We have said it before, but one of the most powerful things about FormSpring beyond being a great online form builder, is the tools that allow you to use and manage submitted data. It is one of the areas that we are always evaluating and seeing if we can make it better or easier for our users. That is why we are excited to announce some new changes within the data section which will make searching and using your data easier.

Saved Searches

The main change you will see is the ability to save searches of data for each form. Saved searches make it easy to quickly view and edit data that match pre-defined criteria. A good use of the Saved search feature would be for companies who target certain correspondences to certain audiences. For example if you created a survey and wanted to segment all those who wanted to be contacted further versus those who didn’t, or wanted to segment results based on age ranges or zip code, etc., you can create and save a search for each segmentation. You would then be able to login in and quickly access and download or view those submissions in each saved search.

To create a saved search look in the left-hand navigation and click the “create one now” link, which will launch a configuration window:

You can give your search a name and search for whatever information you need from your form fields. You can search using multiple qualifiers like these:

You can also create searches with multiple criteria across any form fields. Simply click the + icon to add fields to your query:

Once you have all the information you want to search for click “Save Search”, the saved search will appear below the “Recent Submissions” tab on the left hand side like this:

You can edit or delete your search by clicking the appropriate icons next to the search name.

More Changes

We’ve made a lot of improvements to the user interface in the data area. You should find it easier to navigate through the data area, whether to view a listing of all data, individual submissions, data snapshots, or to download data to Excel or Word.

Similar to the saved searches functionality you’ll see a new “Recent Submissions” tab. This will allow you to quickly access new data that has been submitted since your last login. You’ll also be able to see the same data within the snapshot view or download a file with just the recent submissions.

We’ve also added a way to quickly sort data in any view by using the “Newest First” or “Oldest First” icon at the top of the data listing.

You’ll also notice you can delete multiple submissions easier by checking boxes next to each submission in the data listing, and clicking “delete selected submissions” at the bottom of the page. Or if you’d like to delete all the submissions for a form or saved search, you can do that as well.

If you have feedback or want to get in touch you can let us know what you think of the new changes by commenting below.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.