Invite to Wufoo Form Creator

I’ve finally gotten my invite key for Wufoo and the last time I was this excited trying something new was when I requested for a public key to use Google Analytics. When I first mentioned about The Art of Wufoo Form Creation, it fewer options you could add to a form and there was less features you could use.

However, now given the opportunity to beta test Wufoo I see that they’ve got a quite a few nice stuff and not so nice stuff depending how you look at it of course. So let’s have a chat about Wufoo and what it offers website designers alike. :)

I’m going to take the Wufoo form creator part by part here; adding fields, editing fields to finishing the form. Without further due, when adding fields you’ve several options to choose from like:

• Single Line Text
• Paragrapht Text
• Multiple Choice
• Checkboxes
• Drop down
• Address
• Website
• Section Break
• Number
• Name
• Date
• Time
• Phone
• Price
• Email
• File Upload

Yes, there are that many items for you to use freely and to add an item it’s easy as just point and click. Then if you’re unhappy with the form workflow, all you need to do is just drag and drop to rearrange each field.

The stuff you have to note though when adding some fields is to think of it as something simpler and logical. Take for instance the Name field asks for Title, First name, Last name and Suffix as well. When I first tried out the available demo, it didn’t occur to me the Name field would have these many items because I’ve been used to adding a Single Line text to fill a Name.

Moving onto editing the fields you’ve added. You’ve a few options for each field with the basic being:

• Field Title
• Field Type
• Field Size (Small, Medium & Large)
• Validation (Required & No Duplicates)
• Permissions (Public Access & Admin)
• Instrucstions for the User

If you check the No Duplicates under validation, what it does is that it double checks for anyone who might’ve signed up already. This has been implemented because the team at Wufoo thought it’ll help curb users creating forms for mailing lists. Good thinking guys.

I don’t quite get the Admin access only under Permissions and I sure don’t understand its main use. Here’s what I got from the tooltip:

Set the field to ‘Admin Only’ if you would like the field to ONLY be accessible via the Wufoo Admin inteface. Fields that are set to ‘Admin Only’ will not be shown to users when the form is made public. Useful for forms that need to collect public submissions but then need to be ranked or added to privately in the Admin interface.

If anyone does know why the team has this, please do tell us about it.

The instructions for users will appear when a user hovers over each item found in the form. It’s meant to be like a reminder, guide, tip kinda thing. If you also need the same field type in a form and feeling too lazy to go back to the add field section, just duplicate the field.

Upon finishing the form, you can request Wufoo to email new entries to you and have a successful message display when the form has been submitted. The reason for submitting new entries via email to you is for people who would like to store their database on Wufoo itself.

Now, customizing the form has its freedom too with Wufoo Themes. In Themes you can customize everything from the Logo, Colors, Typography, Borders and even to turn the Shadows on or off. Though it sounds very general do not be fooled by it because its customization can go all the way up to tooltip background color to the choice of font you’d like to use all over the form. You can also save your themes. Phew!

The other great thing about Wufoo is that it’s not only seeing itself as a form creator but also a customer relationship management (CRM) application. Yes, the Wufoo team have outdone themselves by offering a Report Manager with the system.

Remember I said about some setbacks. Well, I think when Wufoo is a public release, free sign-ups get to make 10 forms and have 20 reports. If you’d like to use anything more than that, you’ll have to ‘upgrade’ your account. So I’ll be waiting to see what’s the decided fee they’ll be putting on it though I’m pretty sure it’ll be in USD.

Last but not least, view the Wufoo form I’m testing out on http://www.dannyfoo.com/contact_us.html