Webform settings

Webform settings include setting the confirmation message, adding emails or handlers to receive web form submissions, who has access to the webform, etc.

Getting there

1. From the administration bar, select Workbench, and then select My Dashboard.

2. Navigate to the Forms list.

3. Locate the form you want to configure and select the drop-down menu under the Operations column.

4. Select Settings.

Editing and saving settings

1. Select the desired sub-tab.

2. Make the desired changes.

3. Select Save.

When making changes, you must work one sub-tab at a time. Changes will be lost if you switch to another sub-tab without saving.

General sub-tab

The General sub-tab is where the form editor can change the title and description of a form, archive the form, prevent the form from keeping a record of submissions, and more.

Archiving the webform

Checking the “archive this webform” option makes the webform closed to new submissions, and not available to be added to new webform blocks. Use with caution - it also removes it from all listing pages, so it can only be viewed by form editors who have kept a record of the URL. In most cases, the form should be closed instead.

Disabling saving of submissions

Checking the “disable saving of submissions” option stops the system from storing the results. This can be used when there is no value in storing the results. Results can still be sent by email, and/or processed by a remote post or MailChimp handler.

Form sub-tab

The Form sub-tab is where the form editor can open/close forms, include a progress bar, and enable a preview of their form results before submitting.

Opening or closing a web form

See How-to open/close a web form for more details.

Editing progress bar settings

Under form wizard settings, several options are available:

• Show wizard progress bar: The progress bar is visible by default, but can be disabled by unchecking this option. When enabled, it appears at the top of each page in the form, except for the first page. Each page of the form corresponds to a bar and label on the progress bar. Any bar corresponding to a page before the current one will be filled in green.

Open

• Link to previous pages in progress bar: Previous pages will be linked in the progress bar.

• Show wizard progress pages: The current page and total remaining pages will be displayed.

• Show wizard progress percentage: The percentage of completed pages will be displayed.

• Link to previous pages in preview: Only available when 'Enable preview page' is enabled. The preview page will include 'Edit' buttons for each previous page.

• Update wizard progress bar's pages based on conditions: The wizard's progress bar's pages will be hidden or shown based on each page's conditional logic.

• Labels: The labels on the progress bar can also be customized or users can use their default settings.

Edit form preview settings

The settings under form preview settings determine if the preview page is disabled, optional, or required.

Submission sub-tab

The submission sub-tabs allows you to control a lot of things about submissions.

Setting submission messages

At the top of the “submission general settings” section, you can override or hide the messages that display at various stages/states of the form submission process.

Setting the next submission number

Towards the bottom of the “submission general settings” section, you can enter a number for the next submission, or disable the custom submission numbering (using internal submission ID numbers instead).

When a submission number is set, it will auto-increment as new submissions come in, so generally speaking you should not have to adjust this number. One potential reason you might customize this number is that you are building a new form that replaces an old form, and you want the numbering of the new form to start where the old one left off.

Preventing select fields from displaying when viewing a submission

At the bottom of the “submission general settings” section, you can determine which submission values are included when viewing a single submission.

Note that this does not affect the results table, which is controlled by the “customize” button on that tab, or what is shown in the [webform_submission:values] token used by email handlers, which should be replaced with individual field tokens for more granular control of the output.

Making submissions confidential

At the top of the “submission behaviors” section, there is a checkbox to enable confidential submissions. This is separate from the access control option for “users who are logged out” which accomplishes a similar goal but does not prevent recording the user’s IP address.

This will require the user to be logged out in order to fill in the form, and will not record the user’s IP address. It is still up to you to ensure that no fields on the form collect personal information.

When checked, this allows you to enter a custom message to override the default one.

If left unchecked, you can still provide some level of privacy by checking the “disable the tracking of user IP address” box.

Letting the user know they have previously submitted the form

In the “submission behaviors” section, there is a checkbox for “show the notification about previous submissions” which, when checked, lets users know that they have previously submitted the form. Be aware that this is difficult to guarantee for forms that do not require authentication, as there is no way to tell if they are submitting the form from a different device, or if the browser cookie that identifies them has been cleared.

Allowing identical submissions from the same user

By default, users cannot submit the same form with the same data more than once (subject to the limitations of identifying the user). There may be situations where you want to allow this, in which case you would check the “Allow users to duplicate their previous submissions” checkbox in the “submission user settings” section.

Setting submission limits

The “submission limit settings” section allows you to limit the number of submissions overall, and per user. You can have multiple types of limits enabled, and they will all act together. It is important to make sure these are configured correctly, as it is possible to set these in a way that may seem right, but in actuality prevents users from filling in the form at all.

The “total submissions limit” covers all instances of the form, If the form is embedded on multiple pages, all submissions, regardless of the source page, count towards this limit. If you set this to “5” and receive 5 submissions across all the instances, the form will not accept any more submissions.

The “total submissions limit per source entity” treats each instance of the form separately. If the form is embedded on multiple pages, each page can only submit the form this number of times. If you set this to “5” and receive 5 submissions on one instance, and no submissions on other instances, the instance of the form that received 5 submissions will not accept any more, but the other instances will.

The “per user submission limit” and the “per user submission limit per source entity” work similarly, but on a per user basis instead of total overall submissions. The per user settings also allow you to set an interval - using “ever” means that they can never submit the form again after reaching the limit, while choosing a time period means that they must wait at least that long after submitting the maximum number of submissions before they can submit again. It is also possible to override the default per user submission limit message.

It is important to remember that per user limits work best on authentication-required forms as the system has a positive record of the user having submitted previously. Anonymous submissions require a browser cookie to identify the user, which is easily defeated by clearing cookies or switching to another browser or device.

Removing submission limits

If you have previously set submission limits in the “submission limit settings” section and you wish to remove them, leave the associated number fields blank.

Changing the submission purge settings

By default, only draft submissions are ever purged, and this happens after 28 days. You can change this behaviour in the “submission purge settings” section, changing what is automatically purged or disabling purging altogether. Purge options are drafts only, completed submissions only, or both. You can also change the number of days between purging, which will apply to everything that has been selected for purging.

Allowing users to save and finish the form later

In the “submission draft settings” section, you can choose to allow users to save and finish the form later. This is disabled by default. If choosing the “authenticated and anonymous users” option, be aware that it is difficult to properly identify anonymous users, and someone using a shared computer could be able to see another user’s partial submission.

Configuring the form to autofill with a user’s previous submission

In the “submission autofill settings” section, you can choose to automatically fill the form with the user’s most recent submission, if there was one. This is not recommended for forms that allow anonymous submissions.

Confirmation sub-tab

The confirmation sub-tab allows you to set a confirmation message the user will see on their screen once the form has been submitted.

Creating a confirmation message

1. Select the Confirmation type.

2. Navigate to Confirmation settings. 

3. If applicable, enter a Confirmation title. 

4. Enter the Confirmation message.

5. Select Save.

   Open

   

Note: You can test the web form to see how the confirmation message displays for users once the form is submitted.

Emails/Handlers sub-tab

The emails/handlers sub-tab allows certain actions to be performed when the form is submitted, such as sending email notifications.

How to configure email options

See How to configure web form email options for more details.

Other options

Access sub-tab - authenticated web forms

The access tab allows you to set permissions to determine who has access to a form, with the exception of users with the form editor role, who will always have full access to the form regardless of the settings.

In most cases, you are only concerned with who can view and submit the form (“create submissions”). The other actions on this tab only allow you to add specific users in addition to those that would have access automatically.