123FormBuilder Knowledge Base
Search our documentation platform for answers, service specifications and 3rd-party integrations.
Knowledge Base
What is PayU?
How does PayU work?
Is PayU secure?
Is PayU international?
What payment methods does PayU offer?
Does PayU charge any transactional fees?
How can I integrate PayU with my 123FormBuilder form?
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Product field can help you create customized forms allowing your customers to select and purchase products or services without leaving the form.
You can do various things with the product/service field in order to streamline your process. Let’s start with a cake order form as an example, where our respondents can order a Strawberry cake, a Mousse cake and/or a Vegan cake.
Email notifications
You can set up different email notifications that can help you with your orders. Based on respondents’ cake selection, you can send email notification to different email addresses. This can be done by creating email rules. All you have to do is click on Add rules.
Once Add rules has been clicked, you can create your email rules one by one. If you want to send an email to a specific email address only if Strawberry cake has been selected by your respondents, all you have to do is:
a. input the email address to “Send to”
b. set the condition: If Strawberry cake is
c. set the second part of the condition: is 1.
To put it in other words: if a respondent has selected Strawberry cake, then an email notification is sent to that specified email address.
If you are using Quantity selector for your product/service field, keep in mind to update your email rules. Respondents can select multiple items from the same product/service, so this has to be reflected in the email rule. For example, if your respondent selected 2 Strawberry cakes, then the below email notification is not sent, as the condition is set to 1 Strawberry cake.
If you want to cover all scenarios, then you have to update your email rule as below:
The same principle applies to all your products. Keep in mind that you can select different logic operators: is, is not, contains and so on.
As the email notification is concerned, you can easily customize it as you wish. You can add the Product/Service field to your Subject.
For example, we want to send an email notification when a Strawberry cake is ordered. Create your subject line and pipe in the quantity of a specific product within the subject line by clicking on the + sign.
If your respondents has ordered 2 Strawberry cakes, when receiving the email notification, the subject line will look as below:
When customizing the email notification template/body, you can add the product/service field to it by clicking on the + sign.
Integrations
In order to fully automate your workflow, you can always use integrations. As an example, we are going to enable Google Sheets. By doing this, all the submissions you’ve collected on the form from the moment of enabling the integration will be gathered in a Google Sheet.
Go to Integrations and click on Connect for Google Sheet.
The next step would be to Connect your Google Account.
Now let’s test our the form. Make a test submission and go to your Google Drive. A file has been automatically created, with the name of the form.
In the below example, we have received an order for 3 Strawberry cakes, 1 Mousse cake and no Vegan cake.
The value we are sending for product field is the quantity. If you did not enable Quantity selector, then the default value that we sent is 1.
Rules
You can create field or form rules by going to Rules section from Set up. Just enable them and click on Add rule in order to begin the process of creating rules for your fields/form.
For example, if your respondent orders 2 Strawberry cakes, you want to know if they should be identical or have something different. In this case, if Strawberry cake has a value greater than 1 (meaning your respondent has ordered more than 1 strawberry cake), then the question Should the cakes be identical? is shown.
Approvals
Product field can also be used in an approval flow. You can enable Approvals by going to Set up – Approvals and checking Enable approvals for this form.
After clicking on Add approval, you can create the approval flow.
For example, whenever someone orders more than 1 Strawberry cake, you want to send an approval email to a certain email address. The approval condition would look like below:
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123FormBuilder is excited to announce the release of our latest feature – the Product field! This new feature makes it easier than ever for businesses to sell products or services directly through their online forms.
With the Product field, businesses can create customized forms allowing customers to select and purchase products or services without leaving the form. This can significantly streamline the buying process and boost sales.
How it works
Let’s begin with an use case: you want to create a form through which you are collecting cake orders. You’ve added all the necessary info: Name, delivery date and time, phone number, email and address for delivery.
Now it’s time to add the products/cakes you want to sell. Simply drag and drop Product/Service field onto your form.
Once added on the form, you can easily customize the Product/Service field.
a. Product name – here you give a name to your product for your respondents to easily identify the product/service you are selling.
b. Product description – in order for your respondents to fully understand what your product/service offers, you can provide a product description.
c. Product image – this is maybe the most eye catching element for your respondents: product image. Upload a picture of your product/service so that your respondents could easily scan the products and choose the most appropriate one for them.
For our Cake Order form, we’ve created our first product: Strawberry cake!
Now we need to provide more customization to our first product. We can mark it as required – so your respondents will need to provide an answer to this field/choose this product/service or you can hide the field, if needed.
Next step would be to add a price to your product. You can do that my providing a value to Price from Payments&Calculations. The price provided by you will be displayed on your form for your respondents.
Additionally, if you did not add a payment processor on the form yet, an informative banner at the top of the page will be displayed to remind you of adding a payment processor, but we will get back to that in a second.
If you want to offer your respondents the possibility of ordering multiple items from the same product (e.g: 2 Strawberry cakes), then you have to enable the Quantity selector. Once enabled, you can establish the Unit of measure – the label you set here will appear as your unit of measure for your product (e.g: bottles, packs, lbs, kg)
The last customization that we can bring is related to Order options. Here you can change the currency, discount, taxes and add more advanced calculations.
Once you click on Order options, a pop-up will open where you can:
a. change the price of the product, if needed
b. apply a discount on the product
c. apply a tax on the product
d. set a stacked discount – which applies on top of the discount applied on each product
e. set a stacked tax – which applies on top of the taxes applied on each product
f. change the currency of the product by clicking on USD – US Dollar dropdown and selecting the currency you are interested in
For example, let’s add a discount of 10% to our Strawberry Cake. Once you input your 10% discount on Order options and click on Save, our Strawberry cake will have the price updated: we are going to show the full price and the price after the discount has been applied.
Payment processor & Order summary
In order to go further with our form, let’s add more products to it: Mousse cake & Vegan Cake. And last but not least, let’s add a payment processor on the form. You can do that by navigating to Payments from the left side panel and selecting the payment processor you want to use.
For our form, we have used PayPal. Once a payment processor has been added and enabled, you’ll notice an Order summary at the end of the form.
This table will be populated automatically based on your respondents choices for the product/service list.
Let’s test the form in Preview to see how it looks like. For our form, we have selected Strawberry cake and Mousse cake. The order summary has been automatically updated to reflect our choices.
In the Order summary you can see the product that has been selected, its price and its quantity and the total price for each product and for the entire order.
If a discount has been added to a product, for example for our Strawberry cake, the discount will be reflected in the Order summary, as Discount (x%) and also the value that is discounted.
Following the same pattern, if a tax has been applied to a product, if the product is chosen by respondents, the tax will be reflected in the Order summary as a Special tax(x%) and the value of the tax.
If you have enabled the Quantity selector, respondents will be able to provide the number of items they want to order for that product and simply click Add to cart button.
Subsequently, the Order summary will also reflect the quantity for each product.
Submissions
In order to test our form, let’s make a test submission and go to Results – Submissions. For each product added on your form, you can see the quantity:
a. Strawberry cake – 2 -> this means that 2 Strawberry cakes have been ordered
b. Mousse cake – 1 -> this means that 1 Mousse cake has been ordered
c. Vegan cake – no value -> this means that no Vegan cake has been ordered.
You’ve created your 123FormBuilder form and shared it with your respondents. Now you have gathered some views, even some submissions on your form. But how can you interpret Insights data? How can you use it to level up your form?
Form Insights – Navigation
You might have noticed that below the form stats, you have some clickable titles: Views/Submissions/Submission rate/Avg time to complete. All Insights data is filtered based on this selection. By default, Views is selected.
When you click on Submissions, the charts, the device, the referrer and the location card are refreshed to take into consideration the number of submissions. The same principle applies when Submission rate or Avg. time to complete is selected.
When Users or Abandon is clicked, we are updating the info shown in Insights charts in order to see the evolution of our form per day.
Note: keep in mind that currently, for Users & Abandons we are displaying only the Form insights cards, and charts, as they are not included in the Device, Location, Referrer cards.
Form Insights – Devices card
Let’s take the below example. Our form has gathered in total 38 views and 7 submissions and we have Views selected by default.
By using the devices card, you can see from which devices your respondents have viewed and submitted the form from. In the below example, the most used device for viewing the form is Desktop: 32 views, representing 84% of the total views.
You can hover on the pie chart to see the allocation of each type of device for your Views.
When switching to Submissions, the pie chart will reload in order to take into consideration the number of submissions per each type of device. Each slice from the pie chart will represent the percentage of submissions per each device. On hover, you can see the number of submissions for each device.
The same principle applies for Submission rate. On a bar chart, you have the submission rate represented for each type of device. On hover on each bar column, you have the type of device and it’s submission rate.
When Avg. time to complete is selected, the bar chart is reloaded to take into consideration the average time to complete per each device. On hover you can see the type of device and the average time to complete per each type of device.
How can Devices card information help me?
Let’s continue with the above example. Our form has registered a lot of views from Desktop devices (32) and only 2 submissions. This means a submission rate of 6.25%. Pretty low, if we are comparing it with Mobile or Tablet devices, isn’t it?
This should be making us thinking: what is happening with my form when it is viewed and completed from a desktop device? Is there an issue with the type of fields, with how it looks? Is the submit button not visible on desktop device? Or is there any other issue that I’m not aware of?
You can figure this out by going to the Preview section and playing around with all the devices. Dig deeper in the layout of your form and see what is causing problems to having it completed.
Now that you have figured out where the issue is, make the necessary adjustments and test it out once more. Sit back, relax and let your form gather more submissions.
Form Insights – Referrer card
Let’s take the below example. Our form has views and submissions registered on multiple referrers. If there are more than 3 referrers, you will have the option of expanding the list in order to see them all.
If we can not detect the referrer, we use the placeholder No referrer, like below.
When Views is selected, the pie chart will represent the top 3 referrers. Each slice of the pie chart shows the number of views and the appropriate referrer.
The same principle applies when Submissions is selected. Each slice of the pie chart shows the number of submissions per each type of referrer.
When Submission rate is selected, the pie chart is changed to a bar chart. When hovering over the column chart, you can see the referrer and the submission rate registered for that specific referrrer.
The same principle applies for when Avg. time to complete is selected. For each referrer, you can see the average time it took your respondents to complete the form.
How can Referrer card information help me?
By analysing each referrer’s performance, you can figure out which one is the most successful. Let’s say that you have shared your form on social media, on email and you have also embedded it in your website.
If the views registered for your form when embedded are higher, but submissions very low, this might mean that your respondents have difficulty completing it on your website. Now it’s time to dig deeper and see where the stopper is.
Maybe one channel is more successful than another, so this might be the key of getting as many submissions as possible.
Form Insights – Location card
Following the same pattern, location card shows you from which countries your form has registered views and submissions.
When Views is selected, the map will be have the countries from which your form registered views coloured. On hover, you can see the name of the country and the number of views registered from that country.
The same principle applies for all other information: Submissions, Submission rate, Avg. time to complete.
How can Referrer card information help me?
If your form is meant to collect submissions from multiple countries, here you can see which country is performing better.
Let’s say a country is registering a lot of views, but no submissions. In this case, you should verify if the translations have been made correctly.
Fields Insights
Fields Insights section is available starting with 6 September 2023. Fields Insights section is meant to provide you in-depth form analytics performance per each question that you currently have on your form.
For more information on how Fields Insights section works, please check out this article.
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How can Insights section help me?
Fields Insights
Beginning with 22th of March 2023, we’ve released some powerful features for Insights section.
If your pricing plan is below Platinum, you will have access to the basic form stats of the form:
a. Views
b. Submissions
c. Submission rate
d. Avg. time to complete
e. Users
f. Abandons
How can I access the full data?
If you are interested to know how your form is performing over time with more in-depth analysis, you can directly upgrade from Insights section.
Once you upgrade, you will have access to more powerful features, such as:
a. charts to see the performance over time for all your form stats
b. information related to the devices your respondents have viewed & submitted the form from, the submission rate for each device and the average time to complete per each device
c. information related to the referrers your respondents viewed & submitted the form from, the submission rate for each referrer and the average time to complete per each referrer
d. information related to the location of your respondents that viewed & submitted the form from, the submission rate for each location and the average time to complete for each location.
Fields Insights
Beginning with 6 September 2023, Fields Insights section is available to all users. If your pricing plan is below Platinum, you will be seeing a placeholder image with an Upgrade button.
Fields Insights section is meant to give you in-depth form analytics performance per each question that you currently have on your form. For more details on how the Fields Insights section works, please check out this article.
How can this information help me?
Insights section is a very powerful one, especially if you are interested in levelling up your form in order to gather more submissions.
For example, let’s take the device information. If you notice that your respondents mainly submit the form from a mobile device, maybe it’s time to think how you can modify your form in order to be mobile friendly. Keep in mind how your respondents interact with the form on a mobile device and change the type of fields to better suit mobile devices. For example, you can change a likert scale from your form as some respondents might have difficulty providing answers to a likert scale on a smaller resolution.
If you notice that on a certain device you are registering a lot of views but very few submissions, this could be a trigger warning. Some respondents might have difficulty submitting the form on a certain device. In this case, you can start digging deeper and see what the issue with the form is. You can always use the Preview and switch to different types of devices to see how your respondents interact with the form and if they are having any issues at all.
The referrer information can help you see what channel is the most used one. Let’s say you have shared the form on social media platforms and directly on email. You will be able to see which channel is the most performing one. This might help you better understand your respondents’ behavior.
The location information is useful especially if you are sharing your form in multiple countries.
Important Note
Forms created before the above release dates will have incomplete data, starting from the release date until the present day.Related articles
According to our Terms of service, forms with high email bounce rates will be limited for abuse. In order to bring more clarity on this matter, here you can find which are the rules we are following when limiting forms/users for high email bounce rates.
How can users reach high bounce rate?
Our threshold of allowed bounced emails is 5% of the sent emails.
If there are more than 90 emails sent in the last one hour, we are allowing a bounce rate lower than 5%. This means that we are allowing you to send 90 ignored email, but starting with email number 91, if the percent of bounced emails is >=5%, then your account will be blocked.
How are we treating each particular case?
If you are a free user and if you reach the maximum allowed threshold of 5% bounced emails, your account will be blocked. In this case, you need to get in contact with Customer Care.
If you are a premium user in day one and two of your lifetime and you reach 5% bounced emails, then your account will be blocked. You can sort this out by getting in contact with Customer Care.
If you are a premium user and your account is older than 3 days, then all email notifications from any form will be blocked. Additionally, you are going to receive an email information about the form that caused the high bounce rate.
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The form generated PDF file can be sent to Salesforce in two objects:
- Attachments and/or
- Files
The setup is easy, but dependent on the version of the Emails section your form has.
The form has Emails version 1 if you see Form Owner and Form Sender tabs when accessing the Emails section
Otherwise, your form has access to Emails version 2:
Now that you have identified the version of the Emails section of your form, let’s see what’s the necessary setup in order to send the form generated PDF to:
Emails notifications v1
If you need to send the Default Template PDF to Salesforce, then no special setup is required in the Emails section, you can go directly to the Mapping part.
However, if you want to send to Salesforce a custom PDF that you created, make sure the template is selected in the Emails section, under ATTACHMENTS → Attach submission as PDF to the notification email → Use template:
Note: Form Layout PDF can’t be send to Salesforce if your form has Emails v1
How to send the PDF template to the Attachment object for emails with v1
In the Object Mapping section simply create a primary object and then add Attachment as a related object.
After you choose it, you’ll see 2 required Salesforce fields listed in the Field mapping section: File name & Body.
Map the File Name with another form field or use custom value to type your own text.
Map the Body on the left with PDF submission on the right.
How to send the PDF template to the Files object for emails with v1
In the Object Mapping section of your Salesforce integration create a primary object and add the Content Version object as a related object.
Afterward, associate the Salesforce fields with the fields indicated in this image:
Emails version 2
If your form has access to this version, before setting up the Mapping part, you need to make sure that you have at least one Email with the option Add attachment: Submission PDF or Submission PDF using form layout enabled
If your form has access to this version, before setting up the Mapping part, you need to make sure that you have at least one Email with the option Add attachment: Submission PDF or Submission PDF using form layout enabled.
How to send the PDF template to the Attachment object for emails with v2
It is done the same way as described above, in Emails v1 mapping, except now you have the option to choose in the mapping which PDF to send:
How to send the PDF template to the Files object for emails with v2
It is done the same way as described above, in Emails v1 mapping, except now you have the option to choose in the mapping which PDF to send:
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Starting with 8th of March 2023, there are going to be some changes to your pricing plan. You might have noticed an in-app announcement related to this topic, but we are going to take each change one by once for more information.
Custom email notification template
Before changes, free users, users on Wix Starter & Weebly Silver had access to 3 custom email templates.
After 8th of March 2023, for Free/Wix Starter/Weebly Silver pricing plans, users will have one email notification available, with no edit option.
Only new forms (created after 8th of March 2023) will be impacted. Forms created before this release date will continue to work with the initial setup. If there are made any changes to an older setup, the new changes will automatically apply.
Email recipients
Before changes, free users, users on Wix Starter & Weebly Silver had accees to multiple email recipients.
After 8th of March 2023, for Free/Wix Starter/Weebly Silver pricing plans, users will have one email recipient available.
Only new forms (created after 8th of March 2023) will be impacted. Forms created before this release date will continue to work with the initial setup. If there are made any changes to an older setup, the new changes will automatically apply.
Redirect options in Thank you page
Before changes, free users, users on Wix Starter & Weebly Silver had access to the redirect options from Thank you page (Redirect to a webpage/ Show text, then redirect to a web page/Redirect with custom variables).
After 8th of March 2023, for Free/Wix Starter/Weebly Silver pricing plans, users will no longer have access to the redirect option in Thank you page, as they will become available from Gold pricing plan.
Only new forms (created after 8th of March 2023) will be impacted. Forms created before this release date will continue to work with the initial setup. If there are made any changes to an older setup, the new changes will automatically apply.
Custom sender email
Before changes, Wix Starter/Weebly Silver users were able to customize the From email option.
After 8th of March 2023, custom email sender (or in other words, customizing From email option) will be available starting with Platinum pricing plan.
All forms will be impacted as it follows:
– forms on Dormant, Wix Starter, Weebly Silver & Gold with custom sender will be redirected to noreply@123formbuilder.com
– forms on Platinum, Diamond & Enterprise with custom sender but with invalid SPF will be redirected to noreply@123formbuilder.com
We have introduced a new feature for you that comes in your help, especially for users on Free/Starter/Silver pricing plans.
Premium icons
All fields & field settings that are outside of your current pricing plan are marked with a premium icon so that you can easily figure out you currently do not have access to those fields.
For example, for free users Multiply field groups, HTML block and File/Image upload are not included in their plan, thus they are marked with a premium icon. This has been implemented so that you could easily understand those fields are outside of your plan and not get surprised when hitting a paywall.
The behaviour remains the same: as a free user, if you are trying to add such a field on your form, you will still hit the paywall with the appropriate pricing plan selected.
Another place where we have used premium icons to come to your help are for field settings. For example, free users do not have access to Payments & Calculations and as such, we have marked these field settings with a premium icon.
Informing banner
Another feature that we have implemented is showing an informing banner in Editor when you have reached the maximum number of fields allowed on the form according to your pricing plan.
Based on our research, we have noticed that most users were confused of why we are showing a paywall when trying to add an extra field on the form. As such, we’ve come into your help with an informing banner.
For example, when adding the 10th field on the form, free users will be seeing a banner informing them that they have reached the maximum number of fields allowed (10 fields). In order to add more fields on the form, they can easily upgrade by clicking on Upgrade now, where the paywall is shown with the appropriate pricing plan.
We have a new feature available for you in order to make your forms more successful: Estimated time to complete the form.
You may have noticed that in Preview we are displaying near the Publish button an estimated time to complete the form. Let’s dive in what it means.
What is estimated time to complete the form?
We are automatically calculating how much would it take for a respondent to complete your form based on:
a. the type of fields your form has
b. the lengthy instructions that you have added for each type of field
c. if fields are read-only or require input from your respondents.
How do you calculate estimated time to complete the form?
The formula we are using when calculating the estimated time to complete the form is based on a point system. We are taking into consideration the fields that you have added on the form and assign points to each of them. Then, the total amount of points is divided by 8, getting the estimated time to complete the form. You might ask why divide everything by 8. Based on our research, it generally takes on average 1 minute for 8 simple questions to be answered.
We are assigning points as it follows:
a. short/simple question → 1 point
b. grid format question → 1 point for each row
c. multichoice question → 0.5 points per answering option
d. mental calculation → 2 points
e. short open-end questions → 3 points
f. lengthy instructions or questions that have a lot of words → 1 point for every 60 seconds.
Note: hidden fields and field rules are not taken into consideration when calculating the estimated time to complete the form.
How does estimated time to complete the form help me?
Based on our research, 27% of people abandon online forms because of their length. This is something that you might want to take into consideration when building up your form.
Also, research shows that the data quality tends to decline on forms that are longer than 20 minutes, so a good rule of thumb is to keep your form as short as possible, preferably under 20 minutes. A form that takes over 20 minutes loses more than 3 times as many respondents as one form under 5 minutes.
If you want to increase your chances of building a good converting form, estimated time to complete the form comes in real help. When building up the form, always go to Preview to check how long it would take your respondents to complete the form, test out your form and you are ready to gather those submissions!
Analyse data and draw your conclusions
Let’s say you have published your form and gathered submissions. Now you can easily go to Insights section and check out the average time to complete the form.
The main difference between estimated time to complete the form and average time to complete the form is that:
a. estimated time to complete the form shows you how long it would take a respondent to complete the form based on a predefined formula
b. average time to complete the form shows you the actual time it took your respondents to complete the form, by calculating an average out of all submissions.
If you notice that your average time to complete the form is too high, you can always go back to your form to make the necessary adjustments and shorten the form in order to increase your submission rate.
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Our form builder offers you the possibility to apply diverse formats and validation options to your fields. For example, the Phone field will automatically format the number you introduce and you can have quite a few variants too. Have a look over our comprehensive guide on how to choose from the large selection of field formats we offer.
Nothing quite suits what you need? Read on for more advanced options.
First, let’s make sure we have the basics covered. Read here how to add a script to your 123FormBuilder form. Now, we can move on to the part that is more fun.
Change text input to lowercase/uppercase
The script examples provided below help you to automatically format your clients’ answers to be in all caps or all lowercase. After they are done writing in a field, the text will change accordingly.
Add this script to your form in order to change an input to all lowercase:
function changeTextFormat() {
var valueOne = loader.engine.document.getElementById(00000000).getProperty('value.value');
loader.engine.document.getElementById(00000000).setValue(({"value": valueOne.toLowerCase()}));
}
window.onchange = changeTextFormat;Add this script to your form in order to change an input to all uppercase:
function changeTextFormat() {
var valueTwo = loader.engine.document.getElementById(000000000).getProperty('value.value');
loader.engine.document.getElementById(000000000).setValue(({"value": valueTwo.toUpperCase()}));
}
window.onchange = changeTextFormat;In both cases, you just need to replace “00000000” with the field ID of your own Short answer/ Long answer/ Email field.
In order to find the ID of a field, right click on the field and use the Inspect option of your browser.
The result:
Add digits grouping/ thousand separators
Do you calculate and/or collect data with very large numbers on your forms? It comes very handy to automatically format the numbers that your clients input on the form (or the results calculated by a Formula field) with thousands separators. This ensures easier readability.
To use this script you will need to make sure you have a Number field and/or a Formula field, where the number is inputted/calculated, as well as a Short answer field, where the new number’s format is displayed. To not overcrowd your form, you can choose to hide either the Number/Formula fields or the Short answer field (depending on whether you want the form participants to see the formatted number or not).
Here is the script:
function addSeparators() {
var number1 = loader.engine.document.getElementById(000000000).getProperty('value.value'); // - formula field or number field
loader.engine.document.getElementById(111111111).setValue(({"value": number1.toLocaleString('en-US')})); //- short text field
};
window.onclick = addSeparators;Replace “00000000” with the field ID of your Number or Formula field and then replace “111111111” with the field ID of your Short answer field. Remember, the Short answer field is the only field where the number is formatted.
See the result:
In the script above we used the ‘en-US’ locale, which formats a number like 123123123.45 into 123,123,123.45. However, if you need to use the 123.123.123,45 formatting method, replace ‘en-US’ with ‘de-DE’.
If you have more fields with numbers that need formatting, create for each field an associated Short answer field. Repeat the lines of code between the curly brackets {} for each pair of Number/Formula field – Short answer field. Make sure to change the name of the variable for each repetition (ex: var number2, var number3, etc.) and change it accordingly after setValue(({“value”: as well.
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You can create a double opt-in flow using Approvals in order to verify if the submitted data is correct and/or confirm respondent’s identity. In this way, you can make sure that the respondents submitted the information themselves and weren’t impersonated by someone else.
After the form is submitted, respondents will receive a copy of the submission on email and will be asked to review & confirm the submission, by clicking on a link included in the email.
Use cases
The double opt-in flow can be used for:
a. forms collecting personal or sensitive information (e.g: information used for administrative, legal, financial or medical reasons)
b. lead generation forms, such as registration, sign-up & subscription forms
c. application forms
Benefits
a. this flow will allow you to get more done without the hassle of manual work.
b. you can have peace of mind that the collected data is correct, and that respondent’s identity & contact details are verified. In this way, you will no longer reach your respondents based on incorrect or incomplete data, and you will have insurance that they are not using fake email addresses or are not impersonated.
c. this will give more accountability for respondents; there will be less chances of changing their mind after the fact, which could mean less time wasted, even less refunds.
How to set up double opt-in flow
First thing would be to create the form that you need and make sure you collect the respondent’s email address using an Email field and make it required.
Tip: If you want to go the extra mile and ensure that there are no typos when respondents fill out their email addresses, you can ask them to confirm their email address by duplicating the Email field, and linking the second email field to the first use using the option Match another field value. Also, do not forget to make it required.
You can also add a Signature field at the end of the form and ask respondents to confirm that the filled-in data is correct.
Tip: if you want to ensure that respondents actually sign the form and avoid collecting simple doodles like dots or lines, increase the Signature complexity to medium or high, and don’t forget to make this field required as well.
The next step would be to go to Set up and visit the Approvals section. This will allow you to send out a confirmation email to respondents after the form is submitted and ask them to take action.
Tip: you might be tempted to use a simple email notification instead, but using Approvals feature will allow you not just to send out a custom email to your respondents, but also:
a. ask them to take action and confirm/cancel or edit their submission, directly from the received email
b. ensure that submissions remain in a pending state until you have the respondent’s confirmation or rejection in case they have changed their mind and cancelled their submission.
Start by clicking on the New Approver button in order to specify:
a. who should receive the confirmation email
b. when should the confirmation email be sent.
In the pop-up that opens, edit the first line called Send approval email to and select the email address field (through which you are collecting the respondent’s email address) using the dropdown displayed on the right. Go to the next line and make sure you select All submissions for when the approval email to be sent. For now, please disregard the options that appear after the and/or dropdown and go ahead and save the setup by clicking on Add approver.
Tip: If you need to apply another layer of filtering and disqualify specific submissions that don’t meet your criteria, you can choose to send the email confirmation to the respondent only if the submission contains specific information. For this, instead of selecting All submissions, select the fields that you want to review and create one or multiple conditional logic rules. These rules will allow you to customize specific “if this then that” scenarios, and ensure that the confirmation email is sent only when the submission data meets these conditions.
For example, in the below example, only if the Product 1 choice is checked, then an approval email is sent to the respondent’s email address.
After you add an approver, click on Enable approvals for this form. Once it is enabled, you will be invited to navigate to the Emails section, as three automatic emails have been created for you.
Once you have reached the Emails section, looking on the left side you will see a series of email templates. Let’s take them one by one.
a. The 1st template called You received a submission for… is the email that you will receive as soon as the form is submitted (before respondents confirm or cancel the submission)
b. The 2nd template called Submission Approval Request for… is the confirmation email that will be sent to respondents once the form is submitted (based on the setup that you just defined in the Approvals section). More details will follow below.
c. The 3rd template called Submission was rejected is the message that will be sent to respondents and optionally yourself after the submission was canceled by respondents.
d. The 4th template called Submission was approved is the message that will be sent to respondents and optionally yourself after the submission was confirmed by respondents.
The 2nd template, Submission Approval Request for… is essential for the double opt-in flow, as this is the email that will be sent to respondents after they submit the form asking them to take action, review the submission and confirm/cancel it.
There are a few steps that you should take into account while customizing it:
a. Skip the send to & when options, as you already defined them inside the Approvals section.
b. Edit the email subject, so respondents understand what the email refers to and the action that is required on their end.
c. Customize the email body by:
– adding a suggestive message, so that respondents understand what is required of them and that the submission will be taken into account once it is confirmed
– keeping the form summary, so respondents can quickly review the submitted information directly by reading this message
– editing the button text displayed on the Approve button, so respondents understand that the call to action is to Confirm the submission
– editing the button text displayed on the Reject button, so respondents understand that the call to action is to Cancel the submission if they have changed their mind
– highlighting that they can edit the submission and complete missing details, fix typos or update information using the Review submission option.
d. Consider attaching a copy of the submission as PDF. You can choose to attach a PDF that looks exactly as the form (Submission PDF using form layout) or one that looks more like a table, but that can be customized (Submission PDF).
d. Don’t forget to save the setup by clicking on Save button. You will also see an informative message that the email was saved.
As the last step, don’t forget to edit the Submission was rejected and Submission was approved templates and:
a. Add the email address field through which you collect the respondent’s email addresses as a recipient, and your email as well in case you want to be notified when the submission is confirmed/canceled.
b. Edit the email subject and body, and include messages that are more appropriate for your use case
c. Attach a copy of the submission as PDF, to have a snapshot of the final version just in case it was edited in the previous step
d. Don’t forget to save the setup for each email notification.
And you are done, but before publishing the form, we recommend previewing the form, filling it out and making a test submission.
Tip: fill in your own email address on the form, so you can receive the email notifications and test the end-to-end flow. While experiencing the flow the same way your respondents would, you can easily spot where to make improvements if needed.
If you navigate to Submissions section, from the Results tab, you can also check the status of the submission and notice how it changes from pending (after the form is submitted), to approved (after the submission was confirmed) or rejected (after the submission was cancelled).
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