What are Webforms?
The Webforms module is a powerful tool that allows you to collect information online that needs to be stored within CiviPlus. As its name suggests, it is a form that is displayed as a web page in a browser, so that it can be made available not just your CiviPlus contacts, but can also be used for the general public, and possibly even for internal staff data collection.
The key thing about a Webform is that it is tightly integrated with CiviPlus and can expose entities such Contacts, Activities, Cases, Events, Memberships and Contributions. As well as integration with CiviPlus, Webforms uses a number of other features such as conditional fields, validation, and options for saving drafts and what happens when the form is submitted
All this means that, depending on the Use Case, Webforms can be very simple (for example just collecting a few contact fields to store in CiviPlus), or very sophisticated (for example, displaying and collecting data from a number of different CiviPlus modules, and triggering workflows and automation when submitted). Either way, by using Webforms you can easily gather user data and automatically update the CiviPlus database, significantly streamlining data collection and administrative tasks.
What can Webforms be used for ?
Webforms can be used for multiple purposes, but typical use cases are:
Allowing users to update their details themselves
Donation forms
Membership signup
Newsletter signup
Contacts us forms
Grant/Award applications
Volunteering applications
Case submissions
Supporter surveys
Webforms become particularly powerful when you couple them with the automation and workflow capabilities available in CiviPlus. Using these features you can trigger the following following kind of actions when the Webform is submiited:
Send automated followup emails
Automatically update the status of a ‘case’
Add contacts to groups or add relationships between contacts
Generate and assign activities
Beginning a process by creating a ‘case’
CiviPlus actually ships with a few Webforms that you can have. look at to see how they work, and if appropriate you can copy ("clone" is the term is used for Webforms) and tailor for your own purposes:
Update My Details
User Registration
Add Organisation Members
Edit organisation details
Add new case role
Note: The list of existing Webforms in your system may not be the same as the one shown above. It is generally best not to change the Webforms that ship with CiviPlus as they have been specifically configured to work with the out of the box system.
How to create and use a Webform
As mentioned earlier, Webforms can vary in complexity and whilst it can be very easy to create a simple Webform, a sophisticated one may need a development cycle that includes Discovery (what is the Webform going to be used for?), Design and Specification (how will it work?), Build (actually configure the Webform ) and Test (trying the Webform under different conditions, with different users to make sure that it behaves as you expect).
The creation of a Webform happens in the Self-Service Portal area of CiviPlus, and you will need certain permissions to access the configuration pages. The starting point is to go to the Self-Service Portal and navigate to Content -> Add Content -> Webform.
If you do not see this menu option then ask your administrator to check your permissions.
Note: You can also update existing Webforms by navigating to Content -> Webforms and selecting the one you want to amend from the list that is presented.
Assuming that you have the correct permissions you can start the process of creating a new Webform. We will go through two examples in the following articles, one for a simple Webform and one for a more Complex one.