by Lindsay Nash | Dec 6, 2022 | Articles
This is a 6-part series detailing how to get started in Award Force. Here, in part four, we look at building your entry form. Click through the series below:
Creating an effective and engaging awards entry form is one of the most important parts of running a successful awards program. We know you want to attract great entrants and quality submissions. And that means providing an exceptional entrant experience.
Award Force offers the world’s most powerful entry form builder, making it easy to build a sophisticated awards entry form that intuitively collects all the relevant information from your entrants so your judges can make great decisions.
So what’s involved in creating an entry form in Award Force? Let’s go over it now.
The entry form builder allows you to build and preview your form at the same time. To start building or make edits, simply toggle the Configuration mode setting to “On”. Now you’re ready to create!
The Award Force form builder is what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG). This means that while building the form you can get a very good idea of what it will look like to your entrants.
The form builder is also drag-and-drop enabled, making it easy to edit, and uses best-practice layout principles to display your form in a combination of tabs and fields, providing the best possible entrant experience. Good entrant experience means more quality submissions!
Similarly, tabs are an additional way to organise your entry form. There are four different types of tabs to use, each with their own unique function and purpose.
The general tab is most often used to separate the entry form into easily digestible groups of fields. The attachments tab provides a facility for uploading attachments. The contributor tab is used for collecting records of information, such as team member details. And the eligibility tab (for Pro accounts and higher) is used for auto-scoring, perfect for setting up eligibility screening or to help with moderation of entries prior to judging.
Now comes the meat of your entry form– building out your questions. Simply click the plus sign to add a new field (question) to your form.
It’s ideal if you have all entry form questions available (see our checklist here!) so you can easily create your questions in the form builder.
You’ll see options for field types (we have more than 15), additional data protection (ideal if you’re collecting sensitive information or PII), conditional fields to make your form dynamic, auto-scoring for eligibility screening, table fields with automatic calculations and much more!
You can make your form as sophisticated…or as simple… as you need. It’s up to you!
Once you’ve entered your fields and tabs you can toggle back and forth between configuration mode to preview the form as your entrants would see it. Need to move things around? Easy. Simply go back into configuration mode, then drag and drop fields or tabs where you want them. It’s fast and simple to make changes.
Once you’re happy with the entry form, you can submit a test entry. This is a great way to ensure you are satisfied with the entrant experience.
Simply make sure the configuration mode is toggled off and then fill out the entry and click submit. Then, delete your test entry once you are finished.
If you need any help while you’re building your entry form, no problem. Just click the “Need help?” icon on the right-hand side of the screen and you’ll see articles that link to our very helpful Entry form configuration guide, which offers a set of articles, how-tos and videos.
You can also reach out to our friendly client success team from here. They commit to responding within four hours (although it’s usually one hour!)
Articles
Feature focus
How-to-guides
Press releases
Product updates