Webform Tips and Tricks

• A few of our customers have complained about duplicate submissions. We think it’s caused by site visitors clicking the submit button several times because they don’t see it load quickly. If this is a problem for you, you can go to the Webforms tab, then Form Settings tab, and below the Confirmation Message box is a setting for Per user submission limit submissions. If you limit it to one submission every minute, then the site visitor can only click Submit once every minute, which is plenty of time for the page to load.
• Re-using Select List components is risky. If you have a question you ask repeatedly using a Select List, you can change the Options safely, but you should use a new unique key for the new options. (Don't delete the Select List component unless you want all data associated with it deleted too - see below "Re-using Webforms - Delete Existing Components with Great Care").  For example, on my workshop enrollment form, I change the dates of the workshops every quarter. I should remove the existing Options (dates) and use brand new unique keys for each new Option (date) I add.  This preserves data for the old options and at the same time adds data for the new options.  In this way I will still have the key data in my spreadsheet when I download it from Webform.
• If your CAPTCHA doesn't seem to be working, first check that it's configured correctly. It should be on the main page of your form only. Go to your form, click View Published, and then at the bottom make sure it's turned on. If you're still seeing SPAM, it's because the CAPTCHA module we installed is fairly easy to penetrate. We found and tested the one that looks to be easiest for site visitors to complete. We could put a CAPTCHA on that requires the visitor to do a math problem or type upper/lower case letters, but then we get complaints that it's too hard. If you'd like to discuss this with the ITS team, please give us a call or email drupal@calpoly.edu

A Little More Technical

Using a Single Checkbox for a Yes/No question

• Leaving a checkbox un-checked will store an empty string in the database when a form is submitted.  An example of this effect is that if you use a single checkbox for a Yes or No question with a "Yes" indicated by checking the box and "No" being the default un-checked box, your Select List options list will have only one option yes|Yes which will enter a "yes" in the database if the checkbox is checked and an empty field in the database if a "No" is indicated by leaving the box unchecked.   The challenge this presents is that if using Webform Report to query on the checkbox field, you will have to look for an empty field rather than a "no" in the field, and if reporting on the field by looking for *any* value, those without the value (the implicit "no"s ) will not be shown in the Report.

Re-using Webforms - Delete Existing Components with Great Care

• If you plan to reuse a webform AND want to keep existing submissions, don't delete any of the existing form components unless you want the data associated with that component in your existing submission to be deleted also.  Deleting a webform component will also delete the data associated with that component in existing webform submissions.

Conditionals - options not displaying correctly

• Sometimes when trying to setup a Conditional the correct options don't show for the conditional that you are trying to set.  To overcome this, start building the new conditional by selecting the "if" condition, then Save.  Then go back and finish configuring the conditional.  The correct options should be available.