Gravity Forms

dashboard-formsGravity Forms is a WordPress plugin that provides a user-friendly way to build online forms. Responses can be emailed to single or multiple recipients. They are also stored in the WordPress dashboard for your records.

To access Gravity Forms, log in to your site and look for the dashboard menu item “Forms” (see left).

If you don’t see “Forms” in your dashboard menu
  1. Gravity forms may not have been activated for your site.
  2. You might not have permission to edit forms.

Contact [email protected] with any questions, or for help converting your forms to Gravity Forms.

  • Click on Forms -> New Form on your dashboard menu, or click the "New Form" button at the top of the Gravity Forms interface. This will launch a popup window - enter a name a name for your form (you can skip the description). If this is your first Gravity Form, you'll be brought to a tutorial page, which we've replicated below, in case you missed it.

    1. Select A Field Type

    Start by seleting a field type from the nifty floating panels on the right.
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    Not sure what a field does? Demo form showing examples of fields

    2. Click to Add A Field

    Once you've found the field type you want, click to add it to the form editor here on the left side of your screen.
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    3. Edit Field Options

    Click on the edit link to configure the various field options
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    4. Drag to Arrange Fields

    Drag the fields to arrange them the way you prefer
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    5. Save Your Form

    Once you're happy with your form, remember to click on the "update form" button to save all your hard work.
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  • To edit a form, go to the main form list ("Forms" on your dashboard menu), and click on the title of the form. To edit a form field, hover over the form field in the left column, and click on it to reveal more options, as shown below.

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    You can delete or duplicate the form field by clicking on the icons in the upper right. You can also change the label, add/modify help text, and make the field required.

    Curious what a field looks like in action? Demo form with all field types

    The form can be previewed at any time by clicking on the preview icon (outlined in red below) located in the navigation bar near the top of the page.

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    After you've made your changes, make sure to save by clicking on the blue "Update Form" button in the right column.

    Advanced field options

    Clicking on the advanced tab while editing a field reveals many additional options, including the ability to use conditional logic for the field, which allows you to only show (or hide) this field if another field is filled out in a certain way. For example, you could ask for a spouse's name, but only if they indicated that they were married.

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    1. check of the "Enable Conditional Logic" box
    2. select if the field should be shown/hidden if all/any of the conditions are met
    3. select the conditions: the field name, the comparison operator (is, contains, is not, etc.) and the comparison value.

    Form settings

    gf-settingsWhile editing a form, you can click on "Form Settings" (see red arrow, left), located in the navigation bar near the top of the page to access many options, including form layout options.

  • gf-notify1
    From the main form list
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    From the edit form interface

    There are 2 primary types of notifications you can set up.

    1. Admin notification: the email that gets sent to the site administrator when somebody submits the form.
    2. User notification: the email that is sent to the person immediately after they submit the form.

    You edit both in the "Notifications" section of Gravity Forms. You can get there by going to the main form list ("Forms" on your dashboard menu) and hovering over the title of the form to reveal additional action links. Click on "Notifications" which appears as an option when you hover over "Settings" (see red arrow, left).

    Or you can get there by editing a form by looking at the navigation bar near the top of the page. Hover over "Form Settings," then click on "Notifications" (see red arrow, left).

    All forms start out with one default notification called "Admin Notification." Click the edit link to change its settings.
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    Figure 1 - Notifications List

    The most important box to update is "Send to Email" (outlined in red below). Its default value is {admin_email} which represents the site administrator's email (look under Settings -> General to see who that is). In most cases, you'll want to change this. Enter your Williams email address, or a comma separated list of email addresses.

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    You should also update "From Name" and "From Email" to be something appropriate.

    If a notification should be sent to a different email address depending on how the user fills out the form, you can use the "Configure Routing" option.

    In the message section is the value {all_fields}, which simply means that all of the information the user entered in the form is included in the email.

    Click the blue "Save Notification" button at the bottom when you're done.

    User Notifications

    To use this type of notification, your form must contain at least one email field.

    New forms don't come with a default user notification- you'll need to create one. From the notifications list view (see Figure 1) click the "Add New" button.

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    You can choose whatever name makes sense for internal reference- "User Notification" usually does the job.  For the "Send To" option, click on "Select a Field" (red arrow, above). This means that the email address that gets notified corresponds to a field that the user filled out in your form. The "Send to Field" (outlined in red above) will dynamically populate with a list of email fields in your form. Select the correct one.

    Fill out the rest of the form and click the blue "Save Notification" button at the bottom.

  • gf-page-insert Creating a form doesn't automatically publish it on your site - you'll still need to insert the form on a specific page/post.

    In the page/post editing interface, below the title, you'll see an "Add Form" button (outlined in red, left). Place your cursor in the visual editor where you'd like to insert the form, then click the "Add Form" button. A popup window will ask you to select which form to insert. By default, the form's title and description will display, but you can uncheck those boxes if you don't want them to. DO NOT check the "Enable Ajax" box- this will prevent your form from submitting correctly. Click the blue "Insert Form" button, then save the changes to your page/post.

  • Click on "Forms" on your dashboard menu to get a list of all your site's forms. Hover over a form's title to reveal additional action links. Click on "Entries" (see red arrow below).

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    This will bring you to a page that lists all submissions for this form in a table format. Each row represents a submission- the first few fields of the form will be displayed. To see the full submission, click on the value in the first column.

    If you have a lot of entries, you can look for matches in any field or a specific field by using the search feature in the upper right (see below).  Don't forget you may have more than one page's worth of responses - look for the pagination arrows under the search button.

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    You can export your form responses to a CSV format by going to Forms -> Import/Export.  Select "Export Entries," then choose the appropriate form from the pulldown menu.