Welcome to Formly! It makes data collection easy & fun. We want to humanize forms, surveys and quizzes. This article will show you the basics.
1. First up, you’ll need a free Formly account. Don't have an account? Sign Up
2. Log in to your account, and you’ll land in your Dashboard, click +Create Form button to get started.
3. Now click Start from scratch. You can also Import form or Use a template (coming soon), but for this example we'll start fresh!
4. Give your form a name
5. By default, a Multiple Choice question has also been added to get started with, but you can edit or remove it as you please.
6. To add a question, click the + button on the left to see all the different question types:
6. We’ll create Short Text question, to ask for people’s names. As you type in your question, you’ll see what your form will look like in the centre panel.
Text Formatting
To format question and description Text, highlight the text and you’ll see a new menu - bold, italicize, underline, colour, highlight or hyperlink.
7. To create your next question, click the + symbol again.
Let’s choose a Email question.
To make it more personal, we’ll use the name they entered in the previous question.
Recall information
Type in your question, and where you want to use the name from question 1, just type the @ symbol. This will allow you to recall information from another question in your form. Select question 1 - “What’s your name” from our first question and the answer from this question will appear in your question text:
8. You can also duplicate, delete or reorder your questions just by dragging and dropping them in the left question panel. Click and hold any question to move it:
9. You can change question settings in the right panel. Here you can change things like making the question required, or min and max characters:
Click the dropdown under Type if you want to change the question type:
10. Then, spice up the design with Layouts. Click the Add button next to Image or video to open our media gallery, where you can upload your own image or choose an YouTube video:
11. Once you've chosen your image, close the media gallery, and you'll be taken back to the builder, where you can play around with the Layout of your image
12. Edit your form's look in the Design tab by changing the colors, logo and background by applying a theme:
13. Go to Settings to change Form layout (Single page, Slides, Multi page), Progress bar etc. Learn more about Form settings here.
14. Then add one or more Endings (Thank you screen) to finish off your form:
You can also reference the answers to previous questions using Recall information - just hit the @ key and choose from the list of available items. Here, we'll use it to mention the respondent's answer to 'What's your name?' in the Thank you screen, and give it a more personal goodbye:
15. Using Logic, you can show relevant questions based on previous answers and can also link specific answers to specific endings, to show people different endings based on how they answered your form.
You can do all that, and a lot more, from the Logic tab. Read more about that here.
16. Once your form is set up, you can test it using the Preview button (eye icon). Click this, and a preview of your creation will pop up:
Ready to roll? Hit the Publish button to make the form live!
Copy the link and share it with the world.
Also, you can head to the Share panel to find the link, and share it with the world:
Note! Make sure to send respondents a link to the published version of your form. The URLs of the preview and published versions are different, and you can only collect results for published forms.
Saving
Formly have an Autosave feature, so your work is saved automatically. When you've finished building a form, click Publish to make it 'live', so you can share it online.
Editing live form
If you want to edit your form after publishing it, we have you covered. You can make changes to your form at anytime, and they'll be saved automatically. But the changes will not appear live on your form until you click Publish again.
Once you start making changes, the Publish button will become active again. While all your changes are saved automatically, you need to click Publish for the changes to go live. (Your form URL will stay the same!)
💡 Tip! To undo recent changes, like typing in an unpublished form, use Command+Z.