Yes, this is another article about Google. We just can't help seeing library applications for their products! This week's discovery is the form builder inside Google Docs.
Almost everyone wants a form for their website, right? Suggestion boxes, book requests, meeting room reservations, and surveys all let you interact with your patrons online. There are lots of different services for building web forms (SurveyMonkey and FormAssembly are our standbys, though we're also hearing good things about Wufoo), so this is just another tool to try out.
Why it's worth trying: It's quick and easy and free to use, and the forms can be e-mailed to specific people or embedded in a website for anyone to use. You do need a Google Account to use Google Docs to build a form, but you don't need one to use the form to submit answers. When responses to the form start to come in, Google puts them into a spreadsheet in Google Docs for you.
What it's good for: Conducting simple surveys, collecting feedback.
When to use a different form service: A form in Google Docs is not a good option when you're planning to collect sensitive information, or you're creating a massive, complicated questionnaire, or you want to have more control over how the form looks.
Here's an example of a form that was created in Google Docs and embedded in a website:
If you try it: Let us know about your form building experiences! How did you use the form? What worked and what didn't?
Thanks again to Kerri for finding this and testing it out!
Yes--forms is a great way to collect input from various sources. It takes some time to interpret the results since you have to monkey with the spreadsheet (for instance, if you have respondents select from various statements, you get a spreadsheet with a column of those text strings), but it sure beats re-entering data. It's also helpful to organize and automate compilation of data for phone surveys. And I like how the form can be shared for review, then edited further.
Posted by: John DeBacher | September 22, 2008 at 09:06 AM