Forms and Polls - VLab Showcase
Content: Forms and Polls
To the right is a Poll portlet with a single-question poll. Once you vote, the current results will be shown. It is very basic, but can be used to obtain quick, targeted feedback from users to administrators.
Showcase Poll
To the right is a Form, with a handful of fields. Some fields are only presented when other fields have certain values.
Even considering this, it is a simple Form. Forms can employ multiple pages and can also be tied to a Workflow, which will allow Form submission to trigger more actions, be they automated or tied to administrative responsibilities.
Forms:
- Allow for questions to be flagged as Required.
- Can use data sources to populate lists (instead of manually creating them).
- Can be visible based on functional criteria (ie: a value in another field).
- Can be modified by CSS to improve appearance beyond the default appearance. (This example Form has been slightly modified by CSS.)
- Can require CAPTCHA entry (to avoid bot-spamming).
What are Forms and Polls?
A Form allows for structured feedback from user to community administration. It can contain a variety of fields and field types, as well as field placement and even extend into multiple pages of fields (for more complex forms). It is fairly flexible. (In previous versions of Liferay, instead of Forms, we had Dynamic Data Lists, or DDLs. DDLs still exist, but Forms are better at presentation and are preferred over DDLs.)
A Poll is similar to a simple Form but provides additional collation of results and only allows for a single field/question.
What is it good for?
Polls are good for when you want to, uhm, poll the user base of your community on some simple topic in order to see what your user base wants or what opinions they hold. Polls are instigated by the community administration.
Forms are good for submissions from the user base that are expected to recur often. Forms (once defined by the community administration) are instigated by the community users. A Form could be a good solution for:
- Requesting a new feature for the community.
- Reporting a problem.
- Submitting a document (into a controlled workflow).
How Do I Use It?
There are portlets for both Polls and Forms, but because Forms can be backed by a "workflow", their usage can be more difficult, and thus we have more guidance for them. (need link)