Form Fields

Learn how to add a field to a registration page.

Eric Range avatar
Written by Eric Range
Updated over a week ago

What You'll Learn

  • How to add a field to a registration signup form

  • The types of fields available

  • How to use validation and conditional logic

In Add a Signup Form, we covered how to customize and create signup forms to collect information from people who register for your events. On this page, we'll review the different types of fields you can choose from. Fields are the parts of a form where people enter data or make a selection. For example, their name, their phone number, an answer to a question, or their preference from a list of items.

With conditional logic and validation you have the ability to create fields that make forms easier to fill out, and at the same time, ensure that you obtain the information you need for your event. 

Getting Started

  1. On the event, go to the Signups tab, click on the Add a Field button, and a window with the options will open.

  2. Choose the type of field you'd like to add. You are provided with 4 options: Fields, Groupings, and Custom, each containing several different fields for you to choose from. You can search for specific fields in each category using the search bar. The rest of this article will review the categories of fields, individual field types, and how to set up fields for the specific needs of your form and event.

Add a Field: Field Categories

On the Add a Field form, fields are organized into 4 categories:

Field

This tab contains single, pre-made fields. These are common fields, such as name, date of birth, term, and major. These fields already have validation (covered in more detail below) and other options set up for you. For example, the country of citizenship field comes pre-populated with a list of countries so you don't need to create that list for people to choose from.

Groupings

Grouped fields consist of multiple fields. Address is a good example. Rather than manually adding the individual fields (street address, city, state, etc.), you would select the grouped address field. Groupings are great for standard information, but are limited in that the fields in the grouping can't interact with each other like they can with conditional logic (explained below).

Custom

Fields that you or members of your team have already created. Event451 saves your fields here so you don't have to recreate them. This is especially helpful for frequently-used fields. 

New, Markdown

Rather than a field for gathering information, this is a field for displaying text within a form. You can format the text with markdown tags.

General Tab

Once you've selected a field type from the list of pre-made fields, or if you're creating a new field, you'll be able to customize the field. This may mean adjusting settings, or, in the case of new fields, entering them for the first time. 

The General tab is where you'll enter the basic information required for your field to be displayed, along with details about how it should be displayed. Depending on the type of field you selected these options will be different. The following is a complete list of what can be part of the general tab. 

Label
The title of the field that will be displayed on the form. E.g. First Name.

Description

This allows for an internal description of the field.

Help Text
This appears with the field. Use it to help guide people about what they should enter, or the format they should enter it in. Examples are good ways to provide help text.

Default Size
How much of the screen should this field occupy? Choices are full, half, third, and fourth. You can have 1, 2, 3, or 4 fields on a line, assuming the size of the other fields is set similarly.

New Line
When this is toggled to Yes, your field will start on its own line. When combining fields onto one line make sure to toggle this to No.

Default Value
Some fields allow you to have a value pre-populated in the field. "Value" is simply the content in a field. For example, in a major field, the name of a major entered is the value.

Learn More: Using Profile Type default value to create/update non-student profile information.

Default Date
For date fields this is the equivalent of autocomplete. You can choose "today," or an amount of time in the past or future. These dates change, so selecting "today" will always fill in the day when the form is viewed.

Options
For fields like checkboxes, dropdown, and radio buttons that show a list of things for people to select from, you create the list by clicking Add Option and entering the information:

  • Label and Value: The label is displayed to the person filling out the form; the value is what will be saved in the system when the form is submitted.

  • If you have autocomplete turned on, check the box next to the option you want to be pre-populated on the form.

  • Click the minus icon on an item to delete it.

Data Sources

For fields that use options (checkbox, dropdown, and radio button), you can use a data source to populate the options rather than creating them manually. A list of majors is a good example of when you would want to use a data source rather than enter items one-by-one. It not only saves time, but it ensures accuracy and consistency across your forms.

1. To use a data source in a form, you will first need to create the data source by going to Data > Data Sources on the left hand menu, if the source hasn't been created yet.

2. If you know the source exists already, or if you've finished creating it, go to the Data Source tab of the field settings.

3. Toggle "Use values from data sources?" to Yes.

4. Select the data source from the dropdown of all the data sources available to you. This will include customized sources as well as generic ones. Depending on the selected data source, you may see options to indicate:

Name Field: This is the field from the data source that will be shown on the form. You can go to the data source (Data > Data Sources) to see what these options correspond to as they will be different depending on the data source.

Value Field: This is the value that will be saved in the system when the form is submitted.

5. Indicate if you want to use filters to filter out items from the data source that you do not want to display. This allows you to use one larger data source for multiple events and simply filter items from the list on each event. For example, if you create data sources for majors and terms offered at your school and each term only has certain majors available, you can use filters to filter out just the majors for a specific term.

If you're using filters, indicate the below. Note: You can use multiple filters.

Operator: The logical operator used to find results. 

Then click Add Filter and indicate:

Field: Create another field with a data source, then choose that field here.

Dimension: Which value to look at in the referenced data source. These choices will change based on your data source, and refer to the parts of each item in the data source (e.g. label, code). The dimension is the list of values that will be excluded from the data source you are filtering.

Validation

Validation helps ensure that people enter the information you are looking for. For example, letters rather than numbers in a name field, or a certain number of characters in a text area. Some things to keep in mind:

  • You can add multiple validations to a single field.

  • Validation options can be contingent upon other fields. For example, a field may only be required if another field has a certain option chosen, but can otherwise be skipped.

The following are validations available for different form fields:

Required
The field must be filled out. If it's skipped, the form won't submit. 

Required If
The person must fill in this field only if the parameters are met. When this option is chosen you will be asked to choose the field and value(s) that will make this field required. For example, if you have a checkbox field with many choices and one of them is "Other, please explain," you can create a text field that is required if the "Other, please explain" option is checked to be sure that you get an explanation with the choice.

Letters Only
The text must only be letters, no numbers. This is used mostly in name fields to standardize input.

Email
The text must fit the pattern of accepted email addresses.

Max/Min Length
Entered text must be below the maximum number of character or above the minimum. A combination of the two can guarantee the length of what is entered in the field.

Before/After Date
For the date field you can be sure the date submitted is before or after a specified date. 

Conditional Logic

Conditional logic eliminates the need for things like "If you answered Yes to the question above." With conditional logic, you can control which fields are displayed to people based on things like their previous answers or selections to other fields in the form.

The conditional logic tab is where you can set up the conditions in which the field is shown to people filling out the form. If conditions are not meant, the field will be hidden. 

  1. To use conditional logic, click Add Condition on the Conditional Logic tab. Set the conditions by indicating:

Field
The other field on the form this one depends on. Soon we will select what value(s) to look for in this field.

Operator
The logical operator to use on the values we will specify next. These are classic logical operators.

  • Equals: Shows this field if the value in the specified field is exactly equal to a single value.

  • Does Not Equal: Shows this field if the value in the specified field is not equal to a single value.

  • In: Shows the field if it matches any values in a set. You can specify multiple values to look for with this operator.

  • Not In: Shows the field unless any of the values in the set are found in the specified field. You can specify multiple values with this operator.

Value(s)
Specify what value (if using the Equals or Does Not Equal operators) or set of values (if using the In or Not In operators) your operator will be looking for. So, for example, if the field you're adding is a text field asking how many guests a person is bringing to the event, and the field this field is dependent on asked "Are you bringing a guest?" the value would be Yes or No.  

If the field this one is conditional on uses options (e.g. checkbox, radio button, dropdown), you will be able to select the value from a list of the options for the field. If you can select multiple options with your operator, you can click the ones you would like to include.

You can add multiple conditions to get the behavior you desire. Often, the best way to learn how your form fields interact is to try them out. Remember that you can always preview your registration form on the event page using the Preview Icon in the top right (your event should also be set to Published and Private if you don't want others seeing it just yet).

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