Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Create Free Online Web Forms to Embed in your Website

iFreeTools Creator - your custom online database application builder, built for and hosted over Google App Engine - now supports free online web-forms, which you can link-to or embed directly in your websites. When the data is filled-in and submitted using the online forms, the data will get added directly into your iFreeTools Creator online database application, which you (and your authorized users) can sign in to access.

As part of the Entity configuration, you can now specify if you would like to enable web-forms for that entity, as highlighted in the image below.



Once the online web-forms are enabled, you can get the link for the web-form and the IFRAME code in the entity's list views. You can either provide the link to the public web-form in your website / blog or you can embed the form using the IFRAME code, directly within your website.



The link / embed-code will open up the online form, for your users to enter the details. Sample public web-form accessed via the link is shown below.



Currently, as part of the free plan, you can enable web-forms for just one entity, while with paid deployments you can enable public web-forms for unlimited number of entities.

Update : It is also possible to restrict the fields in the web-form, using authorization profiles. For this you will have to..
  1. Define a new Auth Profile with permissions set for the Add operation and select the required fields. Other permissions like View / Edit / Delete / etc.,. will be ignored, when this auth-profile is used in the context of web-form.
  2. Add a new user with email-id as public-web-form-user@ifreetools.com, associating the auth-profile
Please note that having such an user-account configured will affect all the public web-forms.

Hope you find the public web-forms support useful in your database application.

8 comments:

  1. Hi! I restricted our library's public webform and hidden some required attributes. The idea is that if it's added from the public webform, required fields that are hidden can be left blank. (But if adding an entity in the actual app interface, the required fields will have to be validated). It does work if the admin users are logged in, and the database shows an entity has been added by admin even though it is from a public web form. But it doesn't work and it produces an error if one is not logged in. Is there something I can do to make this requirement work or do I have to make all the fields that are hidden to be optional and not required so I can use our web form for clients? Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi,

    Kindly provide access to your application, by adding my email-id raj [at] sahasvat [dot] com (you should have received a welcome email from this id) as an 'admin' user from under Admin > Users > Add User, so that I can verify the current configurations and get back to you regarding the same.

    You can use the feedback page or directly email me for faster support responses.

    Best Regards,
    Raj

    ReplyDelete
  3. Can existing Google Web forms/spreadsheet data be imported to a new database? Not as a CSV file but as a live form, already recording data as a live form embedded in a website?

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Laurie Burg: This is not currently possible. Can surely support the option if we receive more requests for the same, from customers.

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  5. Hi, is there any limit on the entities I can receive using this form, in the free-use version?
    That's because I have 22 items and now I receive a text-page message "Traceback" when accessing the form.
    Thank you very much!

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Belena: Sorry about the message. There was an error condition which has now been fixed. Your web-form should work fine now.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi,

    The web form for adding records works well on my web site, is there an option for viewing the records and editing them on the web site. What I would like to be able to do is add, edit and view the items record by record if possible or in data sheet view.

    Thank you,
    Ryan

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Ryan:

    Glad to hear that the web-form works well in your website.

    With paid deployments, you can enable public access to view the all / specific records. This feature is available as a preview in the free version. More details here.

    Also in the paid deployments, for editing of records, you can use a web-form (for a new entity, let us call it Request access) along with a workflow (which gets triggered when entries are added to your Request access), to automatically add new users into your application, with specific Auth Profiles. After filling in the Request access form, users can then proceed to login and add/edit records based on the permissions defined in their Auth Profile. All database changes will be automatically tracked in Audits.

    ReplyDelete