Thursday, September 03, 2009 3:48 AM
Today, we added a few new features to Google forms:Grid question type
You can now quickly gather responses for a group of similar questions in a new, compact grid format. The new grid question type allows you to label a few columns and create as many rows as you like.
Each row result appears in its own spreadsheet column, with its own summary chart, which brings us to...
Improved results summary charts
We've polished up our results summary charts, with clearer formatting of statistics and better formatting of charts for each question type.
Bi-directional language support
The form editor now supports right-to-left (RTL) text input. When you enter RTL text in the form editor, it will automatically switch the directionality of the form editor and rendered forms (similar to Gmail and other Google Apps). This means your text and questions will flip directionality, making it easier for RTL users to create and use forms.
Sign-in to view form
If you are a Google Apps customer, there are now two options to help you use forms within your organization. In addition to the being able to automatically collect respondent's usernames, we now offer the ability to require sign-in to view a form. This provides an additional layer of security for sensitive forms.
Pre-populate a form with parameters
For developers who would like to integrate forms with their own applications, we now provide an easy way to pre-populate a form with data. Simply append an entry string for each response field you'd like to pre-populate. As an example, this URL...
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=12345&entry_0=Barack&entry_1=Obama&entry_2=1600+Pennsylvania+Ave&entry_3=pistachios|spinach|broccoli&entry_4=8/4/1967... pre-populates the form below....
62 comments:
Great additions
Great additions, but, what about calendar input widgets?
Very nice. Love this update.
nice updates... when will there be a option to enable a function to alert when a form has been submitted?
Currently form submission doesn't trigger emails. It would be awesome if that can be added as part of the next update :)
Excellent updates. The charts and grid format question were an absolute necessity. You can have an option to include location info in a form to get detailed analysis of the respondents. We should be able to analyze more info from their Google Profiles too.
Great
I am a middle school teacher and have used google forms to help me create a paperless classroom. The one thing that I would love to be added would be the ability to embed images into the forms. It would bump google forms from being a great educational tool the best educational tool ever! Keep the incredible work.
One thing I always want, you've made great updates to the summary page, but when will you offer an option to save/export the summary page?
I love how you show the summary results, but then I have no easy way of then showing other people the results.
The grid is great! Could the number of columns be expanded to 9 (or more) in order to allow the grid to be used for a 9 point scale? We use these often for acquiring sensory data.
Good stuff but my biggest issue with Forms is being able to share the resulting data. How can I take all the pretty graphs that you generate and send just that to someone or put it on a website?
Not being able to share this without sending the entire spreadsheet is kinda a pain.
@Oneiroi
You can show the survey results to the respondents.To do this Select More Actions->Edit confirmation.In the Confirmation window select the check box “Let everyone see response summary” and then save.your survey results can now be seen by others.
you can see the results after the survey, in the embedded form given below
http://bit.ly/AhYjZ
Fantastic product - just keeps getting better and better.
You guys rock.
Does this solve the problem of the Summary of Responses pulling information from all responses to a survey (including ones deleted from the spreadsheet)?
The Summary is less valuable to me because it doesn't accurately reflect the actual answers in the spreadsheet - instead it includes all answers in the form.
Actually there's a feature that alerts when a form has been submitted.
In the form spreasheet, go to "Tools > Notification rules..." and select "A user submits a form".
Actually there's a feature that alerts when a form has been submitted.
In the form spreasheet, go to "Tools > Notification rules..." and select "A user submits a form".
I'm a teacher too, and it would be great if we good add or embed pictures, sounds or video's. Than the Google Form will be a great tool to make tests or other question forms for the students.
I'm a teacher too, and it would be great if we good add or embed pictures, sounds or video's. Than the Google Form will be a great tool to make tests or other question forms for the students.
I'm a teacher too, and it would be great if we good add or embed pictures, sounds or video's. Than the Google Form will be a great tool to make tests or other question forms for the students.
Thanks for the RTL support!
when is the new interface coming?
The forms is too limiting. It is not good for long forms because all the completed forms are added to a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is not a good format the completed forms. The completed forms should look like the original forms and you should be able to print out completed forms individually.
congrats. all the best
Thanks for the updates - very nice! It would be very helpful if list items could be links. As an example, picture a question that asks the user to select from a list of web sites. Each list item would be a link to that site.
The function is good but needs below improvement:
1. a link to view the graphical result
2. Total row of 5 is too limiting and a wastage to the function
3. There should be include the recipients in the outcome or result
Kindly consider.
Moving in the right direction. Would be great if a form could automatically include location info much the same way as it automatically includes a timestamp. This could build on HTML5's location feature and would be a real use for collecting data from site on a HTML5 capable phone - currently the iPhone and hopefully very soon Android phones.
These are great additions. I have a suggestion for an addition to forms - add a date field item type with calendar pop-up selection. I am creating forms with several date items that are currently added as text. Users tend to want to add dates differently - 01/01/2009, 01012009, Jan 1, 09, 01 Jan 09, etc. Being able to identify an item as a date will force users to use a uniform format, making milestone date tracking much easier for me. Including an optional calendar pop-up for users to select a date makes it easier for users and encourages them to select the right date rather than guessing.
Thanks.
I too am looking for that date field pop up...any clue when that will be an option?
Wow, very cool Google. I will have to get to work taking advantage of these new features. BTW, at SanMateoWaveforms.com you can import any google form and add images, video, sound etc. And you can also view the form with the data in the form, and get email and chat alerts. And also save all the forms to your browser for offline editing.
You can change url to populate the fields but how do you automatically submit it (this would allow you to update your spreadsheet programatically).
Notification is a great idea for forms, but why can't I notify someone other than the owner of the form (myself)? As an admin, I need to be able to create forms that other users will use, but they need to get the notification emails, not me.
great - I am using it to organize lists of attendees and items to bring to college Tailgates, I am hoping to embed the forms into a google page website for the team, which will also include a calendar, message board, etc.
Anyway, it would be VERY useful if you could have list items (e.g. checkbox) that can only be selected by one respondent. e.g. we only want one person to bring hot dogs, so once someone has picked hotdogs, no other respondents can select those from the list.
It would also be most helpful to be able to display the existing responses BEFORE people submit their form.. So if they could see that someone is already bringing hotdogs, they should bring potato salad or something else on the list..
keep up the good work!
Nice improvements. Thank you.
Next steps:
- Notification is a great idea for forms, but why can't I notify someone other than the owner of the form (myself)?
- I too am looking for that date field pop up
- You can change url to populate the fields but how do you automatically submit it (this would allow you to update your spreadsheet programatically).
Ditto to all these requests above. Is this doable with gadgets? Any URLs to how to make this happen?
Please, please create an alternative format for the submitted forms other than the spreadsheet. If it is a long form such as a long questionnaire, than the spreadsheet is not user friendly. It ends up being very, very wide so it is not easily viewable and printing is out of the question. I work for a large government agency and I was thinking of proposing to my management to be able to use the Google forms. But the spreadsheet format is not usable so I will not be able to use it. Google's loss.
Is it possible to get image uploads for forms? This would be hugely important...
As well...some sort of captcha is needed...
I love this app!!
Does anyone know if you can do field validation with Google forms?
Does anyone else think that if Google gets these forms up to speed, Oracle is going to get really really nervous? :)
cheers
I too would love to be able to add sounds to forms. This would enable me to conduct individual spelling tests for students. I'll keep my fingers crossed!
When adding a dropdown-list field in a form, it is impossible to move or sort the values once added.
Consequently, when a lot of values are added in that dropdown (let say added alphabetically), and we we need to add a new value, this value will always be at the end, whereas we would like to place it somewhere else.
Ideally, theere should be arrows to move values up and down + an option to sort them.
When adding a dropdown-list field in a form, it is impossible to move or sort the values once added.
Consequently, when a lot of values are added in that dropdown (let say added alphabetically), and we we need to add a new value, this value will always be at the end, whereas we would like to place it somewhere else.
Ideally, theere should be arrows to move values up and down + an option to sort them.
Thanks and regard,
You guys are doing a great job! Thanks for the additions.
My request is to allow an html button such as Paypal on the confirmation page after submitting a form. That way I can have a member sign up and then submit their 1st year membership fee at the same time. This would obviously help in other areans like linking users back to the homepage.
Google Checkout or Paypal integration would be ideal. Any chance this option can or will be added?
Very nice ....
Hi, how can i list all forms that i created on one place???
Please, please add captcha support to google docs/app forms (ironically, *just* like I have to answer to submit this comment)
Great work google docs people, lovely updates. i especially like the grid feature..
but i must agree with @jtdarby about the need to "un-notice" deleted rows in the automatic summary. Without the ability to notice deleted test responses, the auto-summary is "beautiful but useless".
(Also.. i wonder where we're meant to post bug reports etc?)
thanks and kind regards, michael
**IMAGES**!!!
please, thx
captcha is a must. Thanks
Great update. One thing missing for me - ability to view individual records AFTER the form has been submitted the way they looked on a form (with grid etc.)
Regards.
I agree with others. Please add a captcha
The right-to-left support is great but assumes that even one word in a RTL language means the whole form should be right-aligned. If I paste a word in, for example, Hebrew into an otherwise English form, the whole form jumps over!
Maybe having the option to choose would be better?
We need to be able to view individual responses.
Either one a time or something you could page through.
Too bad the spreadsheet format is so useless for certain types of forms. Specifically a long form that includes form questions requiring a fair amount of text. These types of forms ending up making the spreadsheet virtually unreadable. The spreadsheet ends up becoming extremely wide, not easily readable and impossible to print out results, especially printing individual responses.
There should be an option for viewing completed form responses in an alternative format. Such as in Document format for each individual response. Then each individual response can be printed or transmitted individually.
Hi-
I am wondering if a Google Doc user/ expert could help me out with a survey collection.
In short, I'm helping facilitate an undergrad class, and having 70 students track various activities that monitor their carbon usage. Mostly, this involves using hashmarks for an action, or minutes charging a laptop, etc., and then entering the total for each day of a week.
Obviously, a spreadsheet makes sense, but I don't know how to collect and analyze 70 individual spreadsheets so as to get the range of desired information. Sharing a spreadsheet in Google docs creates to one shared spreadsheet that collects the aggregate data, but wouldn't have mean, median, etc.
Hopefully, somebody can suggest some tips as to how to use Google docs to facilitate a project of this size.
Thanks!
Kyle
Is there anyway to incorporate Paypal buttons? I am creating a registration form and it would be great if people could pay on-line using the form.
Thanks!
I keep thinking Google Forms is great and gets better, but I agree with 3 uregent inclusions:
1. Being able to store the answered forms in their target format (in addition to the summary and the spreadsheet formats, and making them be printable
2. Trigger emails from submitters
3. clear results of deleted rows in the automatic summary, since they impact the results
Thanks for the tools!
As Tim posted on 9/16/09, the ability to pre-populate a form is very useful. However, it would be even more useful if we also had the ability to pass the equivalent of clicking the submit button, so the data can be pre-loaded _and_ submitted via the URL.
@Jacky: Not sure if I understand your request, but at sanmateowaveforms.com there is an undocumented feature. You can submit data+form to any gmail user, OR just the data to the original spreadsheet. Typing GOOG in the gmail user box will submit data to spreadsheet. Please email me your use case and I will try to build it into the system.
Thanks!
Tim
email: admin@ the above named website.
@Jacky - exactly. Elsewhere I've found syntax that suggests an ajax construct should be able to hit "http://spreadsheets.google.com/formResponse" sending inside the 'data:{} argument the formkey, name/value pairs, and closing the argument list with 'pageNumber: 0, submit: "Submit" '
I'm getting a "NetworkError: 405 Method Not Allowed - http://spreadsheets.google.com/formResponse". I can understand some reason for cross-domain restrictions but i'm running from within one domain. - would really welcome some help on the issue.
thx
+1 for Captcha support .. especially since google bought re-captcha :-)
@Tim:
I was referring to your comment above: "Tim said...
You can change url to populate the fields but how do you automatically submit it (this would allow you to update your spreadsheet programatically).
9/16/09 1:07 PM "
@Steve & Paula:
Unfortunately, I am woefully unfamiliar with the correct terminology invovled; but following what Eric posted, what I want to know is how to do someting along the lines of this:
...&entry_0=data&entry_1=moredata&entry_2=stillmoredata&button_0=true
or whatever construction would be used to force an action as if the Submit button had been clicked.
Thanks for google forms. things like this are helping us making voting easier in our coop and clubs. Definitely, I would use image support and captcha support.
Thanks!
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