Sonia Forms: The Power of Action Buttons

The form action button is often referred to as the "submit" button. Clicking this button can result in a number of actions, including sending notifications, populating fields on records in Sonia, assigning forms or Workflows, and satisfying a check.

Some examples:

A pre-placement form where students’ responses, including perhaps address and/or emergency contact information, needs to be pushed back to the student’s profile.

A Check verification form – students have to answer a series of questions about their pre-requisites.  When they submit the completed form, a mandatory Check is set to “true” allowing them to continue with their placement process.

To set up these action, click the edit pencil icon to open the actions editor.



This will open the Actions editor:


The top panel (where the arrow is pointing) shows the actions currently on this button – this is what will take place when the button is submitted.  In this example, the student’s phone number fields on their Sonia profile will be updated with what they entered on the form.  Many such assignments can be done as part of a submit action.

At the bottom of the page are the panels used to select what Sonia data to fill (left) and what to fill it with (right).  The right-hand side allows static values (such as a number or a date) or picking a field from the form.

The Add button (3) will add the selected fields to the list of actions at the top of the page.

The range of available target fields (1 on the left-hand side) is quite large and should be explored carefully.  Remember that the context of the form is critical and influences what can and can’t be set. For example, a form can’t set the Grade of a student’s placement unless it has been assigned to an allocated student.

Note that custom fields and checks are included in the fields you can set.  This makes this a powerful and flexible tool for linking forms with other data in Sonia. 
 

Satisfying a Check

In the example above, the Student node is expanded under “Set Sonia field”, and we have scrolled down to the Checks section and found the Field Application Check.
Select the Value (1). Since it is a yes/no Value, click the box at the right (2) until it is a checkmark, which means True, and then click the green +.  It is now #6 in the confirmation table at the top.

Assigning a Workflow

If you want the student to get an email confirming receipt of their application, you can assign a simple Workflow.

1. Click ‘Assign Workflow’ tab
2. Select Workflow and Role
3. Green +
4. Save

Assigning a Form

Scenario 1:
Let’s say the application asks if the student is seeking an employment-based placement.  This is a yes/no question on the application.  If they say ‘yes’, they get another form.



On the “Assign Form” tab, select the form you need to assign to the student (1), and select the Role (2).
Since not all of the students completing the form will need the new form, you need to apply a Condition (3).
The Condition currently means that if a respondent (a student, in this case) says ‘yes’ to the question connected to the Condition, they will be assigned the form.  The Condition dropdown only contains yes/no questions.

Scenario 2:
You have a form that students need to complete multiple times throughout the term, perhaps weekly or monthly.
You could assign the same form to be assigned upon submission, creating a loop.
Or, what we often suggest is to copy the form, rename it, and edit it to be different forms. This alleviates confusion for all of the roles that need to touch this form, especially if you have a mentor or university supervisor with several students.

Here we have Field Journal 1, and upon the student’s submission, they will be assigned Field Journal 2.
Everyone needs this form, so there is no Condition. The steps are the same as Scenario 1; just leave Condition blank.
 

“Save Sonia Entity” (i.e., creating a new profile)

We looked earlier at how to *update* existing Sonia profiles.  Forms can also *create* site and site contact profiles.



To create a profile, click the Save Sonia entity tab:

1. Choose the entity (in my example here, we are creating a site).
2. Click the green +. This will kick you over to the “Save Sonia field” tab we looked at earlier.
3. Select the Sonia and form fields to connect.
4. Save.