It’s been in the works for some time now and over the coming weeks we’ll be unleashing some exciting changes to our form builder console. Our main focus has been geared towards improving the overall user experience along with some additional love for connectors. This is an ongoing project so stay tuned for more updates coming soon!
Project Facelift
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We’ve been working towards de-cluttering and simplifying our form builder, with a focus on making the platform simpler, more approachable for new users and, more customisable for existing users. The initial phase of updates for this project will roll out in the next few days, focusing mainly on collapsible areas across most pages on the form builder. In our Screen designers, we’ve leveraged these collapsible areas to better group and collate common field properties for easier reference and discover-ability.
A new feature is also being added to the Settings menu – the excitingly named “View Mode”. This allows web users to toggle all areas open or closed based on your choice of either Basic or Advanced view. For the power users among you, the Advanced mode provides access to all areas without any need to toggle.
Connector Improvements
We’re making a few tweaks to our SharePoint connectors for Forms. These will open up new possibilities for pushing data to Microsoft’s workhorse platform.
SharePoint Documents Connector – New Metadata/Keywords Option
Now you will be able to apply metadata to documents you create via our SharePoint Documents connector. This metadata can be static text or dynamically generated via a formula, and will be added to the uploaded file via SharePoint’s Enterprise Keywords facility.
SharePoint List Connector – Easy Refresh of Columns
If columns change on your target SharePoint List, you previously would have needed to delete the connector from your form, then rebuild it in order to see the new columns in the field mapping panel. BOOM! GONE! No need to remove and rebuild the connector once this feature is released. The new Refresh option will appear on your SharePoint List connector, this allows you to refresh the column list and update field mappings automatically.
Send Media Files Separately
We’re adding the ability to separately send media files (photo’s, video’s and audio clips) captured on a Form using existing connectors. This option will be available for most storage based connectors (e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox etc) as well as on our email connector.
Website as a Service Enhancements
Quite a few of you will have your own branded version of our form builder, so we’re spreading the love and adding some tasty new options that expand the possibilities for you and your customers.
Custom Side Menu
Soon you will be able to completely reorganise the left-hand menu in the form builder. We’re giving you greater control over the order, groupings, title, icon and link targets of absolutely everything in the menu. Still want more? No problem! You will also be able to open external pages from other websites inline via an HTML iframe option. Sweet!
A lot of you will also delegate permissions to other users. Now you’ll be able to restrict menu options based on the logged-in user’s access level and permissions, so you can control who gets to see what on the menu.
New Default Landing Page Option
Along with your shiny new side menu features, you’ll also be able to specify the default landing page for users after they log into the form builder. Again this will be controlled by access level, so you can send administrators to a different spot compared to regular users.
We’ve started the year off with a bunch of great new features, with a whole stack on the way over the coming months. We hope you like them 🙂
As always, we’re guided by your feedback so please let us know what you think.
