Web Forms Best Practices for multiple entries

Ana Aguayo

What is the best practice for a Web form that requires some header information such as Company name, Address, PO#, etc. and then it requires information submitted for multiple products.

For example, we need product information for 8 separate products from the same company, and we want to avoid the recipient of the form having to submit the same Web Form 8 times.

 

 

Tony Davidson - SmartSheet Certified User 2016

You could use drop down columns, checkbox columns, or separate comments text fields 

Ana Aguayo

Hi, we are already using drop down columns, checkbox columns, etc. What we are trying to avoid is having to create duplicated columns in order to collect information for multiple products. For example, Customer ABC needs to report an issue with 5 different products. Customer ABC enters their main information (Contact name, phone, PO#, etc.) and then they enter information for product 1, (Name, quantity, expiration date, price), next would be entering the same information for Product 2, and then for product 3, and so on. How would you collect this information using a WebForm when you don't know how many products they need to report? Customer ABC maybe needs to reports issues with 3 products, and Customer XYZ only has issues with 1 product. Thanks

J. Craig Williams

Since the data for each product will reside in separate rows (I would assume), then using Smartsheet's WebForm will require multiple submissions.

You could have a WebForm for their contact information and another for the product (which would be set to reload after submission).

The product ordering needs to have some way to reference them - either a customer code or phone number or something that will be unique and used on the backend to tie all the orders together.

Or you can look at another form alternative - there's dozens if not hundreds.

 

Craig

Ana Aguayo

Craig, could you mention where to find form options/alternatives? I am going to try creating 2 separate forms one for contact information and one for product information. Thanks so much

J. Craig Williams

Here's what I (typically) do when looking for solutions that are Smartsheet related:

 

1. Check Labs

https://smartsheetlabs.com/

There's nothing there for this - but I check in case they've snuck something new in while I wasn't looking.

 

2. Check Zapier

https://zapier.com/

If you don't have an account, that's OK. Scroll down the home page until you get to the section that looks like this (might change before I finish typing)

In the search, type "Form" (or whatever you are looking for). Surprisingly, this works for a lot of different searches - this is not searching content but only program names but many categories have similiar names - Form happens to be one. CRM is another.

You can also just scroll the list and hope the name rings a bell.

Once I have name, I just type it into the address bar and see what the browser pops up. One or two of the top hits will likely tell me if I should keep clicking or move on.

 

3. And there is just using your favorite Internet browser.

Just "Smartsheet form" in Google has the following hits on page 1:

 

123ContactForm (nice but not what you are looking for)

Google Forms (I use it)

Gravity Forms (I use it)

Captain Form (I'm testing it)

Drupal (this Community is using it)

 

4. Change your search:

Something like "smartsheet form 3rd party", "smartsheet form  integration", or "smartsheet best form" may reveal things to investigate - even alternatives to Smartsheet like Wrike, Liquid Planner, or Basecamp. 

(I tend to ignore paid site hits at the top)

Usually, steps 1-3 are enough.

If I'm still struggling to find anything, I will switch search engines but I don't do that very often.

 

Hope this helps

 

Craig

 

 

 

 

Shaine Greenwood

We also have a Google forms integration that you might check out: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/1850129-smartsheet-sync-add-on-for-google-forms#sync