Ninja Forms 3.1 marks the first major version change to our 3.0 codebase since it launched back in fall of last year. Since then we’ve been gradually improving with incremental changes as we went, but the time has come for more. With your help, we’ve identified a few items that needed a higher level of personal attention and set about to improve them. Namely: merge tags and calculations.
Your feedback on these systems (and all others!) has been incredibly informative and helpful! We appreciate every word of encouragement and criticism you’ve sent our way. Based on your feedback, we’ve made one big change: a complete overhaul of our merge tag system, and one little one to calculations. That’s not all though- we’re very happy to introduce the new Ninja Forms Dashboard as well! What’s that? Let’s look!
The Ninja Forms Dashboard
Gone is the All Fields options from under Forms in your WordPress dashboard! In its place is Dashboard, the new “home page” for all things forms in WordPress. From the Dashboard you can select a form to work on, begin a new one, or search your list of forms for the one you need using the new Dashboard search feature. You can also access Ninja Forms settings, our new Apps and Integrations feature, and our membership portal here.
This may not sound like much now, but it’s going to evolve quickly. We have big plans for the Ninja Forms Dashboard that we’re not quite ready to share, but we think you’ll love it. This is step one on that journey.
Upgraded Merge Tags
As of Ninja Forms 3.1, our merge tag system now has its own user interface to give you full control of the system’s potential from a single location. That location is a discrete modal window that opens only when you need it- interact with anything relevant to merge tags, and it’s there for you. Within this new modal merge tag UI is the ability to select merge tags by category, by search, or simply by browsing an organized list of available options.
The {field:all_fields} merge tag has been retired and is no longer selectable under the new UI. However, all of your forms that are currently using it will continue to function normally! It’s being phased out in favor of two new options:
- {all_fields_table} will display every form field irrespective of status, meaning this tag will show Hidden fields, empty fields, fields obscured by Conditional Logic, etc
- {fields_table} will display user visible fields only and will not display empty fields, meaning placing this in an email notification for example will only return fields the user has entered data into!
Smarter Calculations
This is a small change, but hopefully one that will make a big improvement to your workflow. 3.1 introduces a new setting by which you can easily set the displayed decimal value of the calculation. It defaults to the hundredths place, or .00, but is totally configurable. Behind the scenes we’ve also made a number of performance enhancing changes and bug changes that ought to make for a generally improved user experience.
What are your thoughts on Ninja Forms 3.1? We miss anything you were really hoping to see? Let us know! Your feedback here and in our support queue is incredibly valuable and helps shape the direction of Ninja Forms into the future!
SternCo says:
Still one of the best contact forms out there. Thanks!
Sequester McKinney says:
I was really hoping to see the addition of dynamic fields. I recently completed a ninja form for my church where I needed visitors or guests to add how many children they have, but that became a serious chore as I had to guess about how many children a guest or visitor might have and then let them select the number of children they have, then display that number of fields. Very tedious. Please help. Dynamic fields would be outstanding.
Quay Morgan says:
Hey! What you’re describing can be done with Conditional Logic. Check it out here: https://ninjaforms.com/extensions/conditional-logic/
Cheers,
Quay
Roland Pot says:
While I’m really happy with the way the builder works, there are a couple things I’d love to see changed:
– The”done” button should remain visible regardless of scrolling in the right-side pane (when editing a field, editing conditional logic etc).
– Having all conditions shown under Advanced > Conditional Logic is great, but I’d still like to have the logic options in the fields’ settings as well. Forms require far more planning now than if you could set conditions per field as you build the form.
– Lastly, it would be nice if the fields for conditions (Conditional Logic add-on) were a bit more condensed. I understand all the padding and margins for tablet/smartphones, but there’s quite a lot of ‘wasted space’ on desktop, requiring a lot of scrolling for complex forms.
SternCo says:
Other subscription plugins had problems when I set them up to automatically send new subscribers in an excel attachment – the problem being no email was sent and also the record was lost. Anyone had any experience with ninja forms on that?