Ektron 9.00
Ektron provides powerful online form capabilities, letting you create an online dialog with visitors. Anyone can create and deploy Web forms. A form has the following components.
By default, form permissions are inherited from a form’s folder. To customize permissions for any folder that contains forms, access the corresponding folder under Content and assign permission as described in Managing Folder and Content Permissions.
Similar to content, users in the administrator user group have full control over form features. You must be a member of the administrator group to add, edit, or delete a form, or assign content to a form. You may also perform all actions on a form’s content. Users who are not members of the administrator user group can add, edit, delete, and restore form content if granted these permissions for the content folder or item.
Ektron provides sample forms to start with and then customize. Forms are saved to a database by default, but not emailed. To change either setting, use the Edit Properties screen.
You should only create HTML forms in a folder whose template uses a FormBlock or Poll server control. For example, in the OnTrek sample site, the Company folder uses the company.pb.aspx
. template.
You can modify this template as needed or create a form template and assign it to any folder through its Folder Properties screen. Because folders inherit properties from their parent folder by default, new folders created under a parent folder use the correct template. Of course, you can break inheritance and assign a custom template for any folder. Consult with your Ektron administrator about the folders in which you should create forms.
NOTE: You can also create a new edition of a form in another language by copying an existing form and translating it. For more information, see Working with Ektron Content.
IMPORTANT: If your form/survey/poll uses either Redirect option, your Web developer must use a FormBlock server control to display this form on a Web page. The Web developer cannot use a Poll server control when redirecting to an action page.
Here is an example of form content that you can create.
Note that some fields are required, and some provide a drop-down list of choices. You can learn how to create such a form by following the directions below.
The final screen lets you arrange the form fields. Then, add a button that lets the user submit the data.
NOTE: The form can also contain explanatory text, lines, images, and so on. To lay out fields in columns, insert a table and place the fields within table cells.
Next, click Save and Submit or Publish (). After you complete and save the form, it may need to go through the approval process. When that is complete, add it to the site by assigning it to a page template.
A Checkbox field is one character wide and is checked or unchecked. For example
To insert a checkbox field:
NOTE: You cannot enter spaces nor most special characters (!@#$%^&*()+=<>,.:;’"{}[]|‘~
) into this field. If you do, they are replaced by underscores.
Use a Choices field when you want a site visitor to select from a predetermined list. You can let a site visitor select only one or more than one choice. You can also determine the list’s items and appearance.
To insert a choices field:
NOTE: You cannot enter spaces nor most special characters (!@#$%^&*()+=<>,.:;’"{}[]|‘~) into this field. If you do, they are replaced by underscores.
First item is not a valid selection—You can use the first list item to prompt the user to make a selection instead of being a valid response. For example, the first item may say Select from the list. To do so, check this box. If you do, the site visitor must choose any selection except the first item. If the site visitor tries to file the screen without choosing a different item, this error message appears:First item is not a valid selection.
This option is only available if Appearance is set to Drop List.
music
to be collected when the data entry user selects this item and saves the page, enter music here.To insert a field that lets a site visitor select a date, use a Calendar Field. To do that:
NOTE: You cannot enter spaces nor most special characters (!@#$%^&*()+=<>,.:;’"{}[]|‘~) into this field. If you do, they are replaced by underscores.
NOTE: You can only enter double-byte characters if your Windows settings include that language. If you enter characters that are not in a language defined in your Windows settings, question marks (?) appear instead of the characters.
Calendar Field dialog—Validation tab
NOTE: You can only enter double-byte characters if your Windows settings include that language. If you enter characters that are not in a language defined in your Windows settings, question marks (?) appear instead of the characters.
Calendar Field dialog—Data Style tab
NOTE: You can only enter double-byte characters if your Windows settings include that language. If you enter characters that are not in a language defined in your Windows settings, question marks (?) appear instead of the characters.
Use a text field when you want the user to enter a free text response, or to display text on the screen. There are many variations you can apply to such a field, such as
To insert a text field:
Text Field dialog—General tab
NOTE: If you are using FireFox, you cannot enter text into a text field while creating or editing the form. If you need to prefill a text field with text, use the field’s Default Value property.
NOTE: You cannot enter spaces nor most special characters (!@#$%^&*()+=<>,.:;’"{}[]|‘~) into this field. If you do, they are replaced by underscores.
NOTE: This setting cannot be applied if this is a Password field.
NOTE: You can only enter double-byte characters if your Windows settings include that language. If you enter characters that are not in a language defined in your Windows settings, question marks (?) appear instead of the characters.
All of the following options are used with the text field. Only No validation and Cannot be blank are also used with the calendar field.
NOTE: Decimal numbers include whole numbers because the decimal point is implied. That is, 12 is 12.0000.
NOTE: Decimal numbers include whole numbers because the decimal point is implied. That is, 12 is 12.0000.
The Text and Calendar field dialog’s Validation tab features a validation area.
The validation feature can ensure the following aspects user input.
NOTE: Your Web developer can customize validation options. For details, see http://dev.ektron.com/kb_article.aspx?id=29421.
Your system administrator determines if a user can save the invalid data.
When the Custom Validation option is selected from the Validation field, the Custom Validation screen area becomes active.
As an example of custom validation, assume that a field collects telephone numbers, and you want to make sure the user enters 10 digits. To accomplish this:
string-length(.) <= {X}
appears in the Condition field.string-length(.) = {X}.
{X}
with 10. Now, it looks like this: string-length(.) = 10.
must be 10 digits
. Text Field dialog—Data Style tab
Click the Data Style tab to apply formatting to a field that accepts user input.
When you do, the following tab appears.
Use the tab to assign the following formatting attributes to a response field.
A form typically includes one or more buttons, which let a site visitor submit a completed form.
You can place 3 buttons on a form (circled below).
After you insert a button, you may want to enter or change its properties, such as its text, height, and width. To edit a button’s properties:
Link other Ektron content, you use tabs on the Edit Content screen to enter the following information about the form:
company.pb.aspx
. template. See Also: Working with TemplatesAfter a form is created, you can view its information in the Forms folder. To view a form:
NOTE: The content name is the same as the Form name.
To update additional form information that does not appear on the View Form screen, navigate to the form’s View Form screen and click Form Properties (). The Form Properties screen displays a subset of form information.
In the Mail Properties section of the Edit Form screen, you can select email addresses submitted on the form to be inserted into the To, From, and CC Mail Property fields. Instead of entering a static email address, it can be dynamically retrieved from the user’s form submission. For example, you want to retrieve the “from” field of an email from the information a user enters when completing the form. To do this, use the OR to addresses in field drop-down lists shown below. These lists contain fields that dynamically retrieve data from the submitted form.
Note that the To and CC fields can accept fields whose validation type is email address or email address list. On the other hand, the From field can only accept fields whose validation type is email address (that is, a single email address).
To set up email address retrieval:
When a user completes the form, the value entered in the field created in Step 1 is used for the email’s From address.
You can retrieve data from a submitted form directly to the form’s Subject and Preamble fields. (The subject is a standard mail field, and the preamble is text that appears at the beginning of the email.)
For example, the form may provide a list of your products. While the user is completing the form, the user selects a product that the user is interested in. The product then becomes the subject line of the email.
NOTE: Because a Textarea field can span multiple lines, it can only be used with the preamble. However, a plain text field can be used with both the subject and preamble.
To retrieve data dynamically from a form field into the email’s subject line or preamble:
Surveys and polls are a type of form. All of the same functionality is available and applies.
Surveys and polls can show ongoing results to site visitors after they submit their answers. For information about how to display a poll or survey on a website, see Poll server controla server control uses API language to interact with the CMS and Framework UI to display the output. A server control can be dragged and dropped onto a Web form and then modified..
NOTE: You can also create a new edition of a survey in another language by copying an existing form and translating it. For more information, see Working with Ektron Content
To create a new survey:
NOTE: When you choose Standard Poll or Blank Survey, the number of steps in the Forms Wizard changes from 5 steps to 4 steps. This happens because the Assign Tasks step is removed.
The following example shows a poll. Note that when a site visitor hovers over the poll, the question also appears as Tooltip text.
To create a new poll:
NOTE: You can also create a new edition of a poll in another language by copying an existing poll and translating it. For more information, see Working with Ektron Content.
WARNING! If you are logged into the site and create a new poll by right clicking on a poll selecting New, the existing poll is replaced by the new one.
To edit an poll on a website:
When logged into Ektron, you can right click on a poll and choose New Poll to replace the current one. The title of the poll, its ID, and properties stay the same. Only the questions and answers change.
To replace a poll:
To edit the style and appearance of the bar chart, modify the following files:
siteroot/workarea/csslib/reportchart.css
siteroot/workarea/controls/forms/HistogramReportPoll.xslt
Those files include extensive comments that explain how to customize the bar chart's appearance.
NOTE: You cannot edit pie charts.
You can apply validation rules to text or calendar field types. Validation rules ensure that the information entered by site visitors meets your criteria. For example, a validation rule specifies that a response to the Telephone field is 10 digits. If the response does not conform, an error message indicates the problem. The input must conform before the form can be submitted.
Validation rules are applied when a site visitor submits an entire form, not when the input is entered. If an invalid response is found, the error message that you define appears.
The site visitor must change the response to conform to the validation rule; then, the next field is checked and, if that is invalid, its error message appears, and so on.
NOTE: If you apply validation rules to more than one field, include the field name in the error message. For example, enter The name field only allows text. This is good practice because error messages only appear after a form is submitted. If the message does not identify the field, the user may not know which field needs correction.
The postback message is HTML content, so can contain text or graphics. Typically, the message acknowledges a site visitor’s completion of the form. For most sample forms provided, sample text appears in the editor. Modify it as you wish, using Ektron’s editor to change the style sheet class, insert library items, and so on. You can also insert fields into the Postback Message that retrieve form information. For example, your postback message may be:
Thank you «Full Name» for completing the «[Form Title]».
When the message appears, it looks like this.
Thank you Jay Kohler for completing the breakroom survey.
When you click the Post back message tab and select Display a message, the Merge Field button () appears on the toolbar.
When you click that button, a dialog like the one below appears.
The list includes all fields on the form plus the following fields.
Click any field to insert it into the form. The postback message retrieves the field's value and displays it within the message.
You can apply conditions to any portion (or all) of a postback message. For example, you can display one paragraph if the user browsing your Web page is using a smart phone, and different text if the user is not on a smart phone. As another example, you could display a postback message only if the user is not logged into the website as an Ektron author.
The image below shows the message content after a condition is applied.
To designate a condition within a postback message, select it then click Conditional Section ().
Prerequisite
Obtain the folder and hyperlink name from your administrator who set up an action page.
To redirect submitted form data to an action page:
When you create polls and surveys, you can choose to display the results after a site visitors completes the form. The results can display in the same window or a new window. In addition, you can choose how to chart the data. See Chart Types.
To show site visitors poll/survey results:
NOTE: Data entered into a text box cannot be charted. For example, if one choice in a poll is Other, and the survey has a text box for site users to enter additional information, the text in the box is not charted. However, the fact that a user chose Other is charted.
If a form is set to store data in the database, you can run a report that displays the submitted data.
The submitted form data can be viewed in any of these formats.
The table of values shows the following information for each completed form.
The siteroot\Workarea\controls\forms\FormReportTotals.xslt
file has a largeListSize
property that affects this report's display. By default, this property's value is 5, but you can change it as desired.
If the number of form responses is less than the largeListSize
value, the report lists all responses. In the sample report above, the question Age range has 3 possible responses:
On the other hand, if the number of form responses exceeds the largeListSize
value, the report only displays responses that have data. A response accumulates data when a site visitor selects it.
This format totals, for choice and select type fields, the number of times each choice was selected. Only choices that were selected at least once appear.
The table of values shows the following information for each completed form.
The List of Submitted Values format provides the same information as the Table of Values, but is formatted vertically rather than horizontally.
Displays the results of the form in an XML format. The following information is included:
<Title>
—title of the form blockNOTE: You can create a new poll question to replace an existing poll question. By default, the poll still has the same Title, ID, and other properties. You can change the title of a new poll question when you are editing the poll.
<Description>—
description of the form<SubmittedData>
—information that was submittedAfter you run a report, you can export its data to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file (.xls) for further analysis. If a form uses an XML structure, each XML tag becomes a column header in the spreadsheet.
While tasks typically help Ektron users track content activities, you can also assign a task to users or user groups whenever a form is submitted.
For example, your website offers a free product demonstration to anyone who completes a form. Whenever a site visitor submits the form, a task is assigned to your sales department’s administrative assistant who uses the form information to schedule a demonstration. The sales manager can review the task history to audit sales leads and ensure demonstration requests are being handled in a timely manner.
To set up a task that it is assigned to users or groups whenever a site visitor completes the form:
NOTE: You should be familiar with tasks before beginning this procedure. See Also: Assigning and Managing Tasks
When a site visitor completes and submits the form, Ektron creates a task and assigns it to users and groups you identified in Step 1. The task created upon form submission has the following information.
An email is automatically sent to every specified user who has a valid email address in the User Information Screen. The email’s subject line is the form name. The body of the email contains a name and a value submitted by the user for each field on the form.