We’re excited to introduce 2 new features for your favorite WordPress form builder!
We love launching new Ninja Forms features that make your WordPress form building experience easier. We’ve not been doing that enough this year. We know. It’s been all the way back to April that I was last able to post about new feature releases, and that hurts.
This has turned into a year of largely behind-the-scenes work to improve Ninja Forms. Most of that work hasn’t resulted in a whole lot of visible changes for you. It has set the stage for us to be able to build and design a lot of things that you’ve been asking for, though. And to do it right.
There will be a lot more feature releases coming over the next year, so stay tuned! Here’s what we’ve put together for you recently:
- You can now make select lists with images with the new Select Image field
- PDF Form Submissions has been rebuilt from the ground up
These are two very commonly requested features. They’re obviously not everything you’ve been asking for, but we’re super excited to get down to addressing more of this type of thing very soon. Your feedback on the last feature update article was really nice to have, and were part of the reason these 2 features were selected to complete before the holidays. We’re listening, here and in support. Don’t forget to make your request in the comments before you go!
You can now easily add images to a list field!
There’s now a dedicated field, Select Image, that can be used to display images as list options. This field behaves exactly like the other list fields, but with images. When a user clicks an image, that option is selected and will be recorded in submissions.
Here’s what this looks like on Twenty Nineteen:
And from the form builder:
Features:
- Add images as list options from Media Library
- Label will pre-populate with name of image, which can be changed. Or hidden completely.
- Images can be assigned values for use in calculations
- Allowing multiple selections from the same list can be toggled on/off
- Supports vertical or horizontal display of images
PDF Form Submissions has been completely rewritten with a new library & many new customization options
PDF Form Submissions was not aging well. The PDF library, or underlying framework, that we built it on was old and no longer supported. That resulted in some really bizarre bugs and a poor user experience. We decided to restart this one from the ground up. We’re really happy with the way this turned out, and hope you will be too!
Basic functionality is the same. You can export any form submission as a PDF, and send a PDF copy of any form submission with an email action from the form. The old bugs like sometimes inserting hundreds of blank pages are gone. Best of all, there’s now loads of customization options as standard features, no code required!
Features:
You’ll now find a PDF Form Submission option in the builder under the Advanced tab with the following customization options:
- Document Title
- Header Settings: These can be defined by you, or populated from fields on the form
- Header Position
- Company Name
- Company Logo (supports image from Media Library)
- Address
- Suite/PO Box
- City/State/Province
- Phone
- Date
- Footer Settings
- Footer Position
- Pagination on/off
- Additional Info (rich text editor supports disclaimers, etc)
If you’re using customized templates from the old library, don’t worry. Just read this.
When you update, the new version of PDF Form Submissions will scan for the presence of customized templates in the old version. If found, you’ll be displayed an admin notice prompting you to download a helper plugin. Install the helper plugin, and you’ll be able to continue using your old templates on the new version. That gives you time to set up the new ones like you want.
We won’t be able to support old custom templates- the PDF library they’re based on isn’t even supported by its devs anymore. But, you won’t have the rug pulled out from under your working templates this way. You can continue receiving updates and address your templates at your leisure 🙂
What do you want to see next for Ninja Forms?
Like I said at the top, your feedback is invaluable to us in weighing what to work on next. For example, we knew PDF Form Submissions was long overdue some love, but there were a number of things we wanted to work on for this final quarter. I knew this was something we were getting lots of requests for in support. Getting so many of you chiming in with this in our last features post cemented it as something I was going to pull for.
I know we weren’t able to hit each request. I know there’s more to be done. So, what would you like to see next?
Comments are below! What new features can we turn to next that will make your WordPress form building experience better?
Adrian Morrin says:
Absolutely need for form fields to be saved AFTER submission, this is key for forms used for generating quotations, or anything finance related such as mortgages. So they can go back, change their term/cover amount and get a new quote. Incredibly frustrating not having this as a feature.
Also the use of buttons instead of radio fields. For simple Yes / No questions. I mean, what modern website uses radio fields anymore?
Ed Ammendola says:
I have to agree with this 1000%. I have spent countless hours trying to “trick” Ninja Forms into saving certain submitted data from pre-populated selection lists and I am at my wits end. I just need the data logged to be able to go back and verify certain submissions. I know Ninja Forms “sees” the data, because it shows up in the selection list. Part of it is an email address and it is using the address (successfully) in an email action. However, not being able to store a field on the form is absolutely unbelievable to me. I have several forms that I’ve built and the only reliable logs I have are saved admin emails. Good luck creating a data extract from saved emails. #^&@%%#@&#@^*(&*(_!!!
walker mcgraw says:
Leap of Faith…
I went ahead and purchased PDF form Submission plug-in with the hopes that you would address a needed feature.
I understand that what I am asking for may be a “Customization” or template feature, but so many applications allow documents to be “saved as pdf” that I find it difficult to believe that implementing this can not be done without too much fuss.
What I need is the ability to create a document, as one does when creating an email, and have that document sent out as an attachment on an email. I believe that this format would be more generally appealing than just a flat tabular data dump.
In other words:
1) Add an Action “Create PDF Document” (or Adapt Email Action)
2) Identical to the Email Action, but add content input box for PDF document creation (same rich text editor as used for email creation)
3) PDF document is created and attached to email to be sent out
4) Inclusion of form data table, title, header, footer, etc… should be optional
5) IMPORTANT: Users should be able to define the name of the PDF created
Benefits: Delivery of professional looking OUTPUT that is consistently rendered regardless of platform
Bonus: add security features like no screen shots and PDFs could be used to deliver unique coupon codes etc…
2xBonus: Perfect way to deliver daily, weekly, hourly “Submission Reports” (see next suggestion)
Quay Morgan says:
Thanks for sharing in so much detail, Walker. When we talked through what the PDF redesign was going to look like, having a customizable body section via a rich text editor that you can place merge tags into was on the table. It presented development challenges that would have increased the development time spent on this beyond what we were able to spend this last dev cycle. So that we could deliver on the library and customization changes that are included in this version, we decided to table the customizable body options for later. The fact that this is one of the first things brought up here is pretty telling that we wan to revisit that feature sooner rather than later 🙂
Noting that we need to let you easily name the PDF file that’s generated, too.
Cheers,
Quay
walker mcgraw says:
Thx for the response… Just My 2¢
Sounds like you’ve got a great foundation set for future PDF functionality.
W
walker mcgraw says:
This is a two-fer Reporting and Scheduling
I feel like I am missing something obvious when dealing with submitted data.
Is there a way to have Ninja Forms do a talley calculation for submitted data?
I bring this up because it would be extremely helpful if NF could have an action for a form that would calculate totals for a field (i.e. GOLF? yes: 21, no: 55, noAnsw: 123; Awards Dinner [list items] fish: 144, chicken: 288, special: 15)
It would be even more powerful if you could apply logic step
• Talley sales and report by field (i.e. Student ID)
example
{field: student_001} calc: total1 calc: total2 calc: total3
{field: student_002} calc: total1 calc: total2 calc: total3
{field: student_003} calc: total1 calc: total2 calc: total3
{field: student_xyz} calc: total1 calc: total2 calc: total3
————————————————————–
calc:grand1 calc:grand2 calc:grand3
Results reported in email or PDF
Scheduling: I mentioned this feature previously as useful for sending out Drip Email (bye bye MailChump on the day this happen) but if you had reporting feature as above, then added scheduled correspondence then it would cut out a huge time killer.
Create PDF report, and have it emailed to designated recipient on defined schedule….
Quay Morgan says:
Reporting: This is something near the top of our list for this year. We’d love to make this happen. Having a a way top process/tally cumulative responses across multiple submissions of the same form opens up a lot of territory that you’re not able to use Ninja Forms well for right now, like limited tickets/seating where multiple can be purchased/registered for/etc in a form. I can’t make any promises, but I have high hopes this is something we will deliver on in the not so distant future.
Scheduling: This has been discussed before, and keeps popping up intermittently as a request. I can see how it would be very useful. I’ll bring this back up with our dev team and try to get an idea of where we can work that in.
Cheers,
Quay
walker mcgraw says:
Again, Thx
Got spoiled when I was doing event management and we used a company called SignUp 4 (now Cvent) for all our badging, registration etc…
Their reporting features and client sided dashboards really made us look professional and were huge timesavers.
BTW— They also had a feature that would serve your user very well
••• it was the ability to upload unique flat data files that could be then mapped to a variable (aka merge tag that lets you deliver coupon code, barcode, Photo/image, etc…)
OMG— Stop me, but while you are thinking about reporting, what about the side-angle on this
••• Retrieval of submitted data from form A and map it to merge tag on form B, D… maybe this is already part of multi-part forms (which I have never used???)
SRY— I really like the “Select Image” feature and here are some suggested features
♦ Ability to put “item label” below the image (when on top words wrap depending
on screen size and it makes images staggered)
♦ maybe it is just me, but the master LABEL will not center with “text-align: center;” in css box
♦ ADD a quantity input (i.e. press image and up pops “How many” selector) Reduces calc steps by half
and how about this press twice for 2 units, thrice for 3 and so on
♦ ADD limiter for image item (i.e. available quantity restriction “GrumpyCat [1 of 144], SmudgeCat [2 of 288])
♦ ADD ability to hide item when Zero or Gray out, Option to display a counter
♦ Remove huge image margins .hentry ul, .hentry ol {padding: 0; margin: 0 0 1em 30px;}
♦ Function: when have only one image and you select it, the only way to allow unselecting it is to turn on “Select Multiple Images”
I must be bucking for my NF Union Card
W
walker mcgraw says:
One More…
This is totally selfish on my part, but I have started using Stripe Invoicing quite a bit.
Instant pmt with NF-Stripe add on is great, but having the ability to send invoice opens up B-2-B options.
So my suggestion is to ADD action Stripe Pmt by Invoice
I understand it is not possible right now, but if Stripe add-on is ever overhauled being able to use separate Stripe keys on different forms would be helpful.
W
Eric B says:
WOW! Love the details in this update and the work you all put into this application and provided plugins. Keep up the great work!
Michelle Sidwell says:
We could really use a time stamp field so that we can log the time users start and end a process on our website. I found three year old post on a random site, asking if you would add this feature. Many others posters agreed that they too need this feature. Hoping you add it soon!
Quay Morgan says:
This is definitely on our radar. Thanks for adding your voice to the mix, this is why it’s on our radar 🙂