New Online Form Builder For Schools

A couple months ago we hosted a Covid Webinar series where we discussed some of the ways you can use Boardingware to uphold responsibilities and meet new health and safety guidelines with solutions such as Contact Tracing,  Workflows and Rolls.Today, we’re excited to add to this with the release of our highly anticipated Form Builder.With our new Form Builder, you can build custom online forms to collect information from students, staff, parents or other members of your wider school community.Now you can digitise your school forms, streamline data collection and consent procedures, and organise all your documents and records in the same platform you use every day.Let’s take a look at how the new Form Builder works and a few ways you can use it to  collect, automate and organise your schools forms, surveys and data collection.

Form types for all audiences

Whether you need to survey students, collect consents from parents or gather general feedback from your wider school community, there’s a form type for that.

With the Form Builder, you can choose to build a form specifically for staff members, students, parents or create a public form that can be submitted by anyone. Within each form type, you have the ability to configure the information type you’d like to collect, build a custom form, schedule campaigns and define submission options.

Build custom forms in seconds

Quickly create online forms in seconds using our simple form builder. Simply type the question you want to ask and select the field type that works best. No technical expertise necessary.There are a dozen different field types available so you can customise the information you collect. Everything from text fields to date pickers to checkboxes are at your disposal. You can even add a Signature field to create legally binding consent and approval forms.

Furthermore, you can also choose to map information back to your student database and automatically update their profile when the form is completed. Just select the corresponding field you’d like to update and that’s it.

Generate form completions with campaigns

Knowledge is power, and Forms are a powerful way to collect information and insight. But only if people actually complete your forms...That’s where campaigns come in. With our Form Builder, you can create a campaign to send a message to your chosen audience and ask them to submit the form you created.Campaigns can be scheduled for a one-off specific date and time, set on a repeating schedule or made available to be initiated by specific users on an Ad-hoc basis. You can also setup automated reminders to follow up with people who haven’t submitted your form.

Whatever type of form you create, campaigns allow you to send messages to your audience and automate the follow-up to improve your response rate and put time back into your day.

View and Manage Form Completions

Finally, when someone completes your form, the responses are centralised into a single report for you to view, assess and manage. For student related forms, records are also automatically added onto their profile to ensure all your record keeping is in order.There’s also an option to export your data into a csv to import into Excel, Google Sheets or another data visualisation tool if you’d prefer.

On top of that, you can also configure form completions to be automatically posted to the Activity Feed, so you can notify relevant staff and ensure everyone is up-to-date with what’s happening.Form responses can also be used in combination with Smart Groups to help organise and manage responses. If you configure forms to update specific student data fields, the changes in students data can then also trigger their association with certain smart groups.For example, you might have a Covid-related smart group that uses custom fields (ie. temperature > 36) to  identify possible cases of Covid-19. You could then also have a symptom tracking form that updates each students information when completed. If their responses match the filters set for the smart group then they will be automatically associated with that smart group. This helps to ensure your groups and student management is always accurate and up to date.

Example Use-Cases

Now that we’ve seen how the form builder works, let’s take a look at some of the ways you can use the Form Builder to collect, automate and organise all your schools forms and information. Keep in mind, these examples are just a starting point - forms are what you make of them, and with Boardingware you can make them for your current needs and beyond.

1. Survey Students and Staff to Keep Track of Covid19 Symptoms

To help with monitoring and early identification of possible Covid-19 Cases, you could setup a symptom tracking survey that is sent out to students and staff on a daily basis to ask them basic questions about how they’re feeling.

2. Survey Students to monitor their mental health and well-being

Create a daily form that is sent to students for them to answer basic questions about their mental health and wellbeing. Then use the insights generated from these surveys to identify concerns and proactively provide support and care where needed.

3. Collect consent from parents about new policies and procedures

If you’ve made changes to your boarding policies or procedures and need to obtain consent from parents and guardians, then you could create a form with the details of the changes and include an e-signature field to record their acknowledgement and agreement.

4. Standardise duty reports with a staff form

Duty reports are a common way to communicate between house staff and ensure everyone is up to speed. To help ensure all duty reports follow a standardised format you could create a form with different sections to fill out, associate students associated with the report and have form submissions automatically posted to the activity for everyone to see.

Ready to get started with the Form Builder? Head over to the form settings in the admin console to create your first form. Forms are included as part of the Boardingware platform and are now available for all Boardingware customers at no additional cost.Interested in learning more about how Boardingware can help your school streamline operations, centralise information and turn data into insights that lead to action? Get in touch a member of our team for a free consultation and walkthrough of the platform here.