New & Noteworthy

Appcues Integration

We are pleased to announce our integration with AppCues ( https://www.appcues.com/ ). Appcues makes it easy for you to deliver a exceptional user experience at scale, leading to happier customers and accelerated business growth. With AppCues, you can publish beautiful and in-app guides in minutes. If you has a very complicated form, AppCues is a good option to build a walkthrough guide to help your customers complete the form and improve the completion rate of your form.

We have more third-party integrations coming in the near future. If you are keen on integrating your fillable PDF forms and any other applications, please let us know and we will be happy to research and integrate to help your business.

Cascading dropdown lists feature

Introducing Cascading Dropdown Lists in PlatoForms! Simplify data collection with linked dropdown fields where choices in one field depend on the selection made in a previous field.

For example, in a car rental reservation form, users select a car brand (e.g., Ford), which dynamically updates the next dropdown to show models (e.g., Mustang, Focus). For even more specific details, you can create additional levels. It’s all about streamlining data entry. Try it now!

Enhance customer control: preview PDF before submitting

Now, you can offer your customers a more flexible experience. Enable the Preview the PDF before submitting option in Form Settings. With this feature, your customers can review the PDF at any point, even before submission. It’s all about giving them the confidence and control they deserve!

Customise Your PDF Forms

When you have finished building fillable PDF form in PlatoForms, you can edit the settings to rebrand the form to represent your organisation before sharing it with others. Here are some options you can consider:

Custom domain. The link to the shared form starts with https://forms.platoforms.com. You can edit this by customising the domain name to match that of your organisation.

Sender email address. When your form receives submissions, PlatoForms may send notification emails to your users. By default, the email address provided in the “From” section is mailer@platoforms.com. This email is unmonitored and any responses will be ignored. You can set up a customised email address instead so that replies from your users won’t be missed.

Logo and Theme. You can change the font size and colours, form background etc in Form Designer. You may also upload the logo of your organisation to the top of the form. For instance, the form can be edited to match the colour scheme and design of your organisation, allowing it to blend seamlessly when embedded into your webpage.

API and Webhook. This is the ultimate way to customise the features in PlatoForms. Except for creating, publishing of the form, and user management, you can implement nearly all features in PlatoForms, such as submitting the form, extracting the submission list, downloading created PDFs or retrieving submission raw data.

With these above features, you can create a fully customised form with personalised branding. It helps to establish a more professional outlook of your organisation and ensures all customer replies and inquiries are received.

Save for Later PDF Form

Your PDF may not be a simple one-page form. It can have multiple pages, many fields to fill, and even upload multiple attachment files. To complete such fillable PDF forms at once is very hard work. Your client may want to complete this form several times over a period of days. Our form is an online form that opens in the browser and loses content when the browser is closed. You can now enable the “Save for Later” feature to resolve this issue. You can enable it through form settings. When enabled, there will be a new “Save for Later” button in the form submission bar. By clicking on it, a URL link pops up while the form is saved. Form submitters can come back with this URL and everything will be the same as it was when they clicked “Save for Later”

Not only is this feature helpful for filling out a large form, but it can also be used to create a simple workflow. For example, your form requires two roles on the team to complete, the first person can fill in what needs to be filled in their role and then share that “Save for Later” URL to the next person, who will complete the other part of the form and submit it. It’s much simpler to create than our standard workflow.

This feature is available to all trial and paid users. You can find more details in our help document.

Collect sensitive info securely with HIPAA-compliant forms

We know how crucial it is to keep things secure and compliant when dealing with personal information, especially in fields like healthcare and insurance. That’s why we’re thrilled to offer HIPAA-compliant online forms with PlatoForms.

Stay compliant without the headache

With this feature, you can collect sensitive data without worrying about compliance issues. It’s as simple as signing up for our Silver or Gold plan and requesting HIPAA compliance for your team. Once that’s done, all your forms will meet those strict standards.

We’ve got your back with BAAs

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered on the legal side too. We’re happy to sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) to ensure you stay fully HIPAA-compliant.

Build secure forms in minutes

Building a HIPAA-compliant form is just as easy as creating any other online form with our user-friendly builder. Just upload your PDF documents, and you’re good to go.

Want to learn more? Check out our HIPAA compliance docs. We’re excited to help you gather the personal info you need while keeping everything safe and secure.

Send a form in multiple languages

Internationalization PDF form i18n form

Want to connect with customers globally? Our multi-lingual form feature lets you easily create one form in multiple languages!

What are the benefits:

• Each language version gets its own unique URL to share.
• A cool language selector drop-down right, allowing users to switch between languages.

Translating content is a breeze:

• Edit the translations right in your browser as you go.
• Or, if you prefer, import/export translations using an Excel file.

This multi-lingual magic is available on ALL our plans, even the free one! So you can engage audiences worldwide without any extra costs.

Interested in setting it up? Just check out our quick user guide or video tutorial. With multi-lingual forms, the world is truly your audience!

Reuse the submission content on PDF

If your PDF needs to be signed on every page, our previous method was to create a master form and then add the linked PDF. The master form field can be repeated anywhere on any page so you can put the signature in the right place. Your customers only need to sign once on the master form, and the PDF will automatically fill in all the signatures. Now, this feature comes to our web PDF form. Open the Field Properties dialogue box and click on the “Reuse Content on PDF” link. This field will add a copy to the PDF and drag it to the desired location. Again, you can place this “reuse field” on any page and anywhere in the PDF. Not only signatures, but you can also reuse any type of field, such as text box or checkbox. The implementation of our PDF fillable form is different. You need to add logic to copy the value of the field to another field. Read our documentation for more details.

Set the initial value on the text field

In previous versions, you could set default values ​​in a checkbox or drop-down list. You can now also set the initial value in the text field. It can not only set a fixed value, but also set the current date or time, and even get the initial value from the URL. For example, if you append parameters to the form URL ?foo=bar, when you set foo to the URL value, when the form is initially displayed, the text box will get the value of foo from the URL, which is bar, displayed on this text field.

Make your online forms smarter with conditional logic

Tired of your forms asking irrelevant questions? Make them smarter with conditional logic! This feature lets you set up rules so the form adapts based on how people answer. With conditional logic, you can:

• Show, hide, enable, or disable questions
• Set values for questions
• Copy values from one question to another
• Perform calculations and populate answers
• Navigate to specific pages within your form and much more!

For example, if someone selects “No kids”, questions about children can be skipped. Or if they enter their age as under 18, different fields appear. The form molds itself perfectly to each person.

You can get creative with the logic - pre-fill answers, do calculations, whatever you need. Your respondents just breeze through the relevant sections hassle-free. Awesome adaptive online forms!

Upgrade your forms and checkout the full conditional logic details here.

Flexible e-mail notifications

In the previous version, PlatoForms sends e-mails to the e-mail account you use for login in, so all your team members will know when your form got submitted. Now you can add up to 10 different e-mail addresses in the form of notification recipients. Furthermore, you can select the fields in your form, if they have a valid e-mail input, so the email can be sent at the address you mention. Here is a good example of how you can use this feature: if you want your customers to receive the PDF immediately after they completed the form. You can add an e-mail field in the form and ask them to fill in their e-mail address. All e-mails will have the completed PDF as an attached file, so the recipient of such an e-mail doesn’t need to log into PlatoForms to download the PDF manually.

Automate your online forms with Zapier integration

We’ve got some exciting news to share. You know how Zapier lets you connect different apps and automate workflows? Well, now you can integrate your PlatoForms online forms with Zapier too!

This means the power of PlatoForms can extend to over 5,000 apps and services like Gmail, Trello, Salesforce, social media, cloud storage, calendars, and more. It’s like having a super-powered sidekick for your forms!

How it works

Here’s how it works: whenever you receive a new form submission, PlatoForms will generate the submission as a PDF and trigger a “Zap” (that’s Zapier’s term for an automated workflow) that you’ve set up. From there, the possibilities are endless!

Example zaps

Need to notify your team on Slack? Done. Want to import data into a Google Sheet? Easy peasy. How about uploading that PDF to your CRM? You got it!

Get creative

Don’t be shy, use your imagination and create custom Zaps to automate your work in whatever way makes sense for you. We’ve put together a handy guide to walk you through setting up Zaps for uploading to Google Sheets or Amazon S3. And the best part? You can start using all of this for free!

Oh, and one more thing – we’ve updated our API to version 4 with full Swagger compatibility. Check it out if you’re a developer!

Folders for organized management

We’ve made your experience on PlatoForms even better with a more organized approach. We’re excited to introduce our new feature: Folders.

Now, on the Dashboard, you’ll find three tabs: Online Forms, Master Forms, and PDF Files. You can create folders under each of these tabs, allowing you to neatly categorize your content.

You can also keep things tidy by moving forms or files between folders.

We’ve also added sorting options for your convenience. You can sort your forms and files by name, creation date, or update date.

This update is all about making your workspace more organized and user-friendly. Try out the new Folders feature, and for more details, check our documentation.

Update your PDF attributes with more ease

In the previous version, in your PDF form builder or PDF file builder, if you wanted to change the font size, style, or colour to all your PDF widgets, you had to modify them one by one. Now, all of the builders feature a Style button on their top navigation bar. By clicking on it, you can change the font attributes to the desired widgets at once, within one PDF attribute panel. It features an advanced option as well, allowing you to decide if these changes also apply to the existing widgets or not.

Save form submissions directly to your cloud drive

Premium plans or trial users exclusive

Tired of dealing with form data scattered across different places? We’ve got a convenient solution - automatically saving form submissions to your preferred cloud storage! With our latest integration, you can now connect PlatoForms to the most popular cloud drives:

• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• Box
• OneDrive

Here’s how it works: When someone submits a form, instead of just getting a PDF attached to an email, the submission can be instantly uploaded as a PDF file to the cloud drive folder of your choice.

This integration works with both new and existing forms. So you can start using it right away to streamline your data collection process. For more details, see our step-by-step guide.

Having submissions automagically waiting for you in the cloud saves so much time and headache. Give it a try and experience the convenience! Let us know if you have any other questions.

Create the PDF by API request

we are pleased to announce is the launch of our new API version 3. The most important features of this version are:

• You can use API to submit your form;
• Retrieve the definition of all fields belonging to your forms;
• Non-Expiry Token and Session Authentication are supported, plus OAuth2 authentication in version 2.

Why is the new API better? It boosts the potential of PlatoForms when merged with your in-house system, improving your work process. Let us take one scenario, in which your organization has data that needs to be printed on various pre-designed PDF files. With the help of PlatoForms, you simply upload the PDF files and use the drag-and-drop form builder to create the web form. Then, API comes into the scene, allowing you to post the data and generate the PDF files based on the fields mapping between the form and PDF. This way, you save not just time but also a lot of resources, which may be needed in the case of developing and maintaining a system that allows you to render data into PDF files. Also, don’t hesitate to use Webhook as well, a feature that gives you the chance to download a PDF file on the spot, as soon as it generation is completed.

The former API version, the API v2, will be withdrawn from use starting with the 1st of January 2019, due to the fact that it is outdated and depreciated. For more information about our latest API version, we kindly invite you to check our API documentation.

Form builder Enhancement

Our form builder was enhanced so that it can answer to your requirements in a more professional and specific manner.

• Copy and Paste
• Undo and Redo
• Alignment guidance
• Snap between widgets

Allow us to get into more details and present our new PlatoForms features, so you will have a clearer view of what you will enjoy if you choose our services:

• Now, all form widgets can simply be copied and pasted (Windows: CTRL-C, CTRL-V; MacOS: CMD-C, CMD-V), just as simple as that. This is a feature that can be used across any page within the same PDF. In other words, feel free to copy a widget from one PDF page and add it to another PDF page.
• Don’t you enjoy how the form looks after the changes you made? Then do find out that Undo and Redo can be applied for adding, deleting, resizing or moving any widget(Windows: CTRL-Z, CTRL-Y; MacOS: CMD-Z, CMD-SHIFT-Z). You can do this kind of operations on each page separately, so you don’t have to undo the entire form if you realize that one of its pages doesn’t respect your requirements;
• We introduced the alignment guidance feature, which allows you to quickly align the widgets. While dragging or resizing a widget, the alignment lines will indicate if it is aligned with other widgets next to the borders or middle area in a visible manner.
• If you drag and drop a widget in the proximity of another, it will automatically snap in a place that is in the proximity of the closest widget. If you want to disable this feature, just press and hold the SHIFT key when dragging widgets.
• In PDF, you can use keyboard arrow key to move the widget by pixel ad pixel.

It doesn’t matter what form builder you choose to use, as these features are present in all our builders, for example, the Web form builder, PDF form builder, Master from builder and PDF maker. So, have fun at making your own tailored form!

Master Forms: one form to rule them all

Ever had to fill out the same basic info across a bunch of different forms? So tedious, right? Well, say goodbye to that hassle with PlatoForms’ Master Forms!

Here’s how it works in a nutshell:

You build one Master Form with all the common fields like name, address, etc. Then you simply link and map that form to all the different PDFs you need.

Once your client/customer submits that single master form, PlatoForms automagically generates completed versions of every linked PDF using their data. Bam! No more repetitive re-entering.

For example, a lawyer could link 5 different PDFs to one master form. The client fills that out once with their personal details. And in seconds, they’ve got all 5 PDFs ready to go, pre-filled!

It’s like getting 5 forms for the effort of 1. Or 10. Or 20! You can link as many PDFs as needed to that master form.

Best part? You can view, download and manage all those generated PDFs right from your Submissions page. Revisions are tracked too.

Talk about a time-saving superpower! One smooth process replaces massive redundancy. Master Forms are definitely the smart way to work smarter. For more details, navigate to our user guide - Master Form.

Letter Spacing

When it comes to PDF files, some text fields are designed for writing letter by letter in connected text cells; one cell being made to suit one letter or one number. For example, a driver license number or passport number etc. Before this feature was created, in order to come up with a tidy PDF containing such text format, you had to create much smaller text inputs and the user could only input the characters one by one, jumping from one cell to another. Now you can simply adjust the space between the letters, spreading them into those text cells in a neat and even manner, after typing them all at once.

Use A Custom Domain Name For Your Forms

We pleased to announce a new feature: you can share forms using your domain name URL! This feature is also called Custom Domain or Domain Name Masking. For example, the URL of your form was https://form.platoforms.com/frcaserswr. After set up, your form URL will be https://sales.yourdomainhere.com/form/frcaserswr. With this feature, you can easily hide platoforms.com from your customers.

To utilise this feature, you must own a domain name and have permission to change its DNS records (i.e. adding CNAME records for your subdomain name).

After you update the CNAME in your DNS registrar, our system will automatically install an SSL certificate to protect your form with HTTPS. Thanks to Let’s Encrypt, this certification is 100% free and we automatically handle everything for you, from installation to renewal.

For more details on how to set up, please check out our help documentation: CUSTOM DOMAIN.

A New Way To Present Your PDF Form Online

Our current service converts your regular PDF into a web PDF form. This allows your clients to fill out a PDF without any hassle, as it becomes just a typical online form. However, building the form may be a challenge that will test your patience, especially if your PDF is complex. Today, we are pleased to announce a new way to create your PDF form online. In this new mode, you simply drag and drop the input elements into your PDF to make it fillable. Even if your PDF already has a fillable form, this process will take just a snap as our system automatically does this for you. After the PDF form has been built, you can also publish it as a web page, then either embed it in your website or share its URL. Your clients can then open the web page and fill and submit the form. It is as simple as it sounds.

Here is the comparison of these two form creation methods: TRY THEM NOW.

Web PDF Form

We transform your PDF form into a web form that is easy for everyone to fill out. Our web forms are compatible with all web browsers and they provide great mobile experiences and fast page loading. It will take more effort to build this form (as opposed to an online PDF) because you have to cover the web form and PDF mapping.

Online PDF Form

This is easy to build, keeps all the details from your original PDF, and is suitable for any complex PDF form. This form is only compatible with the latest web browsers – like Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Edge – not IE. The page loading speed could be slightly slower if your PDF has many images.

One More Thing

We also have a great feature that was just released last month. If you don’t have a PDF just yet, you can always build one from scratch. We support most elements, regardless of their field type – text input, checkboxes, signatures, etc. Once you have completed the design of your PDF, you can convert it with one single click to our web PDF form^ or online PDF form. That’s all you need to do to allow your customers to complete it online!

^ You still need to map the PDF label to the web form label.

For more details, please check out our help documentation: ONLINE PDF FORM BUILDER.

Create PDFs From Scratch

I am pleased to announce PlatoForms can now make a fillable PDF document from scratch. The PDF Maker is a drag-and-drop editor to create a PDF from scratch. It supports various form field types – e.g., input box, choice, dropdown, signature, etc. All of these fields can have customised properties, for example: font, size, colour, border, background, etc.

The created PDF form will be read-only at this stage. To make it fillable, you can press the Make Online Form button on the editor function bar. PlatoForms will then convert this PDF to an online form. All PDF fields are mapped to relative online form fields. When your created PDF is converted to an online form, you need to bind the label, help text, or placeholder for the input fields. We try to make this as easy as possible, so all these inputs have auto-completed context text, which is extracted from your PDF.

You can create unlimited PDF documents and this feature is totally FREE!

For more details, please check out our help documentation: PDF MAKER.

Export Form Submissions

When your customer submits a form, our system will send you an email with the form generated PDF to your inbox. From our Submissions page, you can review the submission data and download or re-generate the PDF etc. You can also export the data.
Click the Export Submissions button and select a date range to set the scope of submissions to download. Before exporting, our system cleverly tells you how many submissions are within your selected period. Click the Export button and a zip file will start to download within a few seconds. The package includes one or more CSV format files – if this form has multiple revisions, like if you have published this form multiple times, the zip file will include a different CSV for each revision of the form.

You can open the CSV file with any plain text editor, MS Excel, or MacOS Numbers. All submissions of raw data are included, even the generated PDF URL. It is an easy alternative to our API if you want to import data into your system.

For more details, please check out our help documentation: EXPORT FORM SUBMISSIONS.

Web form designer

We pleased to announce that our form designer feature is released today! With our form designer, you can easily change form colour, font, size, layout, etc. It also supports embedded CSS to give you the super power to totally customise your form’s look and feel.

To access our form designer, in the form builder page press the Preview Form button on the top navigation bar. In the new window, click the Form Design button on the top right. The form designer is presented as a sidebar on the left-hand side. It is extremely easy to use. All changes are immediately reflected on the form in the preview section. Once you are satisfied with the new UI, Apply the design to save it. Note that this won’t impact the sharing form if it was published before. The new look is only exposed to the public when you publish the form again. This means you won’t impact your customers with an intermediary work, and you can save your design work frequently.

The form designer has two tabs. The first is Design, which is enough for most customisation requirements. If you want to have maximum control over your form, you can paste the CSS content in the second tab. All CSS in this tab has higher priority than defaults, meaning it will overwrite the existing styles.

For more details, please check out our help documentation: FORM DESIGNER.

Checkbox Vs. Radio Button

In a PDF, you usually need a tick or cross to mark selections. Choice is the proper widget to fit in. There are two kinds of Choice: one is Checkbox, which allows multiple selections, and the other is Radio Button, which allows only one selection. From its properties dialogue, you can turn on/off the Multiple Choices option to switch between easily.

Press Add Choice to add more items. Each item has a draggable square widget in the right-hand side PDF panel, just drag it to the proper location in your PDF. In the web form, each Choice item has a different label to tell what this option is for. Once it is selected in the web form, a tick or cross is rendered into your PDF at the location you dragged.

With the Other Choice option you can add a text box in the web form, which is rendered as text in your PDF.

For more details, please check out our help documentation: CHOICE PROPERTIES.

Clone a form

Save time on form creation! The “Clone” function duplicates existing forms effortlessly, allowing you to make minor changes like adding or removing fields or adjusting the layout without starting from scratch.

Once cloned, your new form inherits all fields, logic, and settings from the original. Need to add a new Text Input field? Simply insert it in the form builder, drag it to the right spot in the PDF, and effortlessly publish the updated version. Form editing made easy!

For more details, please check our user documentation here.

Preview with sample data

We’re excited to introduce a time-saving feature in our Form Builder! Now you can effortlessly streamline your preview process by prefilling specific fields with sample data.

For example, when building a form, inputting “John Joe” into the “Text Input” field for the name allows you to automatically fill that field with just one click of the Fill Preview Data button during the form preview. This not only enhances efficiency but also facilitates the swift preview of generated PDFs after form submissions.

Your pre-set sample data seamlessly integrates into the PDF preview when you click Preview PDF, providing a comprehensive snapshot of the submitted information.

Please note that certain fields, such as File Upload or ReCaptcha, require manual completion and cannot be pre-filled.

For more detailed instructions and insights, refer to our user documentation here. Upgrade your form-building experience today!

Introduce API Version 1

Embark on a seamless data journey with our inaugural API release!

🌐✨ Highlights:

• Seamless Access: Effortlessly retrieve form and submission information programmatically.

• Real-time Notifications: Empower your workflow with Webhooks, delivering instant alerts for new form submissions.

• Security with OAuth2: Safeguard your data with OAuth2 protocol; obtain a unique Client ID and Client Secret through our intuitive dashboard.

• Webhook Configuration: Tailor Webhooks to your needs by setting up event monitoring for submissions and receive PDF links in real-time.

• Comprehensive Documentation: Explore technical details and examples in our API documentation for a smooth integration experience.

• Accessible Across Plans: Enjoy API and Webhook functionality across all plans, with different usage volume limitations.

• Free for Trial Users: Trial users can harness the power of API and Webhooks at no additional cost.

For more details about OAuth2 protocol, check DigitalOcean’s article here.