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Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's SwiftFox Masterclass. Today we're looking at form templates, the ability to take a form you've already built and save it as a reusable starting point for every form that comes after it, including the RSVP pages you build for your events.

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Most organisations don't build one form. They use dozens and a surprising number of variations of the same form.

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An inquiry form, a join form, or an event RSVP. Each time somebody rebuilds the same contact block, sets the same matching fields, reapplies the same colours, fonts and logo, and hopes that nothing's been missed. It works, but it is slow. Two forms, built a month apart by two different people rarely end up looking or behaving the exact same way. So let's take a look at the form template as it is in SwiftFox, a template acts as a starting point when you build a new form.

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When you use one SwiftFox copies its structure, blocks and styling into a new form, and from there, the new form is yours to change. A template can't enforce consistency after the fact. It's a way to make the consistent thing the easiest thing to do at the moment of creation, because creating a form from a template effectively clones it.

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The two go their separate way from that moment. Changes you make to the template later don't propagate to the forms you've already built from it, which is worth knowing before you treat a template as a way to push changes across everything. Templates are made out of real forms. Rather than being authored separately. You can build a form, get it right, and then clone to a template.

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To do that, you can open the three dot menu at the end of a row in your forms list and choose Set as Template. It'll ask you for a template name and save from then on, the template appears in your list with its type shown as standard template, which is how you can tell the templates apart from working forms at a glance.

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Your original form is left exactly as it was, still live and still collecting submissions. The template is a completely separate record. It's worth separating this from clone, which sits directly above it in the exact same menu and does something different. Clone gives you a one off copy to work on. Set as template. Make something that's reusable appear in the create flow from then on. If you find yourself cloning the same form repeatedly, that's a signal that it should have been a template once.

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At least one template exists, the create flow changes when you create a new form. SwiftFox asks the form name as it always has, and beneath it you'll see an option “Start from a template” dropdown with all the templates available to you.

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You choose one, select Create Form and SwiftFox builds a new form on that basis. From there, it's an ordinary form. You rename fields, adjust blocks, change the actions, and publish. Because the template is optional. Nothing changes if you don't want one. Start from blank is still there, and for one off forms, it's often the right choice.

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For those organisations that use Circles. Templates belong to a circle where they were created in. The ones built in the circle we're working in appear at the top. Templates created elsewhere in your organisation appear below them. This is a considered design. It means a branch, a chapter, or a team can build templates that suit its own work without cluttering everyone else's create flow.

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Events RSVPs is where these templates are most helpful. When you create an event and you're setting up an RSVP page, selecting create RSVP page opens a dialog that will look familiar, but with the same addition of the same “Start from a template” dropdown. What's different is what's inside it. The template offered there are only RSVP page templates, only your standard form templates won't appear, and your RSVP templates won't appear when you create an ordinary form.

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This is because an RSVP page carries event specific behaviour that a general form has no use for, but it has practical consequences worth knowing. You can't build an RSVP template from your forms list. To create one you go into an event, build the RSVP page there and save that as a template or filter your forms list by Event RSVPs and save a previous one as a template.

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A template is only as good as what you put into it. Include the fields you ask for every time first name, last name, and email which SwiftFox uses for matching, plus any custom fields you always need and set your styling once. As a rule of thumb, if you're doing the same thing to a third form in a row, it belongs in a template.

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One pattern shows what RSVP templates can do beyond saving time. Many organisations run the same event in two places at once. A public RSVP page on the website that asks more, since it's meeting people who aren't yet in your database, and a member only version that lives in the portal that can ask for far less. Because RSVP templates are simply RSVP pages that you've saved, you can keep both and pick the right one when you build the event or add multiple.

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The same logic applies beyond events, a short template for campaign capture and a long one for member applications, for a branded one for public forms, and a planar one for internal use. Templates are cheap, so make one per generally different job rather than compromising on a single template that half fits everything.

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Form templates are a small feature with a compounding return. Every form built from a good template starts correct, looks right, and matches to the right person without anyone having to remember how. If you're starting out, don't try to design the perfect template upfront. Take the form your organisation already uses most, the one you'd point to as a good example, and save it as a template. That action will improve the next form you build and everyone after it.

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Thank you for joining us for this SwiftFox Masterclass, and we'll see you in the next one.