Feature Request: Dynamic add option for Auto Complete Widget

I have a very lengthy donor list that I need to be able to select from and also to add to from the form. Two widgets that I have looked at are "User Contributed Dropdown" and "Auto Complete."

The "Auto Complete" is great in that it allows the form user to begin typing the data and have the suggestions come up. This would be perfect if it also had the "add" option that is present in the "User Contributed Dropdown."

Vice versa the "User Contributed Dropdown" would solve the problem if the user could type into it to parse through the options and if the "add" option could be the initial default value.

Are there any work arounds for either of these scenarios. Or a different option to achieve this?

Hi,

I believe it is not possible right now to combine or add conditions between those widgets. But I would like to suggest a workaround.

Here is my live form: http://form.jotformpro.com/form/42937342489971 

I used the Auto Complete widget, and it shows suggested list depending on what the user type. If the item is not in the list, he/she can type the word "Other" and a textbox will appear.

You can follow the screenshots below for a guide.

1. Add "Auto complete" widget with custom list and the textbox "Add other"

2. Add a custom list with one item named "Other", this is for entries that the user inputs that is not in the item list.

3. This is the condition I have. When the user inputs or chooses the item "Other" in the list, the form will show or display the textbox "Add other".

It's quite different on what you expect, but I hope this workaround can give you an idea.

Let us know if this works for you.

Thanks.

I knew you could do that, but this method doesn't add the new option to the dropdown for future use; it has to be manually added to the list for future use.

It sure would be a great add to the user contributed if the entry was autofill, or if the auto fill had the dynamic add option.

I am not a coder, so perhaps I am over simplifying, but it seems that this would be a simple add to either widget.

Hi,

I do agree that it would be helpful. But that would also leave a mark on the forms design and usage. Users who will fill out the form shouldn't be able to edit or alter the forms design, and by adding the feature or functionality of the widgets User Contributor List and Auto-complete to where users can add additional items would someway messed up the list. An example would be a user added an item that is totally not related to the list, a user may also mis-type a word and added it, or users who abuse the form can add irrelevant items just to annoy people.

We do appreciate your inputs and we're always looking to possibilities to improve user experience. I will try to re-think the function you are suggesting and will escalate it to our dev/technical team if that's possible or something similar can be done.

Please continue giving your inputs, we appreciate it.

Thank you.

Charlie,

I am not sure what you are talking about when you say that this "would also leave a mark on the forms design and usage", and that "users who will fill out the form shouldn't be able to edit or alter the forms design."

There are currently, at least, three such "Widgets" in the "Plugins" section of the "Jotform" site that allow form users to dynamically add a new option to "Dropdowns", "Checkbox Lists", and "Radio Lists."

The safeguard to the integrity of the form in these "Widgets" is that dynamically added options are designated as such on the backend, and are easily removed by the form admin.

The thing to understand is that many companies and individuals utilize these forms to pass information internally, where malicious use is not as much of an issue as say a generic survey on a website that some idiot might go nuts on. In my case, we use this particular form for volunteer staff to log non sensitive donation information. We integrate the form to a spreadsheet, then more seasoned staff review the data entry before merging the data into our more sensitive donor and accounting databases. This allows us to better maintain the integrity of these more sensitive systems, by reducing data entry error into them and by limiting access to them to key staff.

I will say that the "auto fill" widget almost gets me there because it does allow the form user to enter something in the field even if it doesn't exist in the dropdown suggestions. With the addition of a simple checkbox to add new donor I can at least be alerted to the need to manually make the addition to our form and backend systems. Not perfect, but suffices for now.

One more note on this. For my scenario the "User Contributed Dropdown" Widget would not work. It appears that my quantity of options exceeds its functional limit (I currently have an options list for one of my dropdowns that is a little over 1,300 options). The "Auto Fill" Widget did support this very large list of options, but simply lacks the dynamic add option that the other widgets have.

Thanks for your assistance and for the continued improvements.

So, in other words, you think the Autocomplete widget would be great only if it is able to allow users to dynamically add more options. This is exactly what User Contributed dropdown does. But you discovered a downside on such widget, and it's the limitation on the number of options, right?

In light of that, we could open a ticket to either request more room for the User Contributed Dropdown and have the "Add a new option" on top . Or make the Autocomplete widget to dynamically add more options.

I await for your response, so we can make this clearer, shorter and faster.

Jeanette,

My apologies it took me this long to get back to you; got a bit busy.

The Autocomplete widget is a great widget as is, especially since it supports such large option lists. For my purposes, and I suspect for others as well, it would simply be that much better of a widget if it had the dynamic add option.

For my purposes the Autocomplete widget is best due to the quantity of options I have. Even if the User Contributed were made to support more options it would be difficult for the form user to complete due to the quantity of options.

As previously stated one of my dropdown lists has in excess of 1300 options. On that note, can you tell me what the limit is on options (if any) on the Autocomplete widget?

As always thanks for all the good work.

Hi,

Thank you for giving your input to us. I'll be creating a feature request ticket for this, so that our developers can look closer and see if they can add the dynamic option for the Auto Complete widget. Please do take note that we cannot provide an exact date of delivery on this or if it will be implemented. But rest assure that our dev/technical team is now being informed about this.

About the Auto Complete widget limit, I'm not sure about that. But we have users who have the same concerns and we have cases that they have more than 1,500 entries, and the form still works fine. Although, this would definitely have an impact on the loading time of the widget.

I'll go ahead and escalate this ticket now. Thank you.

Best Regards.