General Forms can be used for any number of miscellaneous data sets you need to collect, from either non-members or members. Common examples include applications to participate in a group or program outside of your general membership structure, information requests, award nominations, etc.
To create a general form, go to Communication > Form Builder, and select Create New Form, then choose General Application Form from the dropdown.
Enter the title for this particular form, which will appear as the page title when viewed on your website. Note that you can create multiple forms, so unique titles is an easy way to identify them.
Click Form Settings. A window will launch with several settings to configure the way people can interact with the form. First, choose whether you want to require login to be able to view/submit this form. For users that aren't logged in, indicate whether you want a profile created for the submission. If you choose NOT to create a profile, the invoice/payment will be on the anonymous profile unless you later manually link the submission to a profile. If you do set the form to create a profile, keep in mind that you can easily merge the new profile with an existing one if necessary.
You can choose who the submissions/invoice will be associated with, the profile submitting the form or the related organization of the profile submitting the form. Submission/Invoice would include invoice, affiliation codes, listings, custom fields, and other elements will all be associated with the profile you select here for any user submission.
If you plan on adding purchase items to the form, choose whether you want to allow the form to be submitted without actual payment ("Allow Bill Me Option"). For Credit Card payments, IF you have Automatic Recurring Billing (ARB) in your gateway, you can choose to allow the user to opt in to a recurring payment.
If you would like to tag any profiles that submit this form (existing or new) with a specific Affiliation Code, begin typing the code name into the box shown below. Each affiliation code will be applied to the profile on submission.
Finally, enter any email addresses to receive a notification when this form is submitted. You can also add custom text to the form confirmation page and email, which will appear in addition to the itemized invoice snapshot that displays by default after submission.
Click Done. Note that the form is not saved until you click "Save" at the bottom of the page, which is recommended in order to create the form after entering a title and your settings.
Once the new form is created, you can start adding elements. You can remove any of the existing element using the "Remove" button that appears when hovering over each element, or add new elements by clicking "Add New Element" in any location throughout the form or using the button at the top left.
General Application Forms allow you to add the following elements:
Header: a larger, bold section of text that can be used to differentiate separate sections of the form
Text: a basic HTML text block in which you can include instructions, disclaimers, etc.
Individual Profile: the primary profile for the form, this element allows you to choose which fields within the profile should be displayed/collected on the form
Organization profile: allows you to collect organization information related to the individual profile
Custom Field: choose from any of your already-configured custom fields, which will populate automatically into the profile to update the value or create it for new profiles.
Affiliation Code: select any affiliation code to appear on the form as a checkbox selection, such as opting in to certain mailing lists or areas of interest. You can add any number of affiliation code selections.
Listing: while a non-member profile will likely not appear on your directory automatically, collecting their category listing information can be useful data in encouraging them to become a member
Purchase Item: you can add one or more purchase items to your form for the different items a user can select and pay/be invoiced for. The Revenue Item selected will be used to generate the resulting invoice, and you can enter a static amount, choose to use an existing Pricing Calculation based on other values in the form, and/or allow the user to enter a custom amount.
Upload File: if you need to collect any sort of documentation from the user to store in your system, you can allow them to upload a file of any standard image or document type. After submission, you can view the web content record on the profile that is created or linked.
Open Field Entry: this allows you to ask ad-hoc questions that are not stored in the created or existing profile, but are instead only accessible when viewing or exporting the submission list. You can choose an open text entry, a dropdown of selections, or a multi-select set of checkboxes.
Form Submissions
Once the form has been created (don't forget to hit Save at the bottom to save all of your changes), you can view the public form by clicking "View General Form" in the upper right corner. You can also copy this link to use in your web menu, content, emails, or any other location where you'd like to link to the form.
Upon submission, an invoice and payment will be immediately recorded in your system and assigned to the logged-in profile, OR the newly created profile, OR the anonymous profile only if you have chosen not to create profiles for unauthenticated users. You can view these submissions by going to Communication > Form Builder, then clicking the hyperlinked Submission Count in the grid for that form.