Try out a preview of the new Form Builder alpha release

Publié
2020-01-09 13:33
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The Core Team has been hard at work on the new Form Builder for CiviCRM. Code-named "Afform" (the Affable Administrative Angular Form Framework) - the project is growing into a robust app for composing forms for all different purposes.

After months of development we're happy to announce the first public Alpha release, which you can download and try for yourself at https://lab.civicrm.org/extensions/afform/-/tags

Key Features

  • Compose your form by dragging-n-dropping fields from a palette
  • Easily arrange fields into grid or inline layouts
  • Add images or other rich content to your form
  • Save sections of the form as "blocks" for reuse on other forms
  • The powerful "repeatable block" feature makes it simple to add more than one email, address or phone per contact. You can even make a contact repeatable, e.g. for entering a variable number of family members on a form.

Q/A

  • How do I download and try the alpha?
    Visit https://lab.civicrm.org/extensions/afform/-/tags and click the "download" icon next to the latest version (currently 0.4.alpha1). Extract the downloaded file to the extensions directory on your CiviCRM site. Enable the "afform" and "afform_gui" extensions, then visit Administer -> Customize Data and Screens -> Forms in the menubar.
  • Isn't there an automatic way to install it like normal extensions?
    Not yet :)
  • Should I start using it on public websites? Will there be an upgrade path from alpha to beta?
    Probably not.
  • What entities are supported?
    At this early stage only Individuals, Households, Organizations & Activities can be added to a form via the GUI, but the flexible framework makes adding support for more easy, and we'll be doing so soon.
  • How is Form Builder different from CiviCRM "profile forms"?
    Profiles work well for simple forms, but Form Builder has a lot more flexibility when it comes to configuring the layout and mixing multiple contacts on the same form.
  • How is Form Builder different from Drupal/Wordpress Webforms?
    The form integrations in Drupal and Wordpress are robust and feature-rich. This is a new project and doesn't (yet) match them in scope or polish, but the architecture under the hood of Afforms is very powerful and flexible. There are already things you can do with Afforms that you can't with Webforms (such as repeatable blocks), and that list will continue to grow.
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