Red Hats Victoria

Google has a “forms” tool that lets you customise what specific information you need to be emailed to you, which you can use as an event booking/registration form that lets attendees easily fill out all the information you need, in a convenient way for you both.

This can be filled out by anyone who has the link – they do not need a google account, but you will need to.

If you do not have a google account and you’re a chapter then you could have an event coordinator who manages a chapter email account (so you can have yourchaptername@gmail.com) and use that for Chapter matters.

To make a Google Form.

In any other Google product page when you’re signed into your Google account, click on the square of dots to open the menu of Google products.

Scroll right down to the bottom where you’ll find the “forms” option.

Then once you’re in the Forms screen, click on the first option with the + symbol titled “Blank Form” to start a new form.

(Click the image for a larger view)

• “Untitled Form” – Change this to your Event Title.
• “Form description” – You can add your event information in here.
• “Untitled Question” – Change the title to what you need, and you can change the type of response using the little arrow.  By default this is a multiple choice, I would suggest changing it so that the first few questions you ask are the name/phone/email questions.
  • Use “Short Answer” for a spot the attendee can enter in things like their name, phone, email.
  • The default question is a “Multiple choice” select – this means they can click to select ONE option in a list you provide.
  • “Checkboxes” is a similar option to multiple choice, but it will allow the attendee to select more than one – useful for listing food intolerances or activities that they can select to book.
• More Questions – To add more questions to your form, click the + icon on the toolbar on the right.
• Change order – If you need to change the order of the questions, you can drag the question boxes using the 6 dots on the top of the box.
• Add an image  – To the top of the form, you can select the icon of the paint pallet, then go down to “header” and select a photo of your own, or choose one from the available options.
• “Settings” – You can leave these as is. make sure you leave the “Requires Sign in” as it is by default, as it will allow people to fill out the form without needing to sign in to Google (so it will work even if they don’t have a Google account).
• Preview – Check how your form looks and if the options you’ve chosen work as you need them to.
• “Publish” – Once you are done.  You can edit the form afterwards if you’ve forgotten something.  You’ll be asked for the sharing options (you can change this later with the little triangle)
  • Make sure that “Editor View” is restricted
  • Make sure that “Responder View” is “anyone with a link“

“Copy Responder Link” will get you a shareable link, but a better way to get the link is to click the link icon on the top menu – where you can select an option that will shorten the link to get rid of a lot of the random numbers/letters.

Copy the link and you can then use it in your event flyer – or use the Google Form itself as your event notice (if you’ve put all the info on the event in the description part.)

The responses will be emailed to you, but you can also check the on the form by clicking the “responses” link in the centre of the top options.