The basics of creating an email form

 Following are the basic and most important steps for creating a functional and esthetic email form:

1- Drag and drop elements
Choose the relevant elements for you and drag them on to the design area.

2- Layout and alignment
Since the layout is not rigid in the formlogix form builder you can place your elements anywhere you wish in the design area.
Use the alignment options to place your elements in perfect alignment (align top/bottom/left/right) and use the “make same height/width option to define equal spacing between elements.

3- Element settings
Select each and every element and enter the relevant information and settings for it. The most important setting that must be entered in the element “caption”.
The caption is the name of the element and will appear in different palaces: the emails, the data management tool report, the filters, etc.
Another important attribute in the element settings is the “tab index” with which you can define the order of fields when the form filler tabs through them (uses the “tab” key).

Apart from the mentioned above the element settings holds the width and height of the element, the capability to define a mandatory field as well as define the background, font color and add style code.

All that’s left now is to save the form, preview it and try it out before publishing the form and embedding it in your site.

Aligning the email form elements

When creating an email form with a form builder you can place your elements anywhere on the form. This flexibility is a great feature but in most web forms the elements are aligned somehow. Besides, aligned elements make the form cleaner looking, easier to understand and much more pleasing to the eye. So how do you align the elements if needed and what alignment options are available in your email form builder?

There are a few tools one can use for selected elements’ alignment:

1-      Horizontal alignment options. One can align a few elements to the right, center or left. This is a classic solution for aligning bullets or rows of textboxes, for example.

2-      Vertical alignment options. One can align a few elements to the top, middle or bottom.

3-      Grid. A user may use the grid (which is combined or vertical and horizontal guide lines) to align his/her elements. You can freely place your elements against the lines or choose to “snap” the elements automatically to the grid by using the “snap to grid” option.
4-      Make same height/width. These options enable the user to determine an equal spacing between the selected elements. The same spacing may be applied horizontally or vertically.

using the grid to align elementsalignment by snapping to grid

 

press on the make same vertical space icon

elements are evenly spaced

 

 

make same vertical space

 

align top

align left

Adding private fields to an email form

Can one add invisible private fields to a finished email form (fields not visible to the form filler) and if so-How can you do this?

Creating a simple email form is easy but how can one insert invisible fields in the form for tracking and commenting?
This is an important feature for those who need to /rate/distinguish between/comment/etc on the data entries they collect without making the form filler aware of it.
This can be done in a form builder using the “Private Access Fields” option. In this option the form owner places the fields of his choice in a container element and defines it as “private access”. Once the form is saved and published the fields are not visible in the form, but are only accessible to the form owner in the data management tool.

Steps for using the access fields:
1) Enter the form’s report page.
2) Double Click on a specific entry line to enter the entry’s edit mode (or choose ‘Tools’>Edit).
3) Your access fields will now be sowing and you will be able to enter data in them.

Creating a field template in an email form builder

When using an email form builder on a regular basis you may notice that you need to use a few fields or field sections over again in different forms.

You can of course clone the whole email form but then you will need to delete the unnecessary parts each time. Another solution is using a “Field Template”.

A form template is a ready made field, or a section of fields that a form owner can use in his/her form (For example a list of countries or contact fields).
But how can you create such a template?
In this option a form owner can create a custom field template according to his/her specific needs and save it for future use.
Goes without saying that templates saved by one form owner has nothing to do those saved in another account. Each for his own as they say…

These are the instructions for creating such a template:

Prepare the template in the form designer: 1- A – if you wish to create a single field template simply drag the element on to the design area, define its properties and select it.

single field template

B – if you wish to create a group field template simply drag the elements in to a container element and select the container.

field section template

2- In the “General Toolbar” – press on the “Add Field Template” icon.

3- Give your template a name and press on the “OK” button.

4- The template will then be added to the field template List and will be available for use.

choosing template

Choosing the template from the list will result in it appearing in the form.

choosing template

tell a friend email form

The “tell a friend” is a classic email form and is getting to be really popular. I guess it’s because the internet is so big you can get lost and good things are good to bookmark.
Creating such an email form is funny enough very simple and easy if you use a form builder.

Steps to create a “tell a friend” form :
1) Enter the form creator.
2) Drag a Label element in to the design area and enter text explaining what the form is about. For example: Please enter your friends email address in order to recommend this site to him/her.
3) Drag another Label element and enter the text “Friends email address”.
4) Drag an Email element, place it next to the label and go to its element settings.
5) Enter the text “Friends email address” in the element “caption” field.
6) Make sure that it’s defined as mandatory and that its “Send Copy” checkbox is turned on. This checkbox is in charge of sending an email to the address entered by a user in the email element.
7) Go to the “Form Settings” and fill in a message in the “Email User Message” field. This message will appear at the beginning of the email sent to friends.
Make sure you use [n] when you want to create a line break. For example: Hi,[n]I wanted to tell you about this great site i found[n]Its called FormLogix.
Add a submit button.
9) Save the form.