Formulaire, the premium form builder

clarkwinkelmann

treyb unfortunately I'm not sure. I have yet to try the extension manager for myself. I'm not sure how it works together with Extiverse. But I believed it used the same configuration file and should work fine if it already works from the command line.

treyb

clarkwinkelmann Thanks, Ill give it a try when the next extension update is available.

treyb

@clarkwinkelmann - is there a simple way to have a form open in a modal instead of a standalone page? I love the look of the modals and think some forms would be better served that way.

clarkwinkelmann

treyb when opened from where? A link to the form in a post? Or are you referring to user profile forms?

I am planning to add some options for embedding forms on external websites, which would include a modal-like experience, but this still requires some research as I am certain there will be cross-origin problems.

For forms on the forum itself I have thought of various implementations, and would love to hear more about use cases to decide which feature to implement first. I definitely want to have some way to embed standalone forms in posts.

treyb

clarkwinkelmann Hey Clark - In this case, yes the profile form. I know I can do an Iframe inside a JS modal, but that could get a little messy then the footer is duplicated, etc.

Another example I could think of, is the Discussion form. Have a separate Start a discussion button, for reporting a issue, creating a listing, etc. Similar to what Orion Feedback has done.

ctml

Say if I want to blast out an email from a discussion using group mentions, but don't want anyone not in that group to be able to submit the specific form. Is there a way to restrict standalone forms to specific groups?

@Group Please complete this standalone survey <link to standalone form>

It looks like profile forms can be restricted to groups, but I can't direct link users to the form since its embedded under their specific profile page which is unique for each user. I see there is a global permission for standalone forms but really I'm looking for per form group permissions. Any suggestions?

Edit: I see an expert mode that gives the ability to set the group per question, this may work. If the same could be applied at the form level instead of having to set per question that would be the preferred option.

clarkwinkelmann

ctml at this time, there's no per-form permissions for standalone forms, I will probably add this in a future update.

You might be able to use the advanced per-field permission to achieve this, by making a required field that only some groups can fill. The UX won't be the best if an unauthorized user tries to fill the form, but you could add some explanation text in the form itself.

It wouldn't be very complicated to create a permalink for a profile forms that redirects to your profile automatically with a bit of PHP or javascript code. But it becomes a bit more tricky if the user is not yet connected when they open the link.

ctml

clarkwinkelmann thanks, definitely form level permissions would provide a better UX but setting every permission on every field will suffice for now. I will be on the lookout for the update 🙂

clarkwinkelmann

ctml if you make just one field required and put a field permission on it, then no should will be able to submit the form. For most people this would be an issue, but for your use case it should make it easier as you don't need to change every field.

In a future release I hope to add an option for default value, which would allow making a field required while still applying permission on it

ctml

Feature Request:

Create form from existing (duplicate form)
Limit submissions per user, per form. (ie. 1 submission per form). It seems like presently this cannot be achieved on stand alone forms to limit each user to submit the form (survey) only once.
Create a description for the overall form, similar to how you can for each question.

UX:

If directed to a form while not logged in, it says "The form is closed". It would be better if there could be a redirect to login or a message stating that the user must login to complete this form (maybe the preferred option). This one is more of a priority since it will likely lead to reduced submissions as the user will be left confused after receiving a link to form via email (how I am distributing the forms), but user receives message "form is closed" when opening while unauthenticated to the forum.

Bug:

Notification emails seem to include the raw template with variable names etc + another rendered template. The body did not substitute user variables such as {user_email} from the replacement variables listed https://kilowhat.net/flarum/extensions/formulaire#replacement-variables

clarkwinkelmann

ctml thanks, I'll look into all this. I didn't remember the UX behaving this way, I'll definitely improve this when per-form permissions are implemented. If all your forms require login you could use Linguist to change the text of the error page in the meantime.

The Bug is curious. Your Imgur attachment doesn't seem valid though, was it showing something in relation to the email?

ctml

clarkwinkelmann oops, please check the image again and see if it's working now. added one more feature request for form description too.

RE: Linguish - that's a great suggestion, in my case I'm only using standalone forms and seems that anonymous submissions are not supported. Are you saying I can still allow unauthenticate users to submit forms (which would be anonymous then)?
https://kilowhat.net/flarum/extensions/formulaire#standalone

clarkwinkelmann

ctml if you set the permission to allow guests to submit standalone forms, then anyone should be able to submit the form without an account. If they are connected to an account, the relationship will be saved when submitting, otherwise it will be anonymous. There is currently no way to force a form submission to be anonymous while saying connected.

ctml

Discussion reply forms could be an interesting concept, this could provide a way to group related replies in a single discussion with a specific format.

I am also thinking about how this could be used as a more advanced version of polls, where the responses could be collected and shown in the main discussion post (or just below) with the results per question. Permissions to control whether participants can see the results. It's more difficult to show free form in grouped results, so those could be excluded from this type of form.

ctml

@clarkwinkelmann I'm using group mentions as a way to send notification to users by tagging those groups in discussions/posts. How much effort would it be to add a discussion field for groups, that lets the user multi-select groups that would behave like normal group mentions when it is posted.

If it could have an option to filter the groups that are allowed to be selected via regex it would be preferred.

Thanks!

clarkwinkelmann

ctml adding user and group selection fields is on my TODO list, but I'm not sure when I will be able to work on this.

But what do you mean by behaving like a group mention? You mean when it's part of a discussion form, you'd like the group in the field to be notified through the Mentions extension?

ctml

clarkwinkelmann yes thats right, when discussion is posted it would be treated as a standard @Group Mention so that the groups selected in the form would receive a notification as that is how group mentions already work. The group selection in this case on the form is nothing more than a nicer UI for mentioning groups or users. Not sure if that is what you had in mind?

I guess basically, when the discussion is posted the post content would need to be formatted with the groups selected as regular mentions, this way the built-in notification system would be used.

Let me know if it's something you think could be a sponsored feature to be done on priority and how much you think it would cost.

ctml

ctml since I'm trying to leverage this for notifications, my goal is to have the actual discussion post content have all fields inside the post. I understand that is probably not how it works today, however see an option to generate discussion automatically with form submission.

Questions:

To do this, am I correct that I will have to navigate to the form directly instead of using the discussion composer?
- if yes, it would be nice to have a method to navigate directly from the tag. for example, add an option to remove the "start discussion" button and instead add a button for the form with custom text (e.g. "Submit request"), so there would be an entry point for each form from the respective tags page.
To generate the post content with the actual field data, I am inserting the slug fields { slug } using the braces. Some fields don't translate well though, for example long text appears as raw html.

<t><p>test</p></t>

<t><p>test</p></t>

And checkboxes show as "Array", though it would be ideal for the select items to be shown.

Since my goal is to have the regular flarum notifications/emails include the content of the form in it, I need to basically duplicate all the fields into the discussion post using every slug. If I am able to do this successfully, one problem remaining is that I will have two copies of the information shown on the post - those being the added fields above the post, and then the ones added the post body.

One solution could be to have one of the two hidden, this way only 1 is visible from the forum interface but the post content would still be available for forum notifications.

An alternative would be if formulaire could instead embed the fields directly into the post as an extension option instead of above the post.

If post new discussion automatically is enabled, it could also be useful to have update discussion when submission is edited. This would have an effect of editing/updating the post with the updated post content.

Capybara

Does the profile part of Formulaire have cardinal differences from the Masquerade? Or do these extensions have the same functionality in general?

clarkwinkelmann

Capybara I'm not sure what you mean by "cardinal"? The 2 extensions are completely different implementations of a similar concept. Many use cases can be achieved with either of them.

Formulaire offers more field types (in particular, lists and file uploads) and has more permissions around the visibility and edit abilities. Formulaire can also integrate with the sign up form.

The only thing I can think of that Masquerade does differently than Formulaire is the ability to search users by form answers with the native MySQL search driver. Formulaire also supports search, but only with the Scout integration. Scout is much better if this is something you plan to use regularly.

Both extensions can be used at the same time, though it probably doesn't make a lot of sense.

If you have a use case in mind, feel free to share, I might be able to give better suggestions.

Capybara

clarkwinkelmann I bought an extension and tested the profile part. This extension has incredible rights settings, especially pleased that you can separately configure the permission to edit each field.

What I'd like to improve:

Add an icon field to the left of the Title
There is too much distance between the fields. I fix this by adding a horizontal line through [hr] to create some kind of visual and fill the screen. Most likely, you can fix it through the css, but this is not the usual user path
Replace «no answer» with nothing. Imagine that you create a page on a social network, do not fill in any data about yourself and then see endless reminders that some information is missing
Make the description of the field visible to the user even if he cannot edit the field
Add «Show answer to this field in user bio» how it is done at the masquerade

Bug

If you view your or someone else's profile from a mobile device and open the navigation menu, profile item, created by this extension, is not displayed. You need to refresh the page and then it will appear

And in general, the extension works flawlessly

ctml

ctml @clarkwinkelmann let me know if you think if this is doable via sponsored feature. The goal for me is to leverage the form as a standard template, but the end result is a post with the selected answers/fields.

New Fields

Group selection fields (regex for allowed groups to select) as multi-select dropdown or checkbox sorted by A-Z
Date Time field, that allows selecting both date & time
Some standard field that allows all the native markdown formatting to be used in auto-generated post (ideally includes the native composer editor or WYSIWYG editor), so all of the editor features are available like user mentions, emoji picker, etc.

Field Formatting

Some fields may require special formatting
- groups should be formatted as group mentions in discussion posts
- multi-select should be formatted as some kind of list (comma separated, bullet point, etc.) - maybe configurable at field level
- bug fix for fields that aren't being formatted correctly in at the moment like long text appearing as html instead of markdown, or checkbox selection appearing as "Array"
Regenerate formatted post on form response edit (ie. if the form generated a discussion, edit the post)
- when using this option, it probably makes sense to disable/hide the discussion posts edit button
An option to hide the form fields that are embedded above the post when using auto generated discussions, the form edit button would still be available to make modifications to regenerate (edit) the post.

a. Option to hide "start discussion" on tag enabled forms
b. Option to add "start form" button from tag enabled forms (custom button text per form so can be set based on use case, like "submit feedback", "submit request", "ask a question", etc)
- since it would be possible to enable multiple forms on the same tag, there could be multiple start form buttons after one another.
- I guess technically the button could be made to appear on any page even for non tag enabled forms

This would provide a visible entry point to the form from the tag enabled form, instead of having to navigate directly to the form. From what I can tell, if you want to generate the discussion post using the form you can't start the form via discussion composer because you then have to manually enter the post.

Discussion Reply Templates

Discussion reply templates that are tag enabled. If multiple forms use the same tag there could be two options how to handle
- when starting a reply it could prompt the user to select which discussion reply form to use for the given tag the discussion is in
- or discussion reply template could be linked

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