Widget News! Issue #11 September 02, 2014

Hello Everyone! Hope you all had a great week! 

We've made significant improvements on widgets this past week, ensuring that the widgets that provide tabulated results are properly displayed in a table when received in email notifications as well as when viewed from the submissions page.

The update is especially important because it allows you to view data better, and makes the widget become more of an asset than a liability.

When most of us were learning computing, office applications like Microsoft Excel®, Microsoft Word® and Microsoft PowerPoint® was the place to start in sharpening your skills (during the 90's for those who grew up on PC). 

One thing we all remember is profusely using the Microsoft Office® help file to figure things out, especially that little office assistant paperclip - what a throwback! 

The importance of the help file became a benchmark, and no software was ever released without one. 

But as it always is, things are changing.

The help file has come alive, showing up in small bits of software called widgets, helping you here and there to accomplish tasks, learn something new, or complete an online form accurately and with ease. 

There is absolutely no reason why your form users should drown in trying to learn how your form works, it should be easy to work with, they should see something familiar, or at the very least, a proverbial paperclip that helps them along as they complete the form. 

Widgets help you to effectively assist your form users in knowing what they are supposed to do. Little things like a calendar picker, progress bars, well laid out select boxes, frames that contain pictures, videos or sound are just some of the tools that make your form awesome, easy to use and very friendly (like the paperclip office assistant)

Its no wonder Sound Cloud is our trending widget of the week:

 

Sound Cloud is one of the fastest growing sound sharing platforms today, with an average of 12 hours of sound uploaded every minute by 2013**

Such staggering stats often solicit confidence when using a service, and its quite possibly the reason why our SoundCloud powered widget is used at an average of 80 times each day: 

It still retains its position of being the highest rated widget, and it looks pretty good on your form, allowing your users to play a sound that you need them to listen to, like instructions, a professional studio cut or some soothing music ;-) 

Give SoundCloud a spin today and see what it can do for you! 

 

Updates This week

There are many people willing to give to a good cause, and often, the problem is that they do not know how to do it, for example, its pretty hard to pick out a wedding gift, or deciding on what to send in for your contribution to a benefit for orphaned children, or in support of a home or community center. 

Gift Registries are a good way help people give gifts by listing what they can consider when making their contributions - like a list of supplies, food among others. 

The Quantity Gift Registry Widget allows your form users to decide on a quantity of what they would like to contribute to your cause.

It will keep track of how many gifts in each line entry are needed by subtracting the ones that have been pledged already: 

We've fixed a minor bug that prevented the widget from loading properly. Help your form users pledge in their gifts by using the Quantity Gift Registry

 

 

 

One of the best way of assisting your form users is by allowing them to contribute to your form design - well, just some parts of your form. 

The User Contributed Dropdown Widget is one of our latest widgets that allows your form users to add in an option to the drop down field if they cannot see what they need to select. 

The User contributed Dropdown Widget is excellent when you have a large team that is entering data, and often, an aspect of the form needs to be dynamic - like a drop down field with options that your team can populate and re-use. 

The User Contributed Check Box  is among our latest widgets, which also allows your form users to dynamically add check box options to your form.

Help your form users complete your form accurately by using the User Contributed Check box Widget

 

The User Contributed Radio Buttons works much in the same way, allowing your form users to add options to a list of radio buttons: 

The User Contributed Radio Buttons Widget is essential when working with a large team that is collecting data - especially when some listed options on your form need to be expanded. 

 

 

Appointment Slots is the ultimate appointment planner. 

It allows you to manage the time slots that you have available for appointments. 

Your form users are only allowed to pick on available slots, and when they are not available, that particular slot cannot be selected: 

We have fixed a bug that prevented it from displaying properly.

Help your form users make an accurate choice by adding appointment slots to your booking form. 

 

 

Ticket Purchases helps you manage your online ticket sales by limiting the number of tickets available before they get sold out: 

We've fixed a minor display bug. 

Check out the Ticket Purchases widget and see how it can help you manage your online ticket sales. 

 

 

Infinite list helps you plan for the eventuality that your form will receive a long list of entries by dynamically adding additional rows to a predefined list of form fields

Your list may not necessarily be 'infinitely' long to use this widget - just saying.  

- On a related subject - I tried searching for an infinitely large number, and was told that it cannot exist due to "infinite number of possibilities"  :-)

We have updated the widget by placing submitted results in a neat, tabulated format.

See how you can make your form user experience better by using the Infinite List Widget

 

 

Its important to conserve vertical space on your form, it helps your users focus more by having fewer items to view without having to scroll down. 

Multiple Selection is a Widget that compliments this principle by not only allowing your users to select more than one drop down option, but also neatly tucks away their selections horizontally:

We have updated the widget by fixing some layout issues, fixing a bug when using your form in edit mode,  and adding a Custom CSS box so that you can modify the widget to meet your form theme. 

Go ahead and take the Multiple Selection Widget for a Spin. 

 

 

The Checklist widget speaks volumes about simple, efficient sophistication - 

Billions of people around the world relate well to using lists in organizing, checking, troubleshooting, fixing, completing tasks among many other day-to-day routines: 

We've updated the widget output to present the selected options neatly when you receive submissions, as well as fix a minor bug when editing form submissions.

Help your users relate better with your form by using the Checklist Widget

 

 

Matrix Dynamique combines versatility with accuracy by allowing your form users to expand a matrix field dynamically: 

A very valuable field for your users for when they are collecting data that needs to be organized in a table/spreadsheet. 

We have updated the widget to present the collected information in a neat, tabulated format that is easily imported into excel applications.

Checkout the Matrix Dynamique and give it a spin.  

 

 

Its all about helping your form users to complete the form accurately and quickly. 

The Select All Widget appreciates this important principle by allowing your form users to select all the options presented on your form. 

It seems quite trivial, but its the little things that count (how many times have you heard that? - Get's you thinking.. :-) ..)

We've fixed a bug that would have prevented updating the widget answers when editing your submissions.

Make your form user's experience better by adding Select All to your form.

 

 

 

Nothing works better than a visually stimulating way of collecting information. 

If you have tabulated options that you would like your form users to select, this is the ultimate widget. 

Multiselect Grid maps rows and columns into a grid, and depending on which cell your users select, the cross-referenced value is considered their selection: 

We fixed a major bug that prevented the widget from submitting the selected cell values. 

Try out the Multiselect Grid - it presents endless possibilities for your form. 

That's all we had for you this week. 

Special thanks to @jedcadorna from the widget team for reporting multiple issues. 

We thank all our users also for helping us improve the widgets - we've got a good list of improvements which we are currently implementing - so keep an eye out for widget updates in our weekly edition of widget news. 

Check out our widget gallery and see how you can help your form users. 

 

Till next week! :-)

______

Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Office are Registered Trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation

The Office Assistant logo, widget, and all its representations on this edition are copyright of the Microsoft Corporation

Sound Cloud is a registered Trademark of Soundcloud LTD

**SoundCloud Stats 2013

Widget Team keeps on rocking! :) 

 

That's Clippit! :)

Great updates Widget Team!

Endless possibilities coming our way! Good job @Widget Team!

Awesome stuff guys! :-)