Forms: Form Field v Custom Fields-Publishable

Jennifer Miller

I'm trying to set up our Back-To-School forms in Blackbaud. I'm unclear on the difference between using the Form Field option and the Custom Fields-Publishable option. Does that mean if I use the Form Field the information is not attached to the student record? How do I know when to use which one? Right now it seems the Custom Fields only has the text option. Is that because I need to set up the different Custom Fields? Is data from both accessible in reports?

Thank you for any suggestions.

Vanessa Noe

@Jennifer Miller
Hi Jennifer,

If you add a form field under the elements section when creating a form it does not store anywhere in the database so the only way to see those results would be to open that form and look at the submissions or print a hard copy.

You have 10 custom fields you can use located in Core →Settings → General Settings → Custom Fields. These are text only and they display in the General Information section of a user's contact card. Users may be granted access to view and/or edit these fields via Profile Publish Access. i.e. parents and students can see anything in these fields. These could be used for something like authorized pickup since there is nowhere meant to store this.

You may enter an unlimited number of custom Admin View only fields (these are found in the same place as the custom fields, just below) and determine their data input type (checkbox, drop down, text box, paragraph, etc). You also will have the option to select from a number of different locations these fields will appear. (Contact card, Offerings, Room, Section). These fields can only be seen by users with the Platform Manager and/or Schedule Manager role(s). I use these fields to mark where I send records when students withdraw, If a student is taking an online class or receiving academic coaching, etc. There are a lot of uses for these. These fields can be pulled into the Sky lists (Student Lists) so even though they are limiting because they can only be seen by certain roles they are great to use as tags to run reports with.

Good Luck

Vanessa Noe

Bryan Lorenzo

Hi @Jennifer Miller - the School Form data is also exportable to a spreadsheet so you can view the responses easily including the Form Field data.

Vanessa Noe

@Bryan Lorenzo
Very cool. I did not know we could export to excel. Thanks!

Jennifer Miller

@Vanessa Noe This is great. Thank you.

To make sure I understand correctly, if I create a form using the Form Field option which has the dropdown to change the type to text, yes/no, checkbox, etc. - will I be able to run reports on the data from those? For example, as an Independent School, we need to know what our students' home, public school district is. I created a from with a dropdown menu in the ‘Form Field’ would I be able to run a report that could give me the total numbers and names of students in each district?

Bryan Lorenzo

@Jennifer Miller you can export the results to a spreadsheet. The responses to “Form Field” questions just does not live on the users record.