Wait, what’s FormBuilder?
Sometimes I just write stuff and assume folks will know what I’m talking about. Not great, but it happens.
List reader MJ wrote back with a question on my Search Kit. Form Builder. email:
Good morning, Allen! I just wanted to clarify—when you mention "form building," are you referring to the registration forms for our events? If so, I'd be really interested to see what you have in mind.
Thanks, MJ
It’s a great question for me because it reminds me that not everyone is as “deep in the mud” of CiviCRM as I am.
So to explain a little more:
What is this Form Builder you speak of? And can it help with my event registrations?
This is not directly related to event registration — indeed, at this point, it can't handle paid event registrations at all (or any kind of payment). And it's not much related to anything you've probably done in CiviCRM so far — it's a totally new set of features!
FormBuilder is the new drag-and-drop form creation tool in CiviCRM. It's similar to working with Profiles, in that you can specify which fields appear on the form, but it does much more:
Position fields easily in any order, in a variety of layouts, with the drag-and-drop form editor.
Create special-purpose forms for data entry by logged in users or anonymous visitors.
Specify which permissions a user needs in order to access the form.
Define a specific URL (web address) to access the form
Easily group fields in sections or boxes with various options for outline style, background color, etc.
FormBuilder doesn't yet support payments, so it's not going to replace your contribution pages or event forms for paid registrations or memberships — but that's on the list of features "soon to come" (whenever "soon" is).
But its powerful layout tools, along with the types of data it supports (activities, related contacts, cases, and more) make it much more flexible than profiles, and useful for a wider array of needs.
For example, I'm using it now with a client who's doing a series of surveys as part of a grant-funded research project, and it's the kind of thing we really couldn't do (or rather, not do as well) with Profiles.
You can find it under Administer > Customize Data and Screens > FormBuilder. It won't hurt to play around with creating new forms if you like, but I'll offer two qualifiers there:
Probably best not to modify any existing forms that you find there; CiviCRM is probably relying on those to function just as they are designed now, and fiddling with them could have some surprising and undesirable effects.
Getting started on your own is a steep learning curve. The official FormBuilder documentation can help, but even the official docs have trouble keeping up with the rapid pace of improvement in FormBuilder.
So to sum up:
If you've never heard of it, you probably don't want to dive into it. But when you have an unusual need that can't be handled with Profiles, someone who's familiar with FormBuilder might be able to suggest ways that it could help.
I hope this helps!
All the best,
- A.