Overview of Forms

A form is a collection of input fields. The basic layout of a form is a sequence of rows, where each row contains a label followed by 1 or more fields. If multiple fields are placed on a row, their field names will be displayed beneath each (unless you override this).

Overview of the Registration Form

Registering is what adds someone to the people database. The form displayed when a person registers or updates her registration info is called the Registration Form. It has three kinds of fields:

Hardwired into it are fields for entering a person's name and email address.
Also built-in to it are several customizable fields: Phone1, Phone2; Street, City, State, Zipcode; Expires, Privileges; and the initially hidden ones, Representing and Roles. These fields are called customizable because you can edit their properties and explanatory text. For example, perhaps for your group, Phone1 should be a required field rather than an optional field.
Fields you add yourself. These are called group-specific fields because they only exist in your group's Registration Form. (Note: they can also be added or updated via an Import File).

Notes:

Customization of your registration form and your usage of roles should first be thought about when you populate your people database.
The row labeled "Phone Numbers" is a special case. It is followed by a vertical gap in the self-registration form and a sub-heading in the admin form.
To remove a built-in field from the registration form, click on the field and then on the Hide Field button. To put it back in the form or to add Roles or Representing initially, do an Add Field with Field Name set to the hidden field's name. Note that importing a hidden field does not unhide it, you must use Add Field so that you can position it in the registration form.
The Representing field is for when one or more people represent a single entity, say a soccer team. That is, you set the Representing field of each team member to the same value so that each team member can be informed about each team signup. For example, suppose the soccer team has one signup for each game field it is assigned to. Then when an admin sends people a list of their signups, each team member's email will include the team's soccer-field signups even though there is just one such signup per game.

Overview of Signup Forms

The form displayed when a person signs up for an activity is called a signup form. If you do not associate an activity with a form of your own, the built-in minimal form is displayed. The minimal form contains only the person's name for an admin-signup and no input fields for a self-signup (since it is the logged-in person being signed up). If you do create a signup form of your own, a person who has signed up can later edit her form if desired. That is, the form can be displayed by clicking on a signup line's Update icon (or in a grid view, on the SIGNUP FORM item in its dropdown menu).

To create a signup form, go to the Make Signup Form page and select Create New Form... on the Current Form dropdown menu. Then (or after selecting a form you previously created), use the page's Add buttons as described above. You can also create a new form from the current form by clicking on the Copy icon — or rename or delete it using the other two icons.

If a signup form will be associated with most or all of the current event's activities, check Make It Current Event's Default Form when you create the form. Similarly if you later want to make it the default form of some event, select it in that event's Update Event Properties->Default Signup Form dropdown menu. On the other hand, if a signup form only applies to specific activities, select it in the Signup Form dropdown menu of each such activity's dialog box.

Building and Previewing a Form

Form-Editing Summary

You add a field to a form by clicking on an Add Field button. You update or delete a field by clicking on the field itself. You can also rearrange fields in a form, by using a link in the Move column or by double-clicking on a field.

You can also associate explanatory text with a form, to aid your users in filling it out. You add an explanatory row by clicking on an Add Explanatory Row button. You edit such rows, or explanatory text about a regular row (e.g. help text), by clicking on a row's ? icon.

Previewing

The box inside the 2-tone blue border is a slightly stylized view of the form. To see exactly what the form will look like, click on the Preview Form button. A Preview shows the admin view of a form. The user view looks essentially the same — minus the Admin-only Divider and below.

When you preview a form, you can also preview its help. A form's help consists of: (1) Help for the form as a whole, including any such help you create yourself (2) Help for its hard-wired fields (e.g. the Person to Signup field) AND (3) Any row-related help text you create yourself. To preview (or use) a form's help, simply click on the (help) link at the top of the form.

More on (Re)naming and Deleting Fields

Field names can be used in report definitions, and the same field name can be put in multiple forms. To avoid confusion, it is good practice to use the same name in multiple signup forms only if it means the same thing in all of them. Accordingly, PRESTO starts out with all use-boxes checked, and thus by default will rename all other uses of a field when you rename it in one form.

If you ever change a name that has some uses that mean something different, you would uncheck these before clicking the Update button. Conversely if a name is used in multiple forms and you have just decided that it should mean something different in this form (and are thus renaming just it), you must uncheck all its uses before clicking the Update button.

In the same vein, PRESTO will not delete a field if any of its report boxes are checked. Conversely, if you are planning to remove this field from all its report definitions, indicate the Delete is safe by unchecking all of its reports before doing the Delete.