Embedded forms can easily be added into your own website so you can receive enquiries or viewing/meeting bookings directly from your website in Sonas. Enquiry forms will create a new enquiry, while appointment forms link to calendar availability that you define. See: Defining Venue Availability for Appointments to learn more.
Scroll to the bottom for a video tutorial.
If you cannot see this section or get permission denied messages with any of the actions, please contact your Company Admin in order to get the required permissions.
Setting up your Form
- Navigate to Company > External Forms
- Click on Actions > +New External Form (Learn how to clone existing forms at the bottom)
- Name your new form, select the type of form (Enquiry or Appointments), and SAVE. You will be redirected to a screen to edit the form.
- Setup your reCAPTCHA Keys: In order to avoid getting spam, we require the addition of a pair of Keys from Google reCAPTCHA. You can find how to create an account and create a new form HERE. Be sure to select reCAPTCHA v2 Invisible type, which will avoid your users having to fill any reCAPTCHA puzzles unless there's some suspicious activity from the visitor's location.
- Select your Framework - If you use a common UI Framework on your website, you can select it here to generate compatible styling automatically when you save the form. If your framework is not available, please contact Sonas to get more instructions about deeper customization. You may need to reach out to your IT department or webmaster for this information.
- Set your Redirected URL after submission. Optionally, put any URL to redirect potential new customers after they submit a form, such as a thank you page, a page with your online brochure, etc. This redirection can also be used to track conversions if you are using an analytical tool, such as Google Analytics.
- Form Fields: Enquiry forms have 5 required values that can't be removed: Name, Surname, Email, Message, and Submit Button. You can add additional form fields to get more information and help you to better understand your customer’s needs. The fields can be ordered as you want, and can be customized with different labels, initial placeholder values, additional css classes and available options.
Appointment forms have 7 required values that can't be removed: Name, Surname, Email, Event Type, Appointment Date, and Appointment Time. Just like the Enquiry forms, you can also add additional fields to customize the amount of data collected from the form. Other configurations include renaming some fields and editing placeholders to your liking. - Marketing Permission: one of the above mentioned optional fields is marketing permission. This allows customers to opt-in to receive marketing emails from you. Please see Marketing Permissions for more details. You control the wording to encompass what you want to secure consent for. You can also make this field optional or mandatory. This field should be placed above the submit button.
- Setup your Auto Reply with Templates - For each venue specified in the form, you can define a reply template. This will be sent to the email address provided in the form on submission. All forms can use Automatic Form Reply Templates, and Appointments type forms can also use Appointment Confirmations Templates. See Templates for more info on creating your template.
- Custom Css: You may define custom css classes that you want to add in order to customize your form. CSS is the language used to style an HTML document, if you need assistance reach out to your IT Department, Webmaster or to Sonas.
- Allowed Domains: If you want your contact form to be only accessible from certain websites, you can define the root domain from those websites here (e.g. mywebsite.com or subdomain.mywebsite.com). If you add a root domain, there's no need to add subdomains of the same domain. If no domains are specified, your form will load from any website.
Installing the Form on your Website
- Once your form is ready, it is time to change the value of "published" to YES and SAVE changes. Under Actions (upper right hand corner), select "Add to your website". A snippet of code will pop up for you to copy and paste into your website to load the form.
- Paste the form code to your website’s source code where you have your site hosted (WordPress, SquareSpace, etc.). Alternatively, provide the code to your IT Department or Webmaster and they will be able to assist you.
Troubleshooting your Form
To check that the form is loaded on your website and that the messages go through by sending some test data as a first message.
- Navigate to the URL where you have installed your code snippet. You should see something like this:
- If you can't see the form, please check if you included the domain you have the snippet on in Allowed Domains (see above).
- If you see the form but can't submit, please ensure your Google Captcha code is correctly installed and the domain is listed with your reCAPTCHA setup.
- If you have other items on the page using reCAPTCHA (v2 or v3), please see Using V2 and V3 on the same page.
- If you previously had non-Sonas Forms, be sure all associated code is removed.
Clone/Duplicate Forms
- You can duplicate forms with ease by going Actions > Clone Forms in the External Forms section.
- Be sure to rename your form and make any necessary changes such as venue and associated automatic replies.