Tools Used

Form

Use Case

In preparing for an annual conference, I was looking for a better way to collect and display the speakers’ information. The conference was expecting about 50 speakers so the manual workload was not trivial. Using Gravity Forms and GravityView I developed the following workflow:

1. Once speakers have given a verbal commitment, I fill out a form with all the information I have: their name, company name, email address, and the session(s) they will be speaking in.
2. Upon form submission a user account is created and a tag is added to the email marketing platform. This tag triggers an email to prompt the speaker to log in to the speaker portal to verify their information, add anything that is missing, and get access to key information (PowerPoint Template, etc.). The automation in the email marketing system sends out timed reminders as the date of the conference approaches.
3. A View of the completed form is visible in the Speakers Portal only to the speaker it was created for. It displays their basic information and prompts them to fill in anything that is missing. From here they can edit the entry to upload a headshot or fill in any missing information. They are not able to edit certain fields which are editable only by admins. The form automatically crops and resizes their image to fit properly on the website.
4. The admins are able to access a page that shows all of the speakers in one view, so at a quick glance they can see what information is still needed.
5. Once the basic information is entered into the form (headshot, speaker name, company name and job title), the speaker automatically appears on the Speakers page of the website.

Steps 1 & 2 will be covered in this post. The next post will cover Step 3 & 4. The final post in the series will cover Step 5.

A note about License requirements:

• To build the form, the Gravity Forms Basic License is sufficient.
• For functionality and looks I’m using two additional plugins to build the form: Slim Image Cropper for Gravity Forms and Gravity Forms Material Design.
• Sending the form information to your email marketing platform probably also will work with Gravity Forms Basic. See the list of add ons available for email marketing services here to be sure yours is included.
• To register the user upon form submission, the Gravity Forms Elite License is required.
• To create the multiple view visible to admins, a GravityView Core License is sufficient.
• To allow speakers to see only their own entry, you’ll need the Advanced Filtering Extension available with GravityView Core + Extensions License.
• To customize the display of the Speakers on the website, you’ll need the GravityView All Access License to use the DIY Layout Extension.

Steps

Step 1: Set up Your Form Fields

Collect any information that you need for your event. You’ll be able to pick and choose what gets displayed on the website using GravityView, so you can collect information on your form that you don’t want to make publicly available. Here is the list of fields on my form:

• Your Name
• Your Company Name
• Your Job Title
• Your Email Address
• Your Phone Number
• Your Headshot (recommended size: 216px x 216px)
• Your 100 Word Bio
• Session 1 Title
• Session 1 Description
• Session 2 Title
• Session 2 Description
• Session 3 Title
• Session 3 Description

Note: I used Slim Image Cropper for Gravity Forms to collect the headshot, automatically crop it, while allowing the speaker to adjust the cropping if needed, and automatically resize it if the submitted image is larger than necessary for the website (to make for quicker page loading times).

Once your fields are set, you can move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Set up any Form Feeds

Sending to Email Marketing Service

Do you want to add the submitter to your mailing list? If so, you’ll want to install the appropriate Gravity Forms Add On for the email marketing service you use. When you set up the Feed you can set up conditional logic to transmit certain information to your email marketing service. I set up multiple feeds to track whether the bio and photo were submitted; one added the tag “speaker” to every submission; another added “photo” to their record if they submitted their headshot, another added the tag “bio” if the bio field was not left blank. Then I set up an automated email campaign to send weekly reminders to anyone who had the tag “speaker” but was missing the tag “photo” and/or “bio.”

Registering the User

With the Gravity Forms Elite License, you can automatically create a user account for the speaker upon form submission. This eliminates the need to manually create a user, duplicating the entry of their information.

Step 3: Test Your Form

I try to run as many scenarios as possible through my testing phase. If you’ve been using a different method to collect information in the past, use some of your previous submissions to test the form (the more complicated, the better). This helps you make sure you have all the right fields in the right places and your conditional logic works.

If this is a new effort and you do not have any prior submissions, test out several dummy submissions.

Don’t delete your test submissions yet! You’ll need them as you set up your View.

Next Steps: Allowing Speakers to Edit Their Own Information

You’ll find the steps to set up multiple Views, including an “at a glance” view for the organizer and an individual view for each speaker, using a GravityView Core or Core + Extensions License in the next post.