In This Article:

• Steps to Create a Global Registration Form
  • Design Your Form
    • Question Types
    • Advanced Question Editing Options
    • Advanced Page Editing Options
  • Configure Logic for Your Form
  • Preview Your Form
  • Save Your Form
• Steps to Create an Affiliation-Specific Registration Form
• Best Practices

Steps to Create a Global Registration Form

Once custom forms are enabled, you will be able to access the feature by using the menu path Administration > System Setup > Custom Forms. 

Note: If the option does not display on the menu even though the feature has been enabled, you can also get there by adding /Administration/configuration/custom-forms after your root URL for Genius.

In the top right of the Custom Forms page, click the “Create Custom Form” button. 

There are three major steps to creating a form: 

1. Selecting your creation method
2. Building the form and its logic 
3. Assigning any relevant affiliations, if applicable

In step one, you can either “Describe Your Form” or “Create Manually.” Currently, the “Describe Your Form” option is in development, so you will select “Create Manually” to get started. 

1. Design Your Form

You will now be taken to the Form Builder page. There are three tabs at the top that you can toggle between throughout the building process.

• The first tab, Designer, is where you can build the questions for your form.
• The main area includes the “Survey Title” at the top, which you can update with your desired registration form name, and below are editable fields, including page numbers, the description, and the question fields.
• If you click on a question field, you can drag and drop it to the desired location on the page.

Question Types

In the left-hand menu, you will see a section of “General” question types that you can build, including single-line inputs (that include options like text, numbers, and dates), checkboxes, radio button groups, and drop-downs.

You can either click on one of these options to generate the question type at the bottom of your form or drag-and-drop it into your form. Once the question is placed, you can edit your question and add/edit answer options. If you want to change your question type, you can do so by clicking the small green arrow in the bottom left corner of the question box.

Alternatively, you can also duplicate the question, delete it, or mark it as required with the options on the bottom right of the question box. If you mark a question as required, a red asterisk will appear at the end of your question.

Note: Currently, the only Genius-Powered questions that map back to a learner account profile are First Name, Last Name, Email, and Phone Number. If you are interested in capturing data from other fields—such as Middle Name, Address Line 1, Address Line 2, City, Zip code, State, and Country—to map back to your learner profiles, we recommend building custom fields.

Advanced Question Editing Options

To access advanced question editing options, click on the question you want to work with. The right-side panel should expand. You can expand or contract this panel by selecting the right arrow button in the top right corner.

Within this panel, you can adjust the question name, title, and description. The question name is the question ID in the Genius system and is not visible to respondents, while the question title is the visible display name the respondent will see when interacting with the form. 

Note: Make sure the question name is an easy descriptor for you, as this is the field you will search for when creating your logic. 

Providing a question description can be helpful if there is additional context or instruction needed. For example, if users need to provide their personal email rather than their school email, you can call that out in the question description field.  You can also show/hide the title and description, mark it as required, or make a question “read-only.” Please note that if you mark a question as “read-only,” a response field will still show below the question. The user will not be able to interact with the field but will still be able to submit their form.

If you create a question that will use a custom field, you can configure it using the “Input Type” and “Custom Field” selectors. If your question type is a “single-line input,” you will have options such as text, date, numbers, emails, and phone numbers. If your question type is a “dropdown,” your input types will be refined to list-specific options.

If your custom field has a predefined list you set up using the Administration > System Setup > Custom Lists and has been linked to your custom field in Administration > System Setup > Custom Fields, you can select “List” for the Input Type. Alternatively, if you want to use Genius’s pre-built list of countries, states, and state abbreviations, you can choose those options.

Next, select the applicable custom field option from the “Custom Field” dropdown list. Please note that the choices shown here will match the list and must be managed in the Custom Lists section under the Administration tab. When a form is submitted, the selected value will be stored with the user’s record. 

In the question field within the form, you can configure the placeholder text that appears before a user selects the dropdown arrow. For example, if a user is selecting their country of residence, you can customize the placeholder text in the input field to read “Type to search Country.” You also have the option to enable “autocomplete type.”

Advanced Page Editing Options

To access advanced page editing options, click on the page you want to work with. The right-side panel should expand to show the available page settings. You can also expand or contract this panel by selecting the right arrow button in the top right corner.

Within this panel, you can adjust the page name/ID that is not visible to respondents, the user-friendly page title, page description, control whether the page is visible by default or enabled be certain condition, and whether the page should be in read-only mode for respondents or open for responses.

2. Configure Logic for Your Form

One of the most powerful tools of the custom form is the logic configuration feature, which enables you to make the form truly dynamic. With this feature, you can use answer inputs to trigger a variety of flows, including showing/hiding subsequent questions, making a question required, resetting/setting question values, skipping to a question, or even completing the survey. Building logic into your form will not only help you easily gather required data for different user groups, but it will also create a seamless experience for your user since they will only be exposed to the questions relevant to them.

For instance, you may want to determine if the registering user is an alumni—and if they are, you may have follow-up information you want to gather, such as their graduation year and birthdate, which may qualify them for specific programs you are running. Since these questions may not be relevant for others filling out the registration form, you could show/hide the graduation year and birthdate questions depending on how the alumni question is answered. 

Once you have determined the flow of questions you want for your respondents, you can configure the form’s logic so respondents who answer “yes” for the alumni question will then need to provide their graduation date and birthdate. If the respondents answer “no,” those questions will be hidden, and respondents will instead be taken to the next general question requesting the user’s phone number.

There are two places where you can configure logic for the form. One option is toggling to the “Logic” tab, where you can set up logic for all questions. Alternatively, you can select the specific question you want to configure in the “Design” tab and then select the z-shaped icon on the right-hand panel. 

For this example, we will configure the rule in the “Logic” tab. Rules are set up with an if-then statement. 

Note: The “if” trigger can have multiple conditions using “and”/ “or” operators. To add another condition, select the “add condition” button, and you can flip between and/or. 

To set up the trigger, first click on the blue “select” button after the “if” part of the statement and select the question you are configuring from the dropdown menu. Then click on the “equals” button to view all the configuration options available. Here are some common options below: 

• A question is set so it “equals” or “does not equal” a specific answer option. For example, if the response equals “yes” or “no,” trigger the following questions. Another example might be if a response on a dropdown field equals “United States” for the respondent's country, trigger the following flow.
• A question is set so if the respondent chooses “any of” the following answers (good for multi-select), those selections will trigger the same action. 
• If the answer is left “empty” or “not empty,” trigger alternative flows. 
• If the number value for the question’s response is “less than” or “greater than” a value (e.g., date of birth), trigger a specific sequence.

Next, the question will appear below, and you can select the answer you want to use to trigger the action. In this example, we will set the logic so that “If alumni status equals yes, then show/hide graduation year and show/hide date of birth.”

To set up the action, click on the pink button that reads “select action” and then choose your action from the drop-down list (here, we select “show/hide question”). You can then click on the blue box that appears and says “select a question” to choose the question you want to show/hide (graduation year). 

Since you also want the alumni trigger question to show the date of birth question, you can configure that additional action by selecting the pink “Add Action” button and repeating the process for date of birth. Afterwards, click done.

Once you have configured the rule, you will see the logic statement in bold. If you want to edit the logic, click into it and the options will expand below.

To add any additional rules, select “Add New Rule” at the bottom. Make sure you continuously save your work.

3. Preview Your Form

To view the form and test the logic, toggle over to the “Preview” tab. You will be able to view and interact with the form as your registrant would. Here we can see that selecting “no” for the alumni question hides the two follow-up questions. If you flip the answer to yes, the follow-up questions appear.

Note: While in preview, you can show invisible elements by selecting the eye icon in the top right corner, which can be helpful when testing logic rules. The invisible elements will be grayed out.

Additionally, to test how the form will display on different device types—such as desktop, iPhones, androids, and tablets—you can click on the laptop icon in the top right corner and select the device you want to view from the dropdown list. Next to the laptop icon is a rectangle with arrows circling it, which you can click to flip the orientation between portrait and landscape mode when not in desktop view.

4. Save Your Form

Click the “Next” button in the bottom right corner of your screen. While the form is in draft mode, select “Don’t Assign to Any Affiliations.” If the global registration form is ready for use, select “Set as Default” and click the Save button. 

You will then be taken back to the Custom Forms page where all current forms will be displayed. Statuses will show as either Draft or Active (visible to website visitors).

Note: When using only one custom form as a global registration form, the default affiliation will be used. The default affiliation is configured by the parameter DEFAULT_AFFILIATION_ID. 

Steps to Create an Affiliation-Specific Registration Form

Genius CE & Enterprise’s custom registration form tool can also be used to create registration forms at the affiliation level, giving Genius-users even more flexibility to configure their forms to best meet their program needs. When filling out a custom registration form for an affiliation, registrants will be tagged to that affiliation upon completion. It is important to note that currently we cannot assign multiple affiliations automatically; however, Genius can map additional affiliations based on question responses. If you are interested in this additional functionality, let your Genius representative know and they can help you scope the work. 

Designating an Affiliation Registration Form

Designating your form to a specific affiliation is an easy process. Once you have built out your form as you would a global registration form, click the “Next” button at the bottom right corner of the screen, which will take you to the save options. If you want to keep the form in draft mode, select “Don’t Assign to Any Affiliations.” If you are ready to activate your form, select “Use for Specific Affiliations” and choose the affiliation you want to use from the dropdown menu below. Click save.

You will be taken back to the Custom Forms page where all of your current registration forms are listed. If you assigned your form to an affiliation, you will see the status is marked as “active” and the affiliation name will be the affiliation you selected. To edit or archive your form, you can do so through the kebab menu in the Actions column.

Note: Affiliation-specific registration forms have unique URLs. They can be found by going to the affiliation’s Information page (Affiliation > Affiliation, search for the specific affiliation). The registration link is called the Affiliation Sign Up Page.

Best Practices

Before you get started, please review the following best practices and keep these in mind while developing your forms:

• Save frequently. Your changes aren’t saved automatically, so remember to save often to prevent data loss.
• Decide what information to collect and map to account profiles. If needed fields aren’t available, create them as custom fields. These can be mapped to profiles and used in Genius reports.

Note: Once you set the “Name” for a custom field, it cannot be changed. However, you can update the “Display Name” for users. All custom fields start with the prefix cf_ to distinguish them from system fields, which helps when managing reports or CSVs.

• Plan your question flow. Not every question needs to map to a learner’s profile. Use the logic tool to set conditions and direct users to relevant follow-up questions.

For example, if your form serves multiple audiences, you can ask, “Have you taken courses with us before?” Based on the answer, direct returning learners to provide their student ID, while new learners skip that question. Only create a custom field for the student ID, not for the guiding question itself.

• Create custom fields in advance if possible. Go to Administration > System Setup > Custom Fields. For drop-down options, build lists under Administration > System Setup > Custom Lists and link them when editing or adding custom fields. For more details, see our knowledge base article here.

• The Custom Form Builder includes Genius-Powered questions. Only First Name, Last Name, Email, and Phone Number currently map to profiles. For other fields (like Middle Name, Address, City, etc.), create custom fields to capture and map this data.