To create a new form, select the New Form option from the Forms tab. You can create a new form from scratch or from pre-built template forms or by importing data from a .xls file.

Create a Blank Form

1. Select Add Form icon and specify the new form name.
2. When you create a new blank form, the option Store Data in Creator will be selected by default. This means that Zoho Creator will have a table generated at the backend to store data submitted through the form. Deselecting this option will not generate a table for this form to store the data. Refer the topic, Creating Stateless Forms for more information.
   
3. Zoho Creator automatically creates a default view for the form in the Views Tab, with name "<Form_Name> View". The default view will have all the columns in the form. If you do not want the default view to be generated, deselect the checkbox Generate auto-view for this form.
4. Click Done to create a blank form in the Forms tab. Drag and drop the required fields to your form. To submit and view form data, select Access this application button.

Create Form from Template

1. Select Add Form icon and select the "How to Create" radio-button option as Use Form Template.
2. When you create a form from template, the option Store Data in Creator will be selected by default. This means that Zoho Creator will have a table generated at the backend to store data submitted through the form. Deselecting this option will not generate a table for this form to store the data. Refer the topic, Creating Stateless Forms for more information.
3. Zoho Creator automatically creates a default view for the form in the Views Tab, with name "<Form_Name> View". The default view will have all the columns in the form. If you do not want the default view to be generated, deselect the checkbox Generate auto-view for this form.
4. Select the required template from the Template list. Click on the Preview Form option to preview the template form.
5. Click Done to create a form based on the template form. To submit and view form data, select Access this application button.

Create Form by Importing Data

1. Select Import .xls and specify the new form name.
2. Copy the data from your .xls file or from other file formats that store comma seperated values or Tab seperated values.
3. Specify the Form Name and paste the data copied from your .xls/.csv/.tsv file.
4. If the data contains a date field, select the required date format from the list of supported date formats.
5. Select the Time Zone for the application from the list of time zones.
6. Click Done to import the data. The "Importing Data" dialog will display the data in the following format:
   • The form will be created with the Application Name.
   • The data in the first row will be displayed as the default Label Names for each column. If you want to change a field name, type a new name in the Label Name box.
   • The default Field Type is displayed based on the type of data pasted for each column. If a field type is not correct, select the appropriate field type from the drop-down list.
   • Click Submit to create the form with data.
7. The created form will be displayed in Edit mode. To submit and view form data, select Access this application button.

Create Form by Writing Deluge Script

1. Select the Script tab
2. In the Select Form list-box click on the New Form option.
3. In the editor area, copy-paste the script or writer script to create a new form.
4. Click Save Script, to create the form.
5. To submit and view form data, select Access this application button.

Refer FAQ - Deluge Scripting for more information on defining forms and fields in script mode.

Support for uploading your own logo is available in the Business Paid Edition. Use the Rebranding tab from the Account Settings page to upload your logo.

When you create a new blank form, the option Store Data in Creator will be selected by default. This means that Zoho Creator will have a table generated at the backend to store data submitted through the form. Deselecting this option will not generate a table for this form to store the data. Refer the topic, Creating Stateless Forms for more information.

To change the existing form name,

1. Select the Form from the Forms Tab.
2. Select More Actions -> Form Properties to view the Form properties as shown below.
3. In the Form Name text area, specify the new name and click Done to update the changes.

Note:

Changing the form name will only change the display name of the form. The form link name will not be changed. To change the link name, specify the new link name in the Form Link Name text area.

Yes, Zoho Creator supports 'captcha' image verification to prevent spam on the forms. To add this feature,

1. Select the Form in Edit mode
2. Select More Actions -> Form Properties
3. Select the checkboxNeed Verification Code
4. Click Done to update the changes.

To customize the success message from the GUI,

1. Select the form from the Forms Tab.
2. Select More Actions -> Form Properties to view the Form properties.
3. By default, the success message Data Added Successfully, will be displayed in the success message text box.
4. Specify the new success message and click Done to update the changes.

Customization of form width is not currently supported but you can customize the Label width of the form. To customize the Label width,

1. Select the Form from the Forms tab.
2. Click on More Actions -> Form properties
3. Specify the label width in percentage or pixel, in the Properties dialog.
4. Click Done to update the changes.

More customization options are provided for forms embedded into your website. Now you can customise almost all the elemenets like form header/footer, field width/height, label backgrounds and much more...to suit your website look. For more information, refer Customizing look & feel of embedded forms.

The Customize tab is used to customize the form and view layouts and themes. Refer FAQ - Customize for more information.

More customization options are provided for forms embedded into your website. Now you can customise almost all the elemenets like form header/footer, field width/height, label backgrounds and much more...to suit your website look. For more information, refer Customizing look & feel of embedded forms.

Yes, you can customize the default Submit/Reset buttons displayed in the "On Add" form and the Update/Cancel buttons displayed in the "On Edit" form. To customize the buttons,

1. Select the form from the Forms tab.
2. Select the On Add tab to customize the On add form buttons (or) the On Edit tab to customize the On Edit form buttons.
3. Mouse over the button and select Edit this button, as shown in the screen-shot given below.
4. In the Edit dialog, specify the label name and instructions if any to be displayed.
5. Click Done to update the changes.

Yes, you can configure to send e-mail notifications with form data. To do this,

1. Select More Actions -> Set Email Notification from the form header in Edit mode. The Email Notification dialog will be displayed as shown in the screen-shot given below.
2. Specify the From, To, Subject and Message fields.
3. Select the checkboxInclude User Submitted Data to send the form data in the email message.
4. Make sure that the Email Notification Enabled radio-button is selected, (at the bottom of the pop up window). To stop email notifications, set the 'Email Notification' to 'disabled' state.
5. Click Done to update the changes.

Whenever a record is successfully submitted, an e-mail will be sent with form data to the address specified.

Also Refer: Tips & Tricks -> Customizing Email Messages

Yes, you can configure to send email notifications with form data. To do this,

1. Select More Actions -> Set Email Notification from the form header in Edit mode. The Email Notification dialog will be displayed as shown in the screen-shot given below.
2. Specify the From, To, Subject and Message fields.
3. Deselect the checkbox Include User Submitted Data, if it is already selected.
4. In the message options, click on Insert Field, and all the fields in your Form will pop up.
5. Now, select only the fields you would like to send in the Email Notification.
6. Make sure that the Email Notification "Enabled" radio-button is selected (at the bottom of the pop up window). To stop email notifications, set the 'Email Notification' to 'disabled' state.
7. Click Done to update the changes.

Also Refer: Tips & Tricks -> Customizing Email Messages

Zoho Creator supports sending email notifications only from zoho.loginuserid and zoho.adminuserid. If you want the email notifications to be sent from your company ID, you have to add your company's ID to your accounts Email ID list and set this as the Primary mail ID. To add a new e-mail id, Log on to your Zoho account at: https://accounts.zoho.com and click on the My Email IDs link present on the left panel.

In cases where the "From" address is not a zoho.adminuserid or zoho.loginuserid, the "To" address can only be zoho.adminuserid and the sendmail task cannot have any CC: or BCC: address.

Also Refer: Tips & Tricks -> Customizing Email Messages

To send e-mail notifications to both the user and the administrator, specify the To address as given below:

To : zoho.adminuserid, input.EmailId ( where, EmailId is the field name in the form to enter the user email address)

Also Refer: Tips & Tricks -> Customizing Email Messages

You can create one-to-one or one-to-many relationship between forms in the same application or different applications. To create a relationship between Form A and Form B, you have to add a Lookup field in Form B, imported from Form A.

Example:

Let us take the example of an "Employee Details" application. In this application, a form named "Employee" is created to add each employee record. Now, we also need to add the department details to which each employee belongs to. To do this, we will create a new form named "Department" to enter the department details in the organization. To create a relationship between the Employee form and the Department form, we will add the Department Name from the Department Form as a lookup field in the Employee Form. Refer the screen-shot below:

Now you can access the values in the Department form from the Employee form. Thus a one-to-one relationship is established between the Employee form and Department form. You can also create one-to-many relationship between forms, by importing a multi-select field.

You can also create a combined view with columns from two or more related forms. The combined view can be created using the form which has the lookup field imported from the other forms. Refer Creating a Combined View for more information.

Deleting a form will delete all the data corresponding to that form and it cannot be recovered. If a form is related to other forms, Zoho Creator will display a message with the details about the related forms. The form cannot be deleted unless the relationship is removed.

To delete a form ,

1. Select the Form from the Forms Tab.
2. Select More Actions -> Delete this form, to delete a form that is currently displayed. Zoho Creator displays a confirmation message before actually deleting the form.
3. Click OK to delete the form or Cancel to return back to the form without deleting.

One of the very useful features of Zoho Creator is to embed the Forms/Views on any website and blog, just by pasting few lines of code. To embed a form,

1. Go to the Live mode by clicking Access this application button.

2. Select the form to be embedded and click on More Actions -> Embed in your website, from the Form header.

3. The Embed dialog will be displayed with the <iframe> code, as shown in the screen-shot below. If your form is private, users will have to login to access your embedded form. To access the form without login, refer FAQ -> Embedding Forms without Login access.
4. To configure next url etc. in your embedded form, select Customize Items. The code displayed will be updated with the required customization.
5. Copy and paste the code snippet displayed to your website.

Yes, the form embed dialog provides options to customize the header, footer, labels and fields of embedded forms.

1. Go to the Live mode by clicking Access this application button.

2. Select the form to be embedded and click on More Actions -> Embed in your website, from the Form header.

3. Click on Customize Form Properties & Look and Feel
4. The left-side tree will display the options to customize form properties, header and footer, labels and fields, field widths and heights. Click on the required option and specify the values on the right-side. The embed code snippet displayed below, will be updated with the values you specify in this dialog.
5. Copy and paste the embed snippet in your website or use the permalink.

To enable shared users to access your private embedded form without login, select the Click Here option displayed in the embed dialog. You will now find an encrypted code appended to the existing one. Copy and paste the code snippet to your website.

You can redirect your form to another url by invoking the openUrl Deluge task from Form/Field action scripts. For more information refer Deluge Reference -> OpenUrl. For embedded forms, Zoho Creator provides you an easier option to specify the next url in the embed dialog. To configure Next URL in embedded forms,

1. Go to Access mode by selecting Access this application button.
2. Click on More Actions -> Embed in website from the form header.
3. Specify the Next URL under Customize Items header, as shown in the screen-shot below:

   

4. Now, copy and paste the <iframe> code displayed in your website/blog. When the form is submitted, it will redirect to the url specified.

You can remove the Zoho logo from the embedded form/view by upgrading your account to Business Paid version. When your account is upgraded, the Zoho logo will automatically be removed from the embedded page and you cannot replace it with your own logo in that embedded page. For more details on the pricing plan refer Pricing

You can edit an existing record from the form view, provided you have Edit permissions enabled by the owner of the application. To edit a record,

1. Click on the Edit button displayed for each record, as shown in the screen-shot below.
2. The existing form data will be displayed
3. Click on Update, to update the changes.

To view the script definition of a form,

1. Select the Form from the Forms Tab, in Edit mode.
2. Select More Actions -> Form Definition as shown below, to view the Form definition.

The script definition of the selected Form will be displayed in the Script Tab. If you are well versed in deluge scripting, you can modify your application by making the required changes to the script definition. The changes made in the script will be reflected in the GUI.

Yes, you can add new records to an existing application by importing data from a .xls, .csv, .tsv file.

1. Select the Form/View in access mode.
2. Select the More Actions ->Import Data option from the form header. The Import Data dialog will be displayed.
3. Select the Paste Data tab and copy/paste the data to the "import " dialog
4. Select the File type as XLS, CSV or TSV.
5. If the data contains field label names in the first row, select the checkbox First row of data is field label names
6. Click Submit to add the data. The existing view will be updated with the new records.

The "Import Data" option will only append new records. You cannot update existing records using this option.

To add form data via e-mail,

1. Go to Live mode and select the Form to which a record needs to be added dynamically.
2. Select More Actions -> Email Data option from the form header. The Email Data dialog will be displayed as shown in the screen-shot below:

3. Copy the Email Template and also the e-mail address specified. For example, sampleapps-250@forms.zohocreator.com
4. Now, specify the above email id as the To address in your email client.
5. In the e-mail message field, specify the message as per the Email Template you have copied.

Use the Form permalink, if you do not want to share your application with users but just want to send them a link to submit form data or to embed in your website/blog. To access your Form via a Permalink,

1. Select the Form in access mode.
2. Select the More Actions -> Permalink option from the form header. The Permalink dialog will be displayed, as shown below. Copy/Paste the permalink to your website/blog or send it to people who would like to access the form.

Note:

If your form is Private, the permalink will prompt for login details. To get a permalink which does not require login, use the Click Here link displayed in the Permalink dialog. You will now find an encrypted code added to the link. Use the encrypted permalink to access the form without login.

To assign a value to a field using the URL, take the Permalink from your Form and add &<Fieldname>=<Value>, at the end as shown in the format given below. You can have more than a single field to be auto filled just by using another '&' and adding the value. To get the permalink of your form, click on More Actions -> Permalink, from the form header, in Live mode.

http://creator.zoho.com/<userid>/form/<formid>/&<Fieldname>=<value>

Yes, you can capture the form url by passing extra arguments to the embedded form url. The sample application "Form URL" given below, illustrates this scenario. http://creator.zoho.com/sampleapps/form-url/

The Registration form in the Form URL app, has a field named "UsedUrl" to capture the url of the embedded form. To embed the form with the UsedURL value,

1. Select the From in Live mode
2. Click on More Actions -> Embed in Your Website
3. In the <iframe> code displayed, add the extra argument as highlighted below, with field name and value. Here, you have to specify the URL of your website where the from is embedded.

<iframe height='500px' width='100%' name='zoho-Registration' frameborder='0' scrolling='yes' src='http://appcreator/zchelp/form-url/form-embed/Registration/UsedUrl=http://www.zoho.com'></iframe>

4. When the <iframe> code is embedded in your website, the UsedUrl column will be updated with specified url, (i.e) http://www.zoho.com