Custom Forms

Custom vs. Standard Forms
Creating a New Custom Form - Basic Information
Creating a New Custom Form - Form Settings
Creating New Custom Form Pages - Form Builder
Neon Fields vs. Toolbox Fields
Publishing a Custom Form
Setting the Form Acknowledgement Email & Web Template
Editing a Custom Form
Viewing & Exporting Custom Form Results

Custom vs. Standard Forms

There are two kinds of forms in NeonCRM:

• Standard Forms are generated for you "out of the box," such as a Standard Donation Form and Email Subscription Form.

• Custom Forms allow you to collect different types of data than the Standard Forms. Custom Forms can be used for customized donation and membership forms as well as surveys, such as a client satisfaction survey.

Creating a New Custom Form - Basic Information

You must have the Custom Forms & Surveys module in order to create custom forms in NeonCRM. Your list of available modules can be viewed from the Organization Profile. 

To create a new form or configure existing ones, navigate to Web Content > Custom Forms.

This will take you to the Custom Forms List. Click Detail to access the settings of an existing form and to view any existing entries.

To create a new form, click New Custom Form.

Selecting the New Custom Form button will bring up the Custom Form Builder where you configure the Basic Information for your new form.

Form Settings

The Custom Form Builder contains several important settings:

Custom Form Name

The internal name of your form; this will not be seen by your constituents.

Form Description

The internal description of this form.

Support Payment

This option allows you to collect Donation and Membership transactions via this custom form. If you create a custom membership registration or donation form, Neon will use your standard Credit Card form to collect payment - this is the same payment page used for all your standard Neon forms and it can be configured using the web form customization utility.

There are two types of transactions that can be collected via a custom form:

1. Donation (free input donation amount OR donation levels).
2. Membership (Join transactions for individual, No Group memberships only)
   

If you do not wish to collect payment for this form - for example, this is simply a contact application or other form collecting data - leave the value as "No Payment Support".

Create Account

This option determines if the system will create individual accounts for each person who completes this survey.

• If you select Yes for the Create Account setting, then Neon will automatically create a new individual account for each person that submits this form.
• If you select No, then your form will simply collect the information but Neon will not create an account for each entry.

Set to Default Donation Page

This setting will make the Custom Form the default donation page which constituents will see under the "My Donation" area of the Constituent Login Portal.

This option will only be available if you choose Donation Free Input or Define Donation Level for the Support Payment option.

Valid Until

The form will be available through this date. For example, if you set the Valid Until date to 12/31/2020, the form will expire at midnight Central Time on 01/01/2020. If someone tries to access the form after this date, they will receive a notice that the page has expired: "Sorry! The form you are trying to access is not available."

Availability

This determines who will be able to view and complete the survey. A full explanation of these options is available in the Constituent Restricted Custom Forms guide.

Prevent constituent from filling out the form more than once

This will only appear if your form is restricted to constituents/members/applicable group. This can be useful for collecting votes, or other applications that are only allowed one submission.

Exit Page

This is what constituents will see when they complete your form. If the survey is collecting payment (Donations or Memberships), this page will not apply. NeonCRM will instead use the default exit page for donation and membership transactions, which thanks the constituent for their donation or membership registration.

Enter an external URL will allow you to redirect the constituent to a URL of your choice upon completion of the form/survey.

BCC Email

Copy a staff user on the Form Acknowledgement Email when it is sent to the constituent. You must enable the form acknowledgement email. This will BCC the email addresses in this box with the Form Acknowledgement Email. More information on the Survey Acknowledgement Email is available here. When you have completed the basic settings for your custom form/survey, click Next to begin creating your survey.

Creating New Custom Form Pages

Once you have filled out the basic information for your custom form, you can create the content of the form itself. Under the Pages section, click New Page to start from scratch with a blank page or click Copy Page to use a page you've already created from another custom form.

Clicking New Page will open the form builder to a blank page.

This will bring up the Form Builder interface where you create the content of your form.

The Form Builder will only pre-load two items for you, both of which are required for all custom forms:

1. Survey/Form Header
2. Submit button

Neon Fields vs. Toolbox Fields

You must add any other fields that you wish to collect data for. There are two types of data that you can collect: Neon Fields and Toolbox Fields.

Neon Fields link directly to NeonCRM fields, both Standard Fields (e.g. City, First Name, and Last Name) and Account Custom Fields, if you have any. Data entered into these fields will feed directly into NeonCRM accounts.

If your form is set up to create accounts, make sure to add the "First Name" and "Last Name" fields to your form page and set them as required.

Click on the field to access the Properties box. Use the Required drop down to select "yes."

You can see that the field is now set as required.

Toolbox Fields are fields that you create solely for this form. These fields are not created as fields elsewhere in the NeonCRM system. The only way to view responses to these fields is to view survey results.

To add a field, drag and drop it between the Your Survey/Form Header and Submit items.

When you add a field and then select it, the Properties area in the left panel will populate with options for this field.

For example, we might change the Label of this field to Committee. It won't change the name of the field itself; it will only change how it's displayed on the form. We can also make the field required, change the size of the text box, change the maximum number of characters allowed in responses, and decide if this response will be included in the custom form acknowledgement email.

There is also a Token Name field in the Properties section. The acknowledgment email that you can build for your custom forms can include tokens for any fields in the form, including custom fields. The Token Name property allows you to name the available tokens for this email.

If left blank, the token will have the same name as the field.

If you attempt to give the token a name that is already in use, you will receive an error message and be asked to choose a different name.

Some fields will give you additional Properties options.

For example, in the screenshot above, I have added a Toolbox Field type called Check Box Text. This allows me to build out a question with a series of checkbox options, so my constituents can select more than one. I can create my options in the Properties area and then click the green checkbox to save my changes.

You can preview your survey at any time by select Preview.

Once you are satisfied with your survey, click Save to save your changes, then Home to return to the Survey/Form page.

Publishing a Custom Form

Once you are ready to share your custom form and allow constituents to begin taking it, you need to publish it. To do this, select [Publish] in the upper-right corner of the Custom Form page.

Custom Form Link - Upon publishing a custom form, Neon will generate a link to your form.

Click Check to view your form. This is the link that you can share with your constituents and link to your website.

You can use the code snippet to embed the form on your own web page.

Setting the Form Acknowledgement Email & Web Template

You can set your own acknowledgement email for your custom form by going to the Custom Form detail page.

The detailed guide to configuring the Form Acknowledgement Email is available here.

You can use an alternate web template for this custom form if you've created one. To change the web template, the form must be unpublished.

Click [New Template] to see a list of your available alternate web templates and select the one you want to use for this custom form.

Editing a Custom Form

If you need to make changes to your custom form, go to Web Content > Custom Forms, then select Detail next to the form that you wish to edit.

• If you remove any standard fields or account custom fields from a custom form page, you will notice that this field is no longer available under the Statistics Report section of the custom form configuration page. The data was not lost, it just won't be shown under the custom form/survey stats.
• If you remove any survey fields (aka Toolbox Fields), any data collected in that field will be lost upon removing it from your form.

You must unpublish a form in order to make changes. To do this, select Un-Publish in the upper-right corner.

Click OK to confirm that you want to unpublish the form.

Once the form is unpublished, you will be able to edit your form by clicking on the page icon.

Once you have completed your edits, re-publish your page. The link address will be the same as it was before you un-published the page to make changes. You will not need to send out a new link to your constituents.

Viewing & Exporting Custom Form Results

You can view and export all your custom form entries from the Statistics Report section of the custom form detail page.

Click "All Entries" to see a list of all submissions. You can export all entries by clicking the "Excel" link.

Clicking the "All Entries" button will take you to the Survey Entries page for that custom form. Click "View" to see the data submitted for a particular entry.

If your form is set up to create accounts, then the "Account ID" column will be populated with the individual account ID number for all entries. The Account ID will also display if the form was filled out from the Constituent Login Portal.

You can also see the entry on the responder's Account Detail page in the Custom Form Responses section, as shown in the example below. This will only populate for forms that create accounts or when an existing constituent fills out the form while logged in.

Click the name of a form in the response history to see the full entry.