How to create forms in Confluence Cloud for data collection
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Linh Pham
20th May, 2023
How to create forms in Confluence Cloud for data collection
Change the way your teams work. Forms for Confluence brings the best elements of forms and Confluence together.
Confluence is more than just a technical documentation platform.
With hundreds of Marketplace apps, you can extend Confluence capabilities to solve complex business problems.
Need to build dynamic forms for data collection? Want to gather survey data to make informed decisions? Keen to get feedback from customers and employees in one place? You can achieve all that with just a single app!
Meet Forms for Confluence, our top-selling app for creating forms and surveys for Confluence.
In this article, you’ll learn how to build forms and enhance Confluence’s collaboration capabilities. Let’s dive in!
What are the benefits of Confluence forms and surveys?
Having the right information at the right time is critical for teams who handle support tickets or rely on survey feedback for decision-making. While Confluence is perfect for content creation, it lacks the form-building or survey tools you need for data collection and insight generation.
“We’re already using Google Forms to run surveys - what’s the difference?” 🤔
We're glad you asked!
Third-party tools like Google Forms can introduce more friction into your team’s workflow, especially when your organisation collaborates entirely on Confluence.
- Let’s say that submitting a form is a required step for a specific operational process. You’ll need a way to review the information submitted and escalate the request to the right team.
- If you want to monitor your team's health, it's easier to run a pulse survey right within your HR Confluence space, where your team shares company-wide initiatives.
- Or, if you have a customer-facing Confluence space, you can embed forms within a page and get feedback in a context that makes more sense to your customers.
Most importantly, you'll want to have all your form responses securely stored inside Confluence for greater control over your team's data.
So the real question is less about which tool is better - and more about how you can create a seamless form and survey experience using Confluence itself.
Below are three key benefits of having a form-building solution within Confluence:
- Use Confluence for all communication purposes 💬
Reimagine Confluence beyond a knowledge base. Equip your team with the tools to gather feedback, conduct surveys, or capture data to make informed decisions - right from their Confluence workspace. - Minimise app-switching for frictionless collaboration 🚀
RingCentral and CITE Research suggests that workers tend to lose their train of thought while navigating between apps. It's time to say goodbye to tedious external link sharing and manual data entry. With Forms for Confluence, you have a complete form database right within Confluence, ready for use. - Create advanced workflows in Confluence 🔀
Need to capture information to escalate a task to the appropriate department? By having users fill out a form, you can ensure the right information is delivered to the right person - anytime.
Next, we'll walk you through the step-by-step guide to creating a form using the Forms for Confluence app.
How to create forms in Confluence
Creating a form in Confluence is quick and easy when using our intuitive form builder.
Get your free trial of Forms for Confluence by clicking the button below. Then follow our easy guide to get started with your first form!
Creating a form and a page from scratch in Confluence
To create a brand new form and host page, click Apps > Forms for Confluence in the top bar.
You’re now on the Forms for Confluence homepage. Click the blue Create new form button on the right-hand side.
Enter your form name in the dialog box, and fill out the other fields to choose the location of your form and the name of the new page. You can also add a description to quickly explain the form's purpose.
Click Proceed.
💡 Hint: You can also add collaborators to your form. Collaborators have the same access to the form (and its responses) as you. Just start typing a user's name in the box and select the right person.
You'll be taken to the new page containing your empty form. Simply click the edit icon (the pencil) to start adding questions.
Start adding the form fields you need, such as a text box, radio buttons, or a date picker.
Press Save and publish your page, and you'll see your completed form as users will see it!
Ta da! 🎉 Your new form is ready to gather feedback.
Building a form directly from a Confluence page
If you want to add your form to an existing Confluence page, simply type /forms when you're in editing mode and select Forms for Confluence from the list that appears.
You can create a new form from the Configure Form dialog box, choosing the form name and page location.
✏️ Note: Because you’re creating a form directly from an existing Confluence page, you won’t be able to change the space or the parent page.
Your empty form will appear on your existing Confluence page. You can then follow the same steps as above, clicking the edit icon to add questions to your form.
That’s it! You’ve successfully created a form within a Confluence page 🔥
Ready to take your Confluence instance to the next level? Install Forms for Confluence for free today!
Collect responses and share information easily with Forms for Confluence Cloud
While it's possible to use Google Forms or other external apps to create forms in Confluence, what's missing is the ability to capture and process form responses within Confluence.
That's where Forms for Confluence shines!
It’s just as easy and flexible to manage responses as it is to create forms. With a built-in database, you can save, view and export responses to a form directly from Confluence.
A handy function that our users enjoy is being able to display responses directly on a Confluence page without having to copy-paste the data. With the Responses Table macro (included with Forms for Confluence), you can instantly display all responses on your chosen Confluence page.
How to view responses from the Forms for Confluence homepage
If you want to keep responses private from other users, you can access them from the homepage. From here, you see all of the forms you've worked on, the locations of the forms, and any responses you've received.
- Click Apps > Forms for Confluence in the top bar.
- From here, click on the name of a form, and it'll take you to your form responses.
- Click the arrow next to a user's name to display their answers.
See the steps in the gif below 👇
💡Hint: Both form creators and collaborators can see and manage forms from their homepage, making it quick and easy to collaborate on projects.
How to display responses within a Confluence page
Click to edit your chosen Confluence page and type /forms. Select the Responses Table macro from the list of options.
In the dialog box, click the drop-down list and choose your form.
You can then choose whether you share the responses with everyone or make them available only to specific users.
💡Hint: Collaborators and creators can automatically see responses. You can see these users in the list at the bottom of the dialog box.
Publish your page. You and any collaborators will be able to view the form responses.
That's it! You're ready to view any responses that come in.