Inquiry Form Features and Usability

Overview

Inquiry forms are designed to be used for Prospect Management within Student Success & Engagement.

• Inquiry forms allow prospective students an easy way to reach out to an institution to submit their contact information and express interest in certain programs and/or request additional information from the institution.

This article explains about the inquiry form features that are currently available within SS&E.

Only New and Inactive inquiry forms can be edited. Once an inquiry form is activated, it can no longer be edited. Only active forms can be shared with prospective students.

• The Inquiry Form Details tab allows users to set the individual form content.
• The Inquiry Form Styling tab allows users to set the individual form styling, aka color scheme. For more information about Inquiry Form Styling, click here.
• To learn more about Inquiry Form set up and configuration settings, click here.

Note: While the inquiry form can be created by institutions of all levels, by design, inquiry forms are intended to be used by Enterprise/CRM customers in order to use this data for the purpose of Prospect Management within SS&E. For more information about the SS&E Enterprise/CRM level, please reach out to your Client Success Manager.

Inquiry Form Details

Inquiry Form Headers

In SS&E Forms Administration, on every New Form or Edit Form page, the Title, Headline, and Subtitle fields are used to identify the different inquiry forms.

Remember, only New and Inactive inquiry forms can be edited.

• The Title is a required field that is used to name a form within SS&E. This is intended for internal use only and will NOT display on the form itself.
• The Headline is a required field that displays at the top of an inquiry form in bold. 
• The Subtitle is not required, yet if populated, this will display on the inquiry form underneath the headline.

Inquiry Form Questions

When creating a New inquiry form or editing an Inactive inquiry form in SS&E Forms Administration, the following questions are available.

Questions marked with an asterisk are required fields, and will appear by default on every inquiry form.

• First Name*
• Last Name*
• Email Address*
• Middle Name
• Address
• Birth Date
• Ethnicity
• Gender
• High School
• Phone
• Race
• Intended Start Date
• Program Interest
• Department Interest
• Paragraph
• Short Answer

Required Questions

By default, the following questions are always required on every Inquiry Form:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email Address

In addition, when creating a New inquiry form, or editing an Inactive inquiry form, additional questions can optionally be set to required at the discretion of the form creator/individual organization.

How to add Additional Fields to a New or Inactive Inquiry Form

1. Select a New form or Inactive Inquiry Form
2. On the Form Details tab, in the Questions area, select "Add Question"
3. Add a new question/inquiry form field type
4. Optionally enter a customized field title by overwriting the default question prompt
5. Optionally set the field as "Required"
6. Continue adding all fields that you wish to display in order to gather required or optional information from prospective students on this specific inquiry form

Inquiry Form Styling

The form Styling tab allows users to change the form color scheme and add a logo to the form header. For more information, click here.

Inquiry Form Edit Mode

From SS&E Forms Administration, you will only be allowed to select Edit when viewing an Inactive form. 

• To view an Inquiry Form in Edit mode, the individual form's Active status must be set to No.
• By design, Active/Activated Inquiry Forms cannot be edited.

The Inquiry Form Edit mode allows users to do the following:

• Add questions
• Reorder questions
• Set questions as required/non-required
• Remove questions
• Change Styling Options

Inquiry Form Preview

After selecting an active or inactive form from the Form Administration list, saving a new form, or saving an edited form, the inquiry form info and preview sections will display.

• If customized styling was not added to a new/inactive inquiry form, the default greyscale styling will display in the Form Preview.
• To change the color scheme, select Edit and use the Styling tab to change the form's colors and add a logo.

Using an Inquiry Form

In order for prospective students to be able to use an inquiry form, the inquiry form must first be activated in Forms Administration.

• Once activated, Inquiry Forms with an Active status can no longer be edited.

Once an inquiry form is active, you may share the inquiry form so that it can be used to gather information from prospective students.

• Select Share (formerly labeled as Publish) from the inquiry form menu bar to share the form by way of a shareable link, embedded link or QR code added to a message or a website.

After selecting Share, you may select the most suitable format for sharing the specific form: 

• Copy the form as a sharable browser link (URL)
• Copy the form as an embedded link (HTML code)
• Copy or download the form's QR code that will link to the specific form URL.
  • • On the QR Code tab, "Download" is available on all browsers, while "Copy" will only display on select/supported browsers.
    • If the Copy button is missing, use the Download button and then copy the downloaded QR code from your local PC.

Inquiry Form Submission

The following screenshot shows an example of sample data that was entered on a shared inquiry form. Once a prospect selects "Submit", their data is sent to display within SS&E.

• When a form is submitted, the system searches for an existing prospect person record by the submitted email address.
  • • If a matching prospect email address is found, the existing prospect record is updated with the inquiry form submission data.
    • If a matching prospect person email address is not found, the system will create a new prospect person record. 

• By design, the Inquiry Form submission job is not instantaneous and it may take a little while for the submitted form data to appear within SS&E.
• Submitted form data will display/can be found within SS&E in the following areas:
  • • On the person record Profile tab
    • On person record Forms tab
    • In the Person Type Filter results
• After the inquiry form is submitted, the prospective student will receive a confirmation message that the form has been received.

If a prospect changes their mind or made a mistake on the submitted form data, they will not be able to edit a submitted form and will have to submit another form with the new data.

• A person record in SS&E will display data submitted on all of the same prospect's submitted forms.
• Submitted inquiry form data will display on the prospect person Profile and Forms tabs.
• The prospect record's Profile tab will display some of the submitted data, while their Forms tab will allow access to view all data submitted on all inquiry form submissions.
• If duplicate values are submitted on multiple form submissions, the value will only appear once on the person's Profile tab.

• If BOTH a Prospect person type record and a Student/Applicant person type record with the same email address then they will both exist within SS&E.
• Submitted Inquiry Form data is only added to an existing/duplicate Prospect person type record.
• In order to prevent this or fix this, institutions can use deduplication and merging to merge duplicate records.

Which/where does the Inquiry Form data display on the UI?

Inquiry Form Filters and Reporting

Click here to view detailed information about form related filters.

Prospect Record

Any prospective student's email address submitted via inquiry form that did not already exist in SS&E will create a new prospect person type record within SS&E.

• If the Prospect person type is included in multiple department spaces, eg. department apps, then the same prospect will also display in the same/multiple department apps.
  • • This doesn't mean that there are multiple copies of the same prospect person record, rather it means that the same prospect record is displaying in different places/within multiple department apps.

Profile Tab

A prospect person type record's Profile tab displays some of the information that was submitted on the prospect's inquiry form(s).

The following data displays on a prospect person type's Profile tab, according to the following rules:

Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Birthdate, High School:

• Only the very first submitted value for these data types will display on the prospect's Profile tab.
• Any corrections and subsequent data submissions for the above data points will not be added to the prospect's Profile tab or replace what it displayed on their Profile tab.
• Prospect data that was not submitted at first then submitted later on a subsequent inquiry form will display on the Profile tab.
• All subsequent data submissions can always be accessed from the prospect record's Forms tab.

Middle Name:

• Only the very first submitted value will display on the prospect record header between the required First Name and Last Name values.
• Any correction or subsequent data submission will not be added or replace what it already displayed on the prospect header.
• Middle Name data that was not submitted at first then submitted later on a subsequent inquiry form will display on the prospect header.
• Any subsequent Middle Name submissions that are not displayed on the prospect record header can be viewed from the prospect record's Forms tab.

Address, Phone, Program Interest, Department Interest, and Intended Start Term:

• Data from multiple inquiry form submissions will all display on the prospect's Profile tab.
• Any subsequent data submissions will be added to the prospect record's Profile tab without displaying any duplicate values.

Paragraph, Short Answer:

• Currently, only the paragraph and short answer question type fields can be added multiple times to the same inquiry form.
• By design, data submitted on all form's Paragraph and Short Answer fields will not display on the prospect record's Profile tab.
• All Paragraph and Short Answer data submissions can only be accessed from the prospect's Forms tab.

Prospect Forms Tab

A prospect person type record's Forms tab will always display all data submitted on all inquiry form submissions submitted by the same prospect.

• All prospect data submitted on all inquiry form submissions is accessible from the prospect record's Forms tab.
• By design, it may take a little while for inquiry form submissions to appear in SS&E.
• Inquiry Forms submitted with optional fields left empty will display on the UI with a "not provided" value.
• Required fields will not allow a prospective student to submit an inquiry form unless all required fielda are populated.

How to view submitted data from the prospect record Forms tab

From the prospect record's Forms tab, select any form to display more detailed information about the specific inquiry form submission.