Forms are very useful for a whole variety of reasons. To receive feedback, information and serve as vehicle of communication and messaging between site visitors, clients and customers.
Now the basic workflow is that when a visitor completes a form – Contact, Feedback or any other available form on your website, you receive an email notification of the details. It is also good to know that the details are also saved on your website accessible by authorised users at the back end.
In this tutorial, I will be showing you how to retrieve a form entries, direct notification to specified emails, edit the confirmation messages and export the entries to Excel.
The basis of this guide is premised on the fact that the WordPress plugin managing your is Gravity Forms.
Retrieving Form Entries
- Login to the WordPress dashboard
Locate the menu item Form
Under Form select Entries
The first marked section allows you to select between forms.
The second section refers to actions you can perform on each individual entry.
Specify form entries notification email
As at the point of creating your website, an email would have been specified to receive notifications. You may however decide to change or add to the existing address.
- Login to the WordPress dashboard
- Locate the menu item Form
- Under Form select Forms
Hover your mouse under settings and click notifications
On the next page that displays, click Edit
Explanations on the parameters are as below:
Name: Label to identify the notification[Not included in the email]
Send to: Delivery option[Always leave this as “Enter Email]
Send to Email: Email to receive the notification – This is where you input whichever email address to receive the notifications
From Name: The name the notification will be deemed as being received from. You can input directly or select from the form fields by clicking the marked section and choosing a field in the drop -down.
From Email: The email the notification will be deemed as being received from. You can input the email directly or select from the form fields by clicking the marked section and choosing an email from the drop -down.
Reply to: Reply to email address for the notification. You can select from the form fields by clicking the marked section and choosing an email from the drop -down.
BCC: Additional emails you want to blind-copy
Subject: Email notification header and subject
Message: Contains all the form field[Be advised not to edit this region unless you are sure of what you are doing.]
Remember in the email fields, you can input more than one email by separating them with a comma.
Click update when you are done.
Confirmation Messages
Confirmation messages are what your visitors see after completing a form at the front end.
See the screenshot below
To To change what is displayed here:
- Login to the WordPress dashboard
- Locate the menu item Form
- Under Form select Forms
Hover your mouse under settings and click Confirmations
On the next page that displays, click Edit
Confirmation Type:
- Text: To display a message to visitors after completing the form
- Page: To redirect visitors to a page after completing the form
If you selected Text:
Then go ahead and edit the writup in the second marked section to your preferred.
Click Save when you are done.
Exporting entries to Excel
You have the option of exporting the entries of your form to a CSV file
- Login to the WordPress dashboard
- Locate the menu item Form
- Under Form select Import/Export
- Click on Export Entries – The first marked section
- Select the desired form in the second marked section
- And tick the headings you wish to include in the CSV file or simply select all.
- Afterwards select the date range
- And click download Export file.
Most of the times, Zion peers at the computer screen, tweaking codes, analysing and calculating figures, manipulating the screen and digging deep into the World Wide Web. A combination of many different things in one thing. You don’t have to bother understanding that.