website).

The Embed code is a few lines of javascript that you can use to embed a FormSpring form into your own website.  This is the easiest way to get a form to appear on your site and the method least prone to errors.  The embed code will grab most of the styling from a style template, other than the background and header/footer images (as we assume you can add these to your page yourself).

The great thing about the embed code, is that unlike the HTML, every time you make a change to your form in the form builder, the embedded form will automatically update.  If you use the full HTML below, you have to cut and paste new HTML to your website every time you make any change to your form.

Besides using a style template, you can style an embedded form using CSS.

Finally, the full HTML of the form is available to expert webmasters.  We do not recommend using the full HTML of the form unless absolutely necessary and unless you have a lot of experience working with HTML and javascript.  There really shouldn’t be anything you can do design-wise with the fill HTML that you can’t do using the embed code and CSS.Recent Posts:

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Recently, we added a new feature to checkbox, radio button, and select list fields that allows you to make these fields unique.  There are many practical uses for this.

For example, say you have 50 seats available for a charity dinner.  You could make a checkbox field with all of the seat numbers on it, letting users purchase one or more seats (use a select list or radio button field if you want to limit them to one seat instead of letting them choose multiple seats).  Each time the form is submitted, any seats selected will be removed from the list.  This prevents the same seat from being reserved by two different users.

To use this feature, add a checkbox, radio button, or select list to your form as you normally would, using the Add Field button.  Then click the Unique checkbox for that field.  Now each selection made from that field when the user fills out the form will be removed.  When no options are left on the form, if that field is required, then no one will able to submit to the form.  If you go into your data and delete a submission, the options selected for that submission will be added back to your form.

This feature will be useful for those selling a set number of an item, taking a set number of reservations, etc. and wanting to close the form after all items have been selected.Recent Posts:

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When creating event registration forms or contest and promotion forms you may need a way to limit the number of submissions you recieve. We have written about this before but it helps to get a refresher on some of our “hidden” features that sometimes aren’t always obvious when building your forms.

You can limit the number of sumbissions in two ways. You can disable a form by limiting the number of submissions or by closing the form on a certain date or time.

So for instance if you have an event that can only handle 200 people you can go into your form’s settings, in the General tab you can select to “Disable this form after number of submissions” and enter “200″

The second way to limit your form submissions is to just deactivate the form on  a certain day and time.  Again in the General Settings tab instead of selecting “After number of submissions” you can select “Disable this form on date” and enter the date you want.  You can enter a certain date and time, for example 6/26/2009 8PM or you can enter 2 weeks from now, two months from now or something similar and it will work the same way. This is perfect if you want to hold contests or special promotions that are time sensitive and need to be cut off at a certain date or time.

You can also customize the message that users will see if they go to the form after it has been closed for submissions.

Let us know in the comments below any other ways you might be using the Form Deactivation settings or any other form building tips and tricks you may have.Recent Posts:

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Recently I wrote a blog post on How to Add Field Variables to Confirmation & Notification E-mails.  One thing I forgot to mention is that you can also add these variables to the subject line of those e-mails the same way.

You can read my previous post on adding form field variables to e-mails, and then do the exact same thing to add them to the subject line of your confirmation/notification e-mails.

For example, say you were collecting “Name” on your form and wanted to pass on the user’s name to the subject line of the confirmation or notification e-mail you send out.  You could do that by cutting and pasting the number code for that field as I did in the image above.

This is one of those “hidden” features of FormSpring that not everyone will need but we had many requests for it and added it in a recent update.  If you have questions regarding this or any other features feel free to contact our support team.Recent Posts:

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It’s common for small work groups to need to collect data for projects. And most of the time, data needs to be collected and stored in a consistent manner so that it can be analyzed or included in another project or imported into another application. Data integrity is usually very important. For more than a decade, the default tool for this task has been the spreadsheet. And I am a big fan of the spreadsheet, don’t get me wrong. But there is a better way.

Using FormSpring’s drag and drop form builder, team members can quickly build a structured form for data collection, circulate the link to team mates and data can be entered in a way that is easy, consistent and most importantly eliminates the pesky challenges associated with the question — “do you have the most current copy of the spreadsheet?”

With FormSpring, data is stored in a database which is download-able into common productivity apps like Excel and Word.  No need to worry about who has the most recent copy of the spreadsheet because all data resides in the FormSpring database.

And if you are entering data repetitively, you simply use the use the custom redirect in the emails and redirects area in the settings tab to redirect the form itself upon submission.

So when you save the form, it publishes data to the database and jumps right back to the form so you can enter another submission.

If you have questions on this or any other FormSpring uses, please contact us.

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Support requests are always a great asset for us at FormSpring, they shed light on user problems but also give us an interesting look at how our form builder can be used outside of just an online form tool.

Someone recently inquired if FormSpring had a way to act as a simple CRM, or Customer Relationship Management tool. In fact there is an easy way to use your form data and the online database as a simple CRM solution. While we wouldn’t suggest this as an alternate to Salesforce, High Rise, or other industry leading tools, it is perfect if you are a small organization that needs to keep track of leads, sales calls or other customer data in one central place.

The first step in creating a simple CRM solution is by adding a hidden field in your form. For instance if you have built a simple contact or lead generation form you can add a hidden Long Answer field titled “Follow Up Notes” to your form

Then as customers or potential leads submit their information you can go back into the FormSpring database and view their submissions. You can click on any submission and Edit that submission quickly.

You can then add notes in the hidden field you created and monitor that lead throughout a sales process, a customer service inquiry or other touch points.

You can hide any field so you could even put in date fields, file upload fields to attach documents to a lead, and other fields to create a more complete tracking system. While it is a basic solution to the more advanced CRM systems, for small and medium organzations this is an effective short-term solution.Recent Posts:

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