If you edit your petition or donation you have a second step where you can put together a nice form for your supporters. If you edit an email protest it's the third step, after declaring your email target. For an email to target, it is the fourth step.

The easiest way to build a form is to copy an existing form (called action template). To do this, just apply a template to your form by choosing an action template in the list at the page bottom and hitting the Apply Template button. For more details about action templates, read our dedicated article!

If there is no action template that looks interesting for your new action, then you can of course drag and drop fields from the right into the form.

In any cases, keep in mind to just collect the information you need from your supporters. Keep it simple, as short forms will lead to more people taking action. It's a good idea to always ask for the first name, last name and their email address.

Supporter Data

Let's go through your possibilities. One of the column on the right holds the fields for supporter data, these you can just use once (otherwise the database will get confused):

•     Salutation - ask how people want to be addressed
•     Gender - ask for the gender (you can also edit this field and provide more/different options. If so, make sure to also edit the keys of the new option(s) accordingly)
•     First name - self explanatory, put this in your form if you want to get your supporters first name (highly recommended)
•     Last name - get your supporter last name too (highly recommended)
•     Title - ask if your supporter has any titles, academic or otherwise
•     Date of birth - ask for their birthday.
•     Street address - ask for their postal address
•     Postcode - get the postcode or zip code for the address of your supporter
•     Country - by default all countries worldwide show up here, by editing the options you can exclude some if you would ever want that
•     State - ask for the state/county/region/administrative area they live in
•     City - ask for the city they live in
•     Phone number - let them provide their phone number, so you can get back to them (if you have an appropriate opt-in)
•     Mobile number - for the mobile phone number of your supporter
•     Newsletter - offer to automatically sign up for newsletter(s) of your choice
•     Direct Mail - ask your supporters if they want to receive mail from you
•     E-mail - get the email address from your supporters

Generic Fields

Second column holds generic fields, you can use them as you see fit:

•     Text-field - let your supporters provide any text you ask for
•     Text-area - same as above, only longer
•     Number - ask for a number (like the credit card *cough*...)
•     Radios - let your supporters choose between several options by selecting radio buttons. Make sure to use meaningful keys for the various options!
•     Check-boxes - same with check-boxes. Make sure to use meaningful keys for the various options!
•     Select list - provide options in a select list. Make sure to use meaningful keys for the various options!
•     Date - ask for a date to be entered
•     Time - ask for a time to be entered
•     Newsletter - a preformed newsletter check-box
•    Currency - let your supporter select a currency
•     File - let your supporters upload a file (upload max. is 2MB)
•     Hidden - hidden fields are useful if you want to get save information about how your supporter got here and for very custom functionalities
•     Markup - if you know some HTML you can use it to provide some in your form
•     Fieldset - provide a container to group several fields together. It has a different styling and can be collapsed to reduce to total length of your form on a first sight
•     Page break - if you have a long form, use page break to split it up in several parts

How to customize a field?

You can edit fields by clicking on the input items or hovering over the the fields and click on the little pencil in their right corner. There are various settings tabs:

• Properties, where you can change the field title and add a description. The description might be an explanation for the user on how to fill the field.
• Display, which provides field specific options for display. There, you can make the field private, choose if a title should be displayed or not.
• Options lets you change the content of your field, for the more complex fields, such as lists, radios or checkboxes. This is the place where the keys can be customised.
• Validation, where you can set fields to be required: If supporters don't fill some information in, they can't submit the form. Useful for your must haves like name and email but also for payment data on a donation, for example.

If you want to get rid of a field, use the trash can icon in the fields right corner. You will be prompted to confirm the field deletion. This confirmation is there to remind you that, if you delete a field in an already existing form with already submitted data, you will loose all the data from this field, too! It might be easier to hide it by setting the display option on "private".