New Features in Forms

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....


52 comments:

Sheldon said...

Great additions

licorna said...

Great additions, but, what about calendar input widgets?

Hamid Ali Sofi said...

Very nice. Love this update.

Chuck Reynolds said...

nice updates... when will there be a option to enable a function to alert when a form has been submitted?

Mohak said...

Currently form submission doesn't trigger emails. It would be awesome if that can be added as part of the next update :)

Yadu Ambadkar said...

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.

דרור ארבל said...

Great

Rackmanager said...
This post has been removed by the author.
Mr. Mylenek said...

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.

Oneiroi said...

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.

Greg said...

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.

Roger said...

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.

tekunik said...

@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

Brian said...

Fantastic product - just keeps getting better and better.

You guys rock.

jtdarby said...

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.

AlexSM said...

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".

AlexSM said...

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".

John Demmers said...

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.

John Demmers said...

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.

John Demmers said...

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.

alnokta said...

Thanks for the RTL support!

skyhard said...

when is the new interface coming?

Tornadoes28 said...

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.

raghavan said...

congrats. all the best

Bryan Rathouz said...

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.

james chiu said...

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.

Bill said...

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.

Catherine said...

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.

Kristin Hokanson said...

I too am looking for that date field pop up...any clue when that will be an option?

Tim said...

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.

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).

Tatian & Tamara Greenleaf said...

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.

S said...

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!

Thaals said...

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?

Tornadoes28 said...

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.

frank said...

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!!

frank said...

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

Mark said...

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!

Stéphane said...

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.

Stéphane said...

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,

Julie said...

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.

Winston said...

Google Checkout or Paypal integration would be ideal. Any chance this option can or will be added?

migonz said...

Very nice ....

valajbeg said...

Hi, how can i list all forms that i created on one place???

mpinch said...

Please, please add captcha support to google docs/app forms (ironically, *just* like I have to answer to submit this comment)

michael chalk said...

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

kenkenson said...

**IMAGES**!!!

please, thx

Bolsa Monitor said...

captcha is a must. Thanks

Bogdan said...

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.

Chris said...

I agree with others. Please add a captcha

Paul Kaye said...

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?

Jeff said...

We need to be able to view individual responses.

Either one a time or something you could page through.