Several event times involve custom registration forms. Data Collection fields are used whenever you want to capture information that is supplementary to information contained in the membership records. For example:
| • | You might want to use an anonymous event to have site visitors fill in a web form without needing to first login to the web-site. |
| • | As part of a recreational class registration, you may want to ask questions as part of the registration process and have fields available for export to a 3rd party system |
| • | You may be running an event and have specific questions that are relevant only for that one event |
The first section of the data collection field setup turns data collection on or off. For anonymous survey events this should always be set to "Yes". For other event types, this setting should be turned on only if you want to ask event specific questions that will be supplementary to the registration activity when a new member account is created.
Most data collection forms will have some pre-amble text to appear at the top of the registration form.
You may enter text or images here in your own format.
This section can be used to explain what the form is for, provide some context, and let web-site visitors know how submitted forms will be handled.
The data gathering form fields are where we can actually setup the fields that we want to have completed during a registration. An example is shown below.
| • | To the left of each row, a graphical indicator is used to identify the type of field (text field, phone number field, date field etc.) |
| • | You may click on the (+) symbol in each row to expand the row to make additional information available |
| • | The "ENABLE" box must be checked or else the field will not be visible to site visitors |
| • | The Label is the name of the data entry field as it will appear to visitors |
| • | NeatClubs.COM supports various fields types that have proven useful in our experience for different registration applications. An explanation of the various types is explained below |
| • | The Size field governs the number of characters wide that character field and numeric fields will appear when displayed. The value entered here will be ignored for other field types |
| • | The Up and Down arrows can be used to move fields up and down the list to re-sequence fields. (Note that NeatClubs.COM does not actually move the fields physically in the underlying database - rather it simply adjusts the order in which the fields will appear. |
The various field types supported by NeatClubs.COM are explained below - some of these are straightforward while others will require some explanation.
| • | Text |
| • | Date |
| • | Yes/No |
| • | Numeric |
| • | Price Multiplier / Quantity |
| • | Free Format |
| • | Business Phone Number |
| • | Home Phone Number |
| • | Multiple Choice Select |
| • | Radio Box Picklist (pick one) |
| • | Radio Box Picklist (pick many) |
| • | Level 1 Heading |
| • | Level 2 Heading |
| • | Text Caption or Explanation |
| • | Price Hint |
| • | Simple Checkbox |
| • | File Upload Dialog |
While many of these are self explanatory, a few may require more explanation.
Price Multiplier / Quantity - A frequent registration problem involves having a baseline price that needs to be multiplied by some quantity. For example, if we were selling tickets, we may want to allow a site visitor to indicate the number of tickets that they want to purchase in an open text field. The calculated price would then be the specific fixed price associated with the event times the numeric value entered in this field.
Price Hints - For fields set of type "Price Hint", NeatClubs.COM will interpret the baseline payment amount due as being equal to a value entered in this field by a site visitor. This value will supersede any pre-defined cost associated with the event definition. This is useful for applications such as on-line payment of invoices or ad-hoc payments. We may want to present a form where we allow people to enter an arbitrary amount to pay (partial payment against an an invoice as an example) where the amount carried forward to the payment subsystem is equal to the amount that site visitors enter in this field. (You may only have one price hint field per form)
File Upload Dialog - A File Dialog field will result in site visitors being invited to upload a file as a part of their on-line registration. The uploaded file will remain associated with the registration. For example, an application that accepts applicants for a job posting may require that a resume be uploaded. A competitive meet registration may require that clubs upload a spreadsheet with their athletes listed in a prescribed manner.
An example of a Radio Box Pick list which allows a web-site visitor to select multiple choices is shown below:
Help or Caption Text : This field has a double meaning. Normally this is where you would provide special instructions to help a user complete a field. These instructions will be easily accessible to users when they fill in the on-line form. For the “Text Caption or Explanation” field type, any explanatory text can be entered directly into this this field, and it will be displayed as a part of the form without the user needing to ask for help.
Field is Mandatory: Setting a field as “Mandatory” means that a response must be entered for this field before the form can be submitted. You may decide that some collection fields are not essential. Be careful with “Yes / No” fields. The nature of these types of fields is that you will always get a value, so it is impossible to know whether the user agreed with what was on the form. Setting "Mandatory" with fields that can only have two possible states (Yes/No fields or Check boxes which are On or Off) is redundant since by their very nature they will always return a value. The same holds with selection boxes. For “Multiple Choice Select” fields, a good practise is to have the first choice being "None" in case the user did not want to select any of the options.
Selection Choices: The choices file is valid for the “Multiple Choice Select”, “Radio Box Pick list (pick one)” and the “Radio Box Pick list (pick many)” field types. If you are specifying a field where there will be multiple choices you need to provide a comma separated list of the available choices. Please avoid using punctuation such as apostrophes, quotes or additional commas which can confuse the system and cause the choices to be misinterpreted.
For example, if you want to provide users the opportunity to order shirts that are Small, Medium or Large, you can simply enter "Small (S),Medium (M),Large (L)" in this field as an example. The system will then offer these three choices for the various multiple choice field types. The example in the screen shot above is going to allow the user to choice none or all of four different documents that are available for download from the web-site, each of which will have a price assessed.
Field is exportable: If this field should be exported to spreadsheets, CSV files or external systems like Clublink, please set this value to "Yes". If this field only has relevance within NeatClubs and never needs to be exported, set this to "No". We suggest that "Yes" is usually the better choice.
Fieldname in Export List: When CSV files are generated (visible in Microsoft Excel), generally the default field label is used for the column heading. Some external programs will want to see a different heading value. Use this field to over-rise the default label associated with exported data.
Display Sequence: This field determines the order of fields in terms of display. Low numbered values will appear at the top of the form while high-numbered values will appear at the bottom of the form.
Include in print or e-mail output: If checked, this field will be included in printed copy or in e-mail registration notification or confirmations. un-checked items will be omitted.
This is a useful NeatClubs.COM facility that allows complex pricing scenarios to be handled. For any option where users make a selection, a price impact can be assessed. As a simple example, consider a case where the nominal charge for a t-shirt that is an option part of a registration is $20.00. Using a multiple choice select field, I can provide choices such as "No Shirt, Small Shirt, Medium Shirt, Large Shirt, Case of 100 assorted shirts".
Given that there are five choices presented, I can assess an incremental "fee impact" for each choice using a value like:
0.00,+18,$20.0,24,$999.99
Note that there is a lot of flexibility in how these values can be entered. Values may be positive or negative and may be express in dollar terms or as percentage uplifts or discounts from the based-line price.
There is no practical limit to the number of price impact fields that can be combined making this solution flexible enough to accommodate almost any imaginable complex pricing scenario.
This facility may be used to handle things like:
- Sibling Discounts
- Non-Member Surcharges (although there are more clever ways to do this)
- Support simple "shopping cart" style applications in the form of a registration
- Pre-pay items like "test days" for skating clubs
- Accommodate complex registration options (single room vs. double room hotel reservations as an example)
In the example screen capture above, we've assessed the price impact for each of the documents that we plan to have available for download. The expression "$10,$20,$25,$30" means that if the user were to select the first and third checkbox a "Price Impact" would be assessed as 10 + 25 = 35 dollars. These price impacts are cumulative from field to field and are added to any event level pricing.
Advanced expressions provide the ability for us to extend functionality further for specific requirements without needing to make this form overly complicated. NeatClubs.COM currently supports (or plans to support) two advanced expression syntaxes in this field. We may add more later. These expressions are of the form:
doclink:137,138,,140
The "doclink" expression means that the acknowledgement e-mails sent to the users will embed or link particular documents from the document library depending on whether a fields has been selected or not by the user. Values in the comma separated list that are Null, Blank or have a "0" value will be interpreted to return no document. In the example above, selecting only the fourth checkbox would result in document #ID 40 being displayed to the user following payment. Document #40 would also be included in the text of the acknowledgement e-mail. You can determine a documents Document ID by placing your mouse over the magnifying glass symbol in the advanced view of the document library. This symbol appears in the left most column of the document listing.
limit:80,*,0,200
The second advanced field expression we plan to support is the "limit" expression. Although not fully implemented yet, the syntax below would limit the number of registrations able to select each option. Below only 80 of the first documents would be selectable, an unlimited number of the second and third documents would be selectable, and 200 of the fourth documents would be selectable. When the limit was reached, these documents would be grayed out and would become un-selectable.
fieldlink:city
The "fieldlink" expression links a custom form field with the member level record by setting the default value of the field equal to the equivalent member level field. For example, the expression "fieldlink:city" would cause this form value to inheret the value of the field called "city" in the membership record to save someone filling in the form the need to re-key this value, but giving them the opportunity to over-ride the value if appropriate.
It can take significant time and effort to get a data collection form just right. NeatClubs.COM provides a convenient mechanism as shown above to "copy" all 50 field definitions from one event to another. This is a big time-saver if you have multiple event definitions that will employ a very similar registration form.