Form Builder Guidance

I know it’s a beta feature in v24, but I’m not finding any information to guide me in getting the new Form Builder to work. Is there any documentation that I’m missing? The upgrade to v24 was perfect and I love the comprehensive options in the form builder, but I’m just not sure how to get started.

Thanks!
Kevin

Hi Kevin, thanks for your question. It’s been a very busy end of year for us here and we haven’t had a chance yet to write documentation for this lovely new feature, but we certainly plan to. Ideally, this will be added over the summer before the start of the next school year, we’ve just been short on time and capacity with the release coinciding with the end of the year.

Cheers,
Sandra

That makes perfect sense, Sandra. I will keep messing with it and see what I can manage to assemble on this end.

The new update is looking good so far, though, and upgrading keeps getting easier and more reliable each time. Thanks for all the work on your end!

Kevin

Hello team,

I’ll drop this question here as seems related:

Gibbon uses: surname+preferd name in most parts of the system, what happens when application form is build with only Official Name field? what would be the downside or is there a configuration to set official name as main name for the system?

→ goal: to reduce the name fields, current: surname, firstname, prefered name, official name

Thank you.

Hi Kelvin, I can certainly understand wanting to reduce these fields. There must be at least two minimum name fields, 1) a preferred name or first name, and 2) a surname. From there, it can extrapolate and come up with the other fields. It cannot use only an Official Name, as there’s no guaranteed way to extract first and surnames from this, as names are complex and vary widely. Hope this helps.

Okay, i will try see how reduce the repeatition there using the combinations you’ve just mentioned.

Thanks again.

Hello again, Gibbon Team!

I have encountered a more specific form builder issue, this one related to the Application Form Confirmation email that is automatically sent to parents. Several parents have mentioned that this email looks like they are the one applying for admission (rather than their student) and I finally saw a copy of an email when a parent forwarded it today. It doesn’t explicitly state that the parent is the student, but it does list the parent at the top of the submission details in a way that is confusing.

Here is the confusing section of the email (with the names adjusted to protect privacy).

Please find a copy of your submitted details below, for your reference:

  • Last Name: [Family Last Name]
  • First Name: [Parent First Name]
  • Preferred Name: [Parent Preferred Name]
  • Official Name: [Parent Official Name]
  • Gender: Female [Parent]
  • Date of Birth: 01/30/2007 [Student]

I looked at the Application Form Confirmation email template to see if I could make adjustments on my own, but all the * fields are drawing on {{submissionDetails|raw}}. Is there a way for me to check or adjust this so parents receive something less confusing?

Thanks!
Kevin

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the heads up, that isn’t the intended behaviour of the script and it certainly is confusing to mix the fields together like that. It looks like it was related to the field labels, I’ve updated the script in a fix for v26, which you can find below. It’s a small fix so should be easy to apply to your system:

I’ve also updated the template data so it will pass along the full set of submitted data to the template, should you want to design your own list of details rather than an automatic one. For example, if the field name (not the label) is homeAddress in your form, you can output it in your email template with the Twig tag {{ homeAddress }}

Eg:

Hope this helps!

I applied this to my two systems, Sandra–it was indeed an easy addition and will hopefully solve the problem. Thank you again!

I don’t have a great way to test this, though. The test emails in the system admin don’t actually attach any student data, so I don’t think I will know the result until I get another application.

I feel confident it will work, but I will keep you posted if not. I appreciate some added flex and functionality!
Kevin

1 Like

Greetings, Gibbon!

I’m running into another problem with the new forms–almost always, the parent 2 is not being created when an application is accepted. I don’t have the picture I took of the error, but I figured I would check on it while it was on my mind. (I can attach the picture later if necessary.)

Thank you for any guidance you can offer!
Kevin

Here is the picture of the error I’m getting. Thanks again!

Hi Kevin, this is odd, I’d be happy to check things out to see if there is a bug. Since the application form is so flexible, can you share some more information about what your application looks like, such as a screenshot of the fields you’ve added to it, and the settings you’ve enabled on the main Edit Form page. For the applications where you’re seeing “Parent 2 could not be created”, could you check to see if a full set of parent data was provided? At the very least, a first name, surname and email would be required to create a new account.

I appreciate your willingness to look into this, Sandra–sorry for my delay. I’ve attached pictures from the edit form page as a starting point. I didn’t adjust much in there, but a few changes were made.



I have also confirmed that Parent 2 information is getting inputted correctly. The error happens for all Parent 2 entries at this point.

Regarding fields themselves, I only added an emergency contact section to the family page of the application. I removed a few I didn’t need (Home Address (Country) was a notable one, but Name in Characters and Personal Documents were also in there). I can include pictures if that helps, but it looked pretty similar to the default.

Keep me posted if you come up with anything or need more information. Thank you as always!
Kevin

Hello @sandra @ross
This issue reported by @kclearylcmc is very pressing.
i.e
PARENT 2
Parent 2 could not be created!

ENROLL STUDENT
Student could not be enrolled, so this will have to be done manually at a later date.

Parent 2 is not being created despite the information being entered in the application form.

How is the enrollment supposed to happen? How is the Form Group selected?

Thanks
Tieku

Hi Tieku, for enrolment to happen during the acceptance process, the Form Group at Entry needs set by an admissions user before accepting the application. This can be found in the Office Only section of the application when editing it.

Were there any PHP errors thrown during the acceptance process? Also, the settings in the screenshots look good. Were any of the Available Years of Entry selected? It doesn’t look like there are any selected in the screenshot, but that might just be visually. This could cause an error if there’s no School Year of Entry set on the application itself.

Hi Sandra,

I understand the student enrolment process now and that’s working.
What about Parent 2 user account creation?

Thanks

I think the form group at entry was the issue for my student enrollment error, Sandra. I’ve had trouble understand the function of form groups until I switched language settings (it’s called “Grade Level” for us now), so I just putting into use properly. I left it off my forms but have added it now with the office use only option. Hopefully that solves the problem!

As for your other questions about my screenshots–there are never php errors in my acceptance process. (Those orange banners in my June 10 post were the only errors that display.) A year of entry is always selected before accepting an application (either by me or the applicant). There was no default set on that screenshot, but I always chose it before accepting the application.

Keep me posted if you have additional thoughts or if you need more information. I should have another application coming in soon, so I will see if my changes make any difference.

Thanks!
Kevin

I’m running into another unusual form builder issue. It seems as though I can only add one custom text block to any given form. If I already have a custom text block in my form and I try to add another, I always get this error.

I only get this error adding other blocks if I don’t give the block a unique label. The text block, however, is always named “text” and doesn’t offer the chance to change the label. I’m trying to find a way to adjust existing text block labels right now, but guidance is always appreciated!

Kevin

I have confirmed that the issue with adding text blocks is the need for a unique name! When I change the fieldName in the gibbonFormField table (in mysql) to something other than text, I can add multiple text blocks into my form.

It would be great to allow this to work within Gibbon, but I have at least found a solution to the problem!

Hi Sandra and Gibbon Team,

Please do you have an update on issue reported on Parent 2. We have started using the system but it is really painful to add parent 2 for each new application manually. Requesting you to look into this.
Appreciate all your help
Thank you