Development Blog
Release (12/14/2009)
- Private Label option allows rebranding of FormSite.
- Site-wide performance enhancements.
Private Label Service
We are now offering private label versions of FormSite to customers with more than 50 accounts. Our private label version is a custom version of FormSite that runs on the domain of your choice, on a dedicated server, and with your branding. There is no mention of Vroman Systems or FormSite.com anywhere on your site. We provide you an administrative dashboard application that gives you full control over all of your accounts including the ability to add, update, disable, and upgrade accounts.
With a private label version of FormSite, you have control over all external pages. You also have full control over pricing. We have great flexibility and can make customizations to our offering to meet your needs. Our private label option is the next step beyond our Custom Domain service. See the Private Label page for more information.
Site-Wide Performance Enhancements
From day one, performance has been a high priority of ours and we continue to strive to do all that we can do to have a high performance site. For this release, we spent considerable effort upgrading third-party components, rewriting inefficient code, and standardizing visual components across our application. We have also re-worked things so that we can more efficiently add new features next year.
Release (9/20/2009)
- Create quizzes and evaluations with Scoring points.
- Custom Labels for all results formats.
- Scheduled Exports feature to automatically Export results at set intervals.
- Server Post integration to send results to your own server.
- Pipe any item that stores results.
- Updated Daily Summary email with more detailed statistics.
Updated External Site
After considerable effort, we are proud to roll out our new layout/design for the external pages of FormSite.com. In addition to a modern presentation, we have added considerable content in an effort to detail all of our capabilities. We have also added "remember me" functionality to the login process. This is now an option on the Login page. In order to implement new security enhancements and to support the new "remember me" function, we have moved the login username and password fields off of the home page onto a separate Login page.
Scoring
In the spirit of the back to school season, we have added Scoring. Scoring points can be assigned to form items and a total score is calculated on a running basis as the user moves from page to page through your form. At the end of a form, the total score is available and can optionally be presented to the user. You can optionally show the user a scoring summary at the end of the form. We also have added the ability to include "explanations" on an item by item basis. When setting up Scoring, you can define a total point value for each item or you can define a different point value for each of an Item's choices.
Scoring has been added to our conditional logic so you can use the score value in skip/branch rules and email Notifications. With this functionality, scoring can be used behind the scenes as a tool to evaluate the information on a given form. For example, you could determine the value of a lead captured on a lead form and, based on the score calculated, you could assign the lead to a certain sales representative.
We also have a new Scoring Report available in "Results->Reports->Scoring Report". On this report we calculate many values including maximum possible score, high score, low score, mean, mode, median, standard deviation and many more. We also show graphical distributions of the points in bar as well as pie formats.
Custom Labels
Historically, the reports and data downloads from FormSite have used items' question text as identifiers. For example, a question on a form might be, "What is your first name?". Any reports and downloads would use "What is your first name?" as a column header or identifier. With this release, we enable you to define Custom Labels for each item on your form. So, you could define "first_name" to represent "What is your first name?".
Custom Labels can be applied to email Notifications, data exports, Server Posts, API requests, Summary Tables, and to many of our Reports. We anticipate that the Custom Labels will be used to change labels for visual purposes as well as further processing of the data by outside systems.
Scheduled Exports
In an effort to help our customers automate their business processes, we have added the ability to schedule exports of FormSite data. Exports can be scheduled daily, weekly, and monthly and contain either the full data set or results since the last export. You have the same format options as the immediate export including Excel, CSV, tab delimited, and custom delimiter. You can also configure the export to email you a link to the export file when it is ready. Some customers will use this as a way to automate backups of their FormSite data and others will use it as a way to feed data collected in FormSite into other systems on a batch basis.
Server Post
Integrations are hot right now and with this release we are introducing a way to have your FormSite form post data into another application immediately. So, when your form is submitted, not only is the data immediately stored in the FormSite database, but an HTTP Post is sent to the server of your choice with your data. This enables you to use the front end features of FormSite with your back end. The data posted can be in several formats including name/value pair, CSV, and XML.
When a form is successfully submitted, you can elect to use the FormSite Success Page or the page returned by the application that was posted to. We also enable you to specify a Custom Labels configuration for your post. This enables you to define the name of the variables being posted. In some cases, you will be able to accept FormSite HTTP Post data on your server into an existing application without making any changes on your end.
We also provide the option not to store the data in FormSite when using Server Post integration.
Release (7/10/2009)
- Enhanced Look & Feel with new themes, including new settings and customizations like shadows and highlighting a user's current item.
- New items: Star Rating, Coupon Code, Dropdown Matrix, and Dropdown Multi-Scale.
- Third Party integration featuring Salesforce and Google Spreadsheets.
- User accounts with permissions on forms and results.
- Account activity logging.
- Doubled attachment space for all service levels.
- Word/character counts on Paragraph items, and updated Optional Instructions and Calendar Item popups.
- "Account->Attachments" renamed "Account->Files & Images".
Modernized Form Look & Feel
We are excited to announce that we have completely overhauled the Look & Feel for new forms created at FormSite.com. To keep things fresh, this is our fifth revision to the Look & Feel of our forms in ten years. Existing forms will remain unchanged unless you elect to change them. To keep up with the times, we have changed the default font, added spacing, added a drop shadow, added gradients, and updated our color schemes. Engagement is greatly increased with dynamic behavior on the forms including highlighting the current Item, counting/limiting characters in Paragraph items and dynamically totaling Rating items.
Our Look & Feel editor has been simplified and redesigned so that changes can be made much faster and with greater accuracy. We have also added 40 new themes to choose from.
New Form Items
Based on user requests, we are introducing 4 new form Items: Star Rating, Coupon Code, Dropdown Matrix, and Dropdown Multi-Scale Matrix. The Star Rating item enables the user to give an item a number of starts on a scale that you define. This Item could be used to have users rate a new movie from 1 to 5 stars.
For Order Forms, we have added a Coupon Code item that can represent a percentage or fixed dollar amount discount. You can define more than one Coupon Code per form. You can also setup a link to Pre-Populate the Coupon Code on your form. This enables you to setup a link from your page that could be something like "click here and save $5 on your order".
The new Dropdown Matrix and Dropdown Multi-Scale Matrix collect the same information as the Radio Button Matrix and Radio Button Multi-Scale Matrix using a different format. In cases where there are lots of choices, the new Dropdown Matrix Items will produce a much cleaner presentation.
Integration With SalesForce.com
We have developed a very powerful integration with Salesforce.com enabling any Salesforce object to be mapped to a FormSite form, including custom objects. Our process is very slick in that we can automatically map your FormSite fields to a given Salesforce object. This means that you do not have to do the manual mapping and that you can have a FormSite form setup and integrated with Salesforce in just a few minutes.
For example, you can create a Salesforce Lead form using FormSite and have that mapped to your Salesforce Lead object. This setup provides you all the professional features of FormSite while also storing your data with Salesforce on a real-time basis. If you update your data within FormSite, the data will also be updated with Salesforce. For a limited time, we are introducing this feature at our Pro 1 level of service which is only $19.95 monthly. Log into your account and go to "Form->Third Party->Salesforce" to get started.
Integration With Google Spreadsheets
FormSite.com + Google Spreadsheets = lots of power. There is no doubt that Google has tremendous functionality in their Google Apps suite and we are now providing you the ability to use a FormSite form to populate a Google Spreadsheet in real-time. This means that you can have your Google Spreadsheet open in your browser and watch in real-time as your results come in. There is no need to refresh your spreadsheet, the results will automatically show. This integration opens up all types of possibilities with respect to sharing data with others. You can share your Google spreadsheet data with others via the Google share feature enabling others to see the form data you collect.
We also enable you to automatically apply a View (show only certain columns) AND a Filter (show only data meeting a certain criteria) to data being sent to Google. For example, say you are collecting order information for a widget you are selling and you want to share quantity ordered data with your supplier. You can setup a Google Spreadsheet that will only receive quantity ordered from your FormSite form using a View. The supplier you are dealing with will not be able to see any other information collected on your form as it will not be sent to Google. If you choose to update data within FormSite, that data will also be updated in your Google Spreadsheet. Log into your account and go to "Form->Third Party->Google Spreadsheets" to get started.
Additional User Accounts
Many of our users informally share the username/password to their account among a small group of people. There is no problem with this and we support it. However, we are introducing a feature that will enable you to gain more control over sharing your account. We are introducing a new Additional Users feature that will enable you to define additional users for your account. You can control whether individual users can only view the form and its results, or update them also.
With this new feature, you could share a single form with a given client and set them up so that they could only read data collected for their form. They would not have the ability to change the form, change the data or delete the data. They would only be able to view reports on the data. To get started setting up Additional Users for your account, log into your account and go to "Account->Users".
Account Activity Logging
With Additional User Accounts now enabling multiple people to access forms and data, it is time to show an audit log of actions taken within your account including logins, form creation, form deletion, results deletion, etc. We store the User taking the action, their IP address, and the action they took along with the date/time the action was taken. You can view by logging into your account and going to "Account->Log".
Release (4/5/2009)
- New Notifications feature.
- New Results Filters feature.
- New Funnel Choices feature creates a follow up question based on a user's answers to a previous question.
- Search directly from the Summary Table.
- Form Login account management.
- Save Partial Work button for Form Login forms.
- Multi-page embedded forms will stay embedded past the first page.
- Modify or delete results attachments.
- Custom PayPal parameters.
New Search and Filtering Functionality
Having been one of the original form builders on the Internet, we are used to having our functionality and design copied. If you want to see what our competitors will be up to, you can pretty much just look at our feature list. Our search functionality, to our knowledge, has not been copied. Not a single competitor or any site that we know of has copied it. While we thought our form based search was powerful, intuitive, and unique, we must now concede there are better ways of searching data. We have split what we used to call Search into two separate features: Results Filters and Search.
A Results Filter is a set of criteria that can be applied to form results in order to produce a subset for the purposes of viewing, graphing, reporting, and downloading. Results Filters can be saved and copied. Say you want to graph results for all females between the ages of 21 and 30 that plan on taking a vacation this year. You could define a Results Filter that would enable you to see just this subset of data and then you could perform actions such as graphing and downloading.
We have added a Search link to our Summary Table page. This is a quick search that is simply a single search box that you type into. You can type in anything and all of your form's data will be searched for the text you enter.
Notifications
With this release, we are introducing a Notifications page as a way to centralize outgoing email for your form. A Notification is a way to send an email each time a user submits your form. You can send information to yourself, to a list of people, or to the user who filled out your form. There is no limit to the number of Notifications you can create or use. You can also specify criteria for your Notification being sent so that the Notification is sent based on answers selected on your form.
Our past versions of FormSite required you to go to different places within our site to define Auto-Responders, Results Receipts, and Results Emails. With our new Notifications page, theses can all be defined in one centralized place. Along with the centralization of email comes much greater functionality. For example, you used to define the auto-response message as part of an Email Address form item. Now, you can define multiple auto-response messages and determine which one gets sent based on the answers your users provide. You can also put multiple Email Address items on your form and define one or more different Notifications for each Email Address.
See the tables below for complete details on the changes.
| Email Form Results to one or more email addresses | |
|---|---|
| Old Way |
Steps:
Comments: Results Email Address is no longer on Configure page. |
| New Way |
Steps:
Comments: If you want the email "From" address to be the email entered by the user on your form (so it appears the email is coming from the person filling out your form), click the "Custom From Address" and then choose the Email Address Item from the "From" drop down. Note, if you only have "Defined Address" as an option, then you need to add an Email Address item to your form. |
| Email Auto-Response to person completing the form | |
|---|---|
| Old Way |
Steps:
Comments: Auto-response options have been removed from the email address setup. |
| New Way |
Steps:
Comments: You can also include the form results with the auto-response. So, where you may have sent out two emails to the same person, you can now send one. |
| Email Results Receipt (copy of what person entered) to person completing the form | |
|---|---|
| Old Way |
Steps:
Comments: There is no longer a Results Receipt item. |
| New Way |
Steps:
Comments: Previously if you wanted an auto-response sent to your user and a Results Receipt, you needed to have the Email Address Item on your form as well as the Results Receipt Item. Now, you just have the Email Address Item, but you can base multiple Notifications off this single Email Address. |
| Check Box / Radio Routing of Email | |
|---|---|
| Old Way |
Steps:
|
| New Way |
Steps:
|
Funneling
Ever want to have the questions on your survey drill down to gather more detail based on previous responses? Our new Funneling option enables you to ask a question like, "What brands of shoes have you heard of?" and then follow-up on the question by asking additional questions about only the brands of shoes the user selected. So, you could then ask, "What brands of shoes have you purchased?" and the available choices would be those shoes identified in the first question. You can chain these new Funneling questions together across multiple questions.
Form Login - Save Partial Work
Our Form Login feature is popular for people that want to partially complete a form and return later to finish completing the form. Previously, we made users successfully complete a given page in order to save any work. This necessitated that forms be broken up into multiple pages in order to really take full advantage of this feature. With this release, we are introducing a "Save Partial Work" button that will be next to the submit button. This button enables the user to save what they have entered regardless of if they have completed all required fields on a given page. This feature is only available for users that setup a Form Login username/password for purposes of updating their form. Additionally, we have added functionality so that the FormSite account owner can now update and delete login details for individual users.
New Embedding Options
A feature that sets FormSite apart from some of our competitors is our Embedded JavaScript option. This option enables you to dynamically insert a form into a web page without using an HTML iframe. If you have ever tried to insert a form using an iframe, you have probably run into issues with the bottom submit button getting cut off or with scroll bars showing up when they aren't wanted.
Previously, when you embedded our form using our Embedded JavaScript option, your form would inherit most CSS style elements from the page it was embedded into. Some people like this and some do not. We now have an option that enables you to retain our style when the form is embedded in your page. This means that the form looks the same as it does on our site when it is embedded in your page.
We now support embedding all pages of a multiple page form in your site. Previously only the first page was embedded. When the user went to the 2nd page of your form, they were taken out of your site to FormSite. By default, we now embed all pages of multiple page forms. This behavior can be overridden so that only the first page is embedded.
More information on these new features can be found by logging in and going to the "Form->Publish" page.
Custom PayPal Parameters
PayPal has so many configuration options that it does not make sense for us to program all of them into FormSite. Up until now we picked the most popular options and implemented them. With this release, you can include Additional PayPal Parameters that get sent to PayPal.
Update / Delete Attachments for Individual Results
We have added the ability to delete just an attachment from a result and to also update the attachment. You are now able to better manage your attachment space usage by deleting selected attachments while retaining all of the other information that users entered. Prior to this enhancement, it was necessary to delete an entire result in order to delete its associated attachments.
Improvements for Large Customers
If you have over 100 forms in your account, we now implement paging logic on the Home page. This enables the Home page to load much faster as it is not necessary to load the details for every form in your account all at once. We have also improved the Results Download performance for very large result sets. Our old way of downloading information relied on loading everything into memory before producing the download file. On occasion, this became an issue for accounts that had over 100,000 stored results as we sometimes ran low on available memory. We now do not use memory to store all results and have processed downloads containing over 200,000 results.
2/1/2009
- Added Google Checkout and Authorize.net support for payment forms.
- Pay by Check option for payment forms.
- Updated templates to use new payment options.
- New option to show quantity remaining for inventory items.
- Piping can now pipe a result's reference number.
- Custom Form Domain - see CustomFormDomain.com for more info.
Run FormSite.com on your Domain
While many of you are fans of FormSite, you are not necessarily fans of having formsite.com in the link to your forms. Many of you use frames or Iframes or embed our form in an effort to hide our domain. We understand this and support this.
As of today, we are offering an even more interesting alternative - run our software on your own domain. This is an extra add-on service that we are charging $49.95 monthly for. Essentially, we setup a domain for you, including SSL, and all of your forms are accessed and processed off of this domain. Everything else works exactly as it does today. All email comes from your domain and all pages including error pages, success pages, multiple page forms, etc come from your custom domain. There is no FormSite branding, there is never a mention of FormSite.com, and you will never see formsite.com in any link associated with your forms.
Additionally, you control the content of the root index page at your domain (http://www.customformdomain.com/). This is very powerful as it enables you to market/brand your services. Your users will not be aware that you are using FormSite.com to host and process your forms. So, you get all of the power of FormSite with complete control of branding/marketing of your custom domain.
Contact us today so that we can get you setup. If you have an existing account we can seamlessly make this change so that all of your old links will still work and your data will remain as is. We will have you up and running on your own custom domain in less than 48 hours. Read more on this at CustomFormDomain.com.
Now Accepting Google Checkout and Authorize.net
Many of you use our service to create order forms and collect payment for products or services. We have recently received many requests to support Google Checkout and Authorize.net in addition to PayPal. We now support accepting payments from PayPal, Google Checkout, and Authorize.net.
Enhanced Order Form Functionality
We have lifted the multiple page restriction on all order forms. All order forms can now span multiple pages. This includes PayPal, Google Checkout, and Authorize.net. You may also include skip/branching logic in any order form now.
Many of you have worked around our functionality limitations to accept both credit cards and checks on the same forms. This has led to some forms that while functional were not as clear to the end user as they could be. With this release, we have now included paying by check as an option in the Payments area. We now have a very clean way for you to accept multiple payment types including checks. See an example here.
New Servers and Networking Hardware
Having started in 1998, it would be easy to overlook replacing certain servers, networking components or cables. We are proud to say that every single piece of physical equipment used by FormSite, including servers, network switches, power cables, and network cables is now less than three years old. The majority of our equipment is now less than one year old. This is a big statement when you have been around for as long as we have as it means lots of equipment has been phased out and replaced.
Interestingly, we didn't think we'd need to replace power cables and network cables when we recently installed new servers. Why not use the existing cabling? When we went to pull out some servers that had been in operation for over 3 years, we found that the heat from the servers had "baked" the power cables to the point that they were brittle. When we bent the power cables, they became useless.
We have learned from that experience and are committed to continuing to have what we feel is the absolute best infrastructure money can buy. We have not spared any expense on our datacenter, servers, or network setup. During our busiest time of the week we are currently operating at less than 10% of our server capacity and at about 20% of our network capacity.
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