Typeform tip of the week 💡 Share & win!

Something I learned from a colleague is when you add pictures to a Picture Choice question, you can move the pop up box (media gallery) to the side and click on the Picture Choice answer option to add a picture and then click on the next Picture Choice answer option to add another picture. No need to close out the media gallery each time you want to add another picture.

Love this, thanks for sharing ​@Phoebe VA! 

Game-changer! 

Thanks ​@suzieq for discovering this cool tip! 😎

Tracking form names in Google Sheet submissions

Just a quick note that helps me keep track of ‘which form’ a user response comes from. (bad grammar and all that ..) 

I have a bunch of typeforms that push data into a single Google Sheet. I consolidate the details into a master tab. Each form contains a set of similar data but to make it easier to identify where the user record comes from, i use a custom variable

To keep track of the form in the responses, I create the custom variable v_form_name in each form and give it the name of the form - like in the image below: 

that variable data is submitted along with the responses to the Google Sheet. 

Now, when i consolidate the records from the various input forms into a ‘master tab’ - using email address as the unique identifier/key field to connect all the inputs - i have a column that gives me the names of the forms that have been used to submit the data record. 

I can filter on that field and figure out how many folks completed the ‘newsletter’ form in this example. 

That’s my little hack for today.. hope it might come in handy for some of you.. 

cheers

des

​@Grace - two Typeform resources to call out, that most folks in the Community won’t know about: 

1. One of my faves is the Changelog page in the Help Center… it’s where i go to check to see if anything has been ‘updated’ (before it gets announced here in the Community) … Highly recommend folks look there regularly. 
2. the Typeform Status page - if there are any issues with not being able to log into Typeform or with client forms, I always check there to see if there is an outage/issue reported. 

i don't leave home without my Amex or those two links above. 

cheers

des

Brilliant ​@john.desborough! First up thanks so much for sharing how you track multiple forms coming into one Google Sheet - I’m sure that’s something a lot of folks are looking to do (including me actually, so thank you!) 

And such a great shout out for the Changelog and Status page - totally agree, these are both hot off the press pages for updates to the product and any issues with the platform so it’s always worth checking them first 😎🙌

🥁🥁 Drumroll please! 🥁🥁

Our very first Typeform Tip of the Week winner is…

The one, the only ​@john.desborough ! 🏅

👏👏 Please give him a round of applause and get ready for next week!

You have until Friday, May 2nd to share your tip of the week to win a prize! 

Nice one ​@john.desborough 🎉 enjoy your coffee voucher! 

And thanks again ​@Phoebe VA for kicking us off! Let’s see what this week brings...

Here’s my Typeform tip: Did you know that you can edit the text of a question from the Workflows tab? If you’re adding Logic and you notice that you forgot a word or have mispelled a question in your form, you can just click on the text and edit it directly! No need to go back to the content tab to edit the text of your question. Total time-saver :) 

suzieq wrote:

Here’s my Typeform tip: Did you know that you can edit the text of a question from the Workflows tab? If you’re adding Logic and you notice that you forgot a word or have mispelled a question in your form, you can just click on the text and edit it directly! No need to go back to the content tab to edit the text of your question. Total time-saver :) 

 

 

​@suzieq - i agree.. as I often fat-finger spelling, this helps a bunch.

des

​@Liz  - thank you.. on behalf of Save the Children.. 

Hot tip ​@suzieq thanks for sharing! 

And ​@john.desborough thanks for always passing the love along 💛

There is a keyboard short cut to add a bullet point to your form. Type alt+0149 (on Windows) or option+8 (on Mac).

Here’s my (tune up your) Typeform tip of the week: don’t forget to customize your system messages!

Whether you’re creating a form in a different language, or just trying to make sure your tone matches your brand, system messages are there for you :)

For example, I’ve just received this nicely branded form from a friend. It’s in Hungarian, and I think the only thing they forgot to do was switch their form language to Hungarian in form settings. (We have a bunch of languages available there, so you don’t have to update each message manually.)

This is more about the respondent experience, so it might not be super obvious while you’re creating a form, but checking your system messages is definitely worth that little extra effort ;)

Nice one ​@Reka! A sometimes forgotten about top tip! 😎

my tip this week: using hidden fields/url parameter fields to start users at different points in the form

scenario: you have a link to a typeform on your website or social media post/bio AND you send the link out from your CRM/ESP to folks in your email list. But you want the users to ‘start’ the typeform at different spots.

Can you have 1 (one) typeform which will take, for example:

• existing purchasers of your product(s) to one spot to ask some questions about their product experience
• non-clients coming from a random URL you have posted to another spot to ask some questions about themselves and their organization

The technique I’m going to show you today have been implemented for about two dozen clients over the past year. I’ve also seen about a dozen of these requests in the Typeform Community as well. So I thought I would cover it today.

Here’s the essence of what we are going to do in the form:

1. Using logic rules on hidden fields to determine the start point
   1. Hidden field is called ‘h_variable’
2. We’ll assume, for this example, that we send a subscriber’s email address in the URL from our mailing list
   1. For example…. ‘h_variable=username@email.com’
3. All other links which we point to this form will use the ‘default string’ for the hidden field that is created when you publish the for ‘xxxxx’
   1. Default value on publishing looks like …’h_variable=xxxxx’

Fair enough?

When we get to publishing the form, here’s the URL that is created - note that I created a custom link name for the form.

• https://desborough.typeform.com/2welcome-stmts#h_variable=xxxxx

This URL is what we use for the ‘random links in the wild’ to the typeform. (You might add UTM parameters if you want but for this note, I’ll keep it simple.)

When we send folks from our CRM/ESP to the typeform, we’ll be sending something along these lines:

• https://desborough.typeform.com/2welcome-stmts#h_variable=

​
The syntax for your CRM/ESP to dynamically include an email may be different BUT it should end up with a result that might look like this when it arrives at the mailbox:

• https://desborough.typeform.com/2welcome-stmts#h_variable=username@email.co

Make sense so far?

The image below is HOW we do that in the logic rules. At the start of the form, this set of rules is run first and foremost.

This is a really simple way to put this in place. Especially if you want to use one common URL to one form, from both your CRM/ESP or from random links you place in the wild.

Hope this makes a little sense about an easy way to get a single form to handle two purposes - just in case you need it someday.

des

This is brilliant, thanks so much for sharing ​@john.desborough! Hopefully that helps out a bunch of folks I know it’s a popular question! 💡

​@john.desborough always coming in with the best hidden field examples, hacks and workarounds! Thank you!!

Tip: using Google Sheets “split” function to separate a typeform’s multi-select multiple choice output

there is a very simple way to take the output of a multiple selection choice and split the values into separate columns. 

Scenario: you have a multiple-select multiple choice question that throws a string of the responses into one column - each choice is separated by a comma. 

The image above shows the Results in Typeform. The image below shows what lands in Google Sheets once you have Connect-ed the typeform. 

Note that the selections show up as a comma separated list. 

What’s the trick to separate these inputs into separate columns so I can pull them into a report more easily?

 Like this example:

Let’s do a quick review of the typeform to set the stage - you can try out the working version at this link.

Here’s the structure:

We ask for a valid email to do the test output - it just makes it easier to do this and tie it into Document Studio to send out the custom report. 

We’ve got 15 choices on this question - users are required to select a minimum of 3 and a max of 10 (see the Range identified on the right hand side) 

Because we allow for the multiple selection, the output for this question is stored in the comma separated fashion in the Google Sheet. 

I stipulated a max of 10 selections - that is why you’ll see that I create column headings for 10 possible choices in the Google Sheet in a minute. 

The third question in the typeform is simply a Statement page to show the selections in the comma-separated format. 

There are no variables or logic created for this form - other than making the questions required. 

Now for the Google Sheets work!

Note that I have already shown you the structure of the output template that I created in Google Slides. You’ll need to create your output template at some point - I recommend creating the draft structure of the report before you head to the Google Sheet and creating the Reporting tab details. 

In the Google Sheet, I create a ‘reporting’ tab/worksheet so that I have control over the column headers - I like to make them simple so that they are easier to pull into the output template. 

Here’s the tab that the typeform uses: 

Now what I want to is create the Reporting tab to look like this: 

Note that I have a column for the email address then choice 1 through 10. I created the column headings manually but Google Sheets does the splitting of the data for me. 

Here’s the formula in cell A2 to pull in the email addresses from the main tab: 

=ARRAYFORMULA('split test'!A2:A)

It simply looks over into the main tab, into column A and pulls in every row as it is added from the typeform submission. 

The formula to in B2 to do the ‘splitting’ of the data string is as follows: 

=arrayformula(if(isblank(A2:A), " ", split('split test'!B2:B, ",")))

The formula does a check to see if there is a value in the email cell on a given row. If there is no email it shows an empty field. If there IS an email, the split() function looks over in the main tab to grab the comma separated list in column B and then splits the data and writes it to the appropriate columns - based on the order in the string of choices. 

There are NO formulas required in cell C2, D2 etc. - the split handles putting the data into the columns. 

Now all the columns will be populated with the values - from the first three columns (minimum from the typeform) up to the 10 selections maximum. 

That should make it much easier to get the data from a multi-select multiple choice into separate columns AND into your reports. 

des