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Stanford Web Forms Service

USE THE WEB TO BUILD, PUBLISH, AND MANAGE FORMS IN WWW.STANFORD.EDU SPACE

Stanford community members can use the Stanford Web Forms Service to make contact forms, short surveys and polls, instructor evaluations, and other forms free of charge. No knowledge of HTML, Javascript, or SQL is required.

Here’s what you need to make a form and publish it:

1. a University-eligible or sponsored full-service SUNet ID, and
2. a web address (URL) in www.stanford.edu space that points to a real AFS location in which you have permission to write files. Every full-service SUNet ID comes with one such location — your own AFS home directory — but if you want to locate your form at a group or department web address, you’ll need permission for that.
   Examples:
   • http://www.stanford.edu/~yourusername/formname.fb
   • http://www.stanford.edu/dept/yourdepartment/formname.fb
   Note that the form builder application uses the URL as an identifier: no “formname.fb” file will be added to your AFS directory. The form and any data submitted through it are stored and served from outside AFS space.

If you’re confident you’re ready with those two pre-requisites, then go ahead and make a form.

Web Forms Service Primer (How does it work?)

On your first visit, the Forms Service application lands you in its “Forms Management” view and invites you to name a first form. Once you’ve done that, you’ll jump to a “build-edit-publish” view: a 3-tab control area with a preview pane beside it.

• In the BUILD tab, you add fields of all kinds. As soon as you add a field, you move into the EDIT tab.
• In the EDIT tab, you set or change field properties and options, including the text in section headings and lines/paragraphs that guide the user in filling out the form. The BUILD tab takes you here whenever you add a field, but you can also just click on any field in the PREVIEW pane to bring it up in the EDIT tab.
• In the PUBLISH tab, you define everything else:
  • the URL for the form (pointing to an AFS location in which you have permission to write files);
  • what happens when the user submits their filled-out form: display a message on the form or jump to a separate web page;
  • how you want the data handled: send it to someone in an email and/or just save it to the Forms Service database for viewing on the web; and, finally
  • the form’s “live” or “not live” status (you can switch this back and forth and still keep and change the form).

You can return to the “Forms Management” view at any time from the link in the breadcrumbs at the top of any application page. From there, you can keep an eye on how many entries each form has logged, link to the (user-facing) front-end of any of your live forms, access any of your forms for further editing, and delete or add more forms.

The Stanford Web Forms Service “Manage Forms” view is accessible directly via formbuilder.stanford.edu.

More Information

The code for the Stanford Web Forms Service has been developed under an open source license. IT Services anticipates community participation in its continuing development and already has plans to enhance its interface and functions in future versions. Details, known issues, and contact information are provide on the project wiki’s known issues page.