A&S Web Guide

A helpful guide to web content and accessibility for the Faculty of Arts & Science, University of Toronto community.

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Create a Form

The webform tool makes it possible for you to create forms for users to complete and submit through your website.

This page explains how to create a form, set up email notifications for form submissions, download form submissions to your computer, as well as how to set up form captchas.

⚠ Caution: U of T must abide by the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. You cannot use a form on your website to ask for personal information (e.g., student numbers, social insurance numbers, financial information, etc.). If you have questions about what constitutes personal information or what information you can ask for on an online form, please contact U of T’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy office.

Create a Form

  1. Hover over Content > Add Content, then click on Webform.

  1. In the Title field, enter the name of the form. This will be the page title which displays above the form.

  1.  You will need to set the form’s placement within the site hierarchy. In order to do this, check the box beside Provide a menu link. You can rename the Menu link title if you wish (i.e., how the page will be labelled in the site’s menu). Choose which menu item you’d like to Place page beneath (i.e., the page under which this new form will be nested).

  1. When you are happy with the form’s page title, menu title, and placement within the site, select Publish at the bottom of the page.

Add Fields to a Form

The form tool is robust, but it’s also a bit complicated. We find that the best way to learn how to build a form that meets your needs is to learn by doing, and contact us at artsci.webliaison@utoronto.ca if you have any questions.

To help you get started, here is a brief overview of what the various form components mean:

Field Name: What It Means:
Date Creates a calendar-based date selector
E-mail Allows website visitors to enter their email address.
Fieldset Creates a heading. You can use it to group related fields.
Grid Meant for surveys; allows website visitors to answer questions using a scale. Here is an example:
Hidden Not visible to website visitors. You like won’t ever need to use this type of field.
Markup Allows you (i.e., content editors) to add text to the page. For example, you can use this to create introductory text above the form.
Number Allows website visitors to enter a number.
Page break Please do not use; this feature does not work properly.
Select options Creates a list of options for website visitors to choose from. Depending on the settings you select, the list can be in radio button, checkbox or drop-down format.

 

  • To create a checkbox: Check the box beside Multiple
  • To create a drop-down list: Check the box beside Listbox 
  • To create radio buttons: Use the default options (i.e., do not select multiple or listbox)
Textarea Creates a multiple-line text field in which website visitors can enter information.
Textfield Creates a one-line text field in which website visitors can enter information.
Time Allows website visitors to enter a specific time. Useful for room booking requests.

 

Set Up Email Notifications for Form Submissions


You can set forms to send email notifications (including a copy of the information submitted) to one or more people.

After you have created the form:

  1. Click on the Webform button beneath the page title.

  1. You will be brought to the content-editing panel. Click on E-Mails in the top-right corner of the page.

  1. In the Address field, enter the email address of the person who should receive copies of any form submissions, then click the blue Add button on the far-right side of the page.

  1. You will be brought to a new page with various options. Generally, you can simply scroll to the bottom of this page and select Save E-Mail Settings. However, if you are sending email notifications to someone who does not have content-editing access to your site, you should modify the E-mail Template slightly by removing the lines “The results of this submission may be viewed at: [submission:url].”

  1. To add more people to the form’s email notification list, repeat steps 1 through 4 above.

View and Export Form Submissions


You can easily view all submissions to a form and export them:

  1. Click on the Results button beneath the page title.

 

  1. You will be brought to a new page that shows the responses the form has received. If you want to view a particular submission, click on the View link beside it. To export all of the submissions, click the Download button in the top-right corner of the editing panel, then click Download at the bottom of the page.

 

Set Up a Form Captcha


When you create a new form, IIT must manually enable the captcha feature to reduce the number of spam submissions your unit may receive. Please submit a ticket to IIT via iit@artsci.utoronto.ca and include a link to the form for all new web forms going forward.