Volunteer Form Set Up

How to set up your Premium Volunteer Form

Your Premium Digital PTO website comes with a number of forms (this varies whether you have selected Premium or Premium Plus). This tutorial will walk you through the quick steps to set up your Volunteer form. The form is already built and installed for you, but you will need to determine where the email notifications are sent as well as which volunteer categories you wish to offer.

Important Info: When your forms are installed, you need to be sure to verify where the email notifications are sent. This is very important. This tutorial will explain that process. Please follow the steps below to ensure your forms are set up correctly.

Customize Your Options and Settings

Our Premium Volunteer forms are pre-built for you, but you are welcome to customize your form in any way you see fit. We have added a number of default volunteer categories for you, so you will need to review these categories and adjust them according to your school’s needs.

Please feel free to add fields, move things around and change your forms. You can also adjust the email notifications and messages that are sent after forms are submitted.

The tutorial below will cover some of the basics you can adjust. Please see our additional form tutorials to learn some more specific settings.

Step 1: Click on FORMS in the Forms Menu

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To open up the list of forms available on your website, click the FORMS link under the FORMS Menu.

Step 2: Click the Title of the Volunteer Interest Form

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Click on the title of the VOLUNTEER INTEREST form. When you hover over the title, you can also click EDIT if you prefer. This will open up the form editor.

Step 3: Review Contact Info Section

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By default, our Volunteer Interest Forms request the following contact information: Name, Email, Home Phone, Cell Phone. If you wish to delete any of these fields (probably phone or cell phone) hover over the field and then click the DELETE button for that particular field. If you are happy with the default fields, proceed to the next step.

Step 4: Open Volunteer Opportunities List

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We provide about 20 default options for volunteering in order to save you some time. By default, you will only see the first 5 of these options. Click on your volunteer opportunities to see the full list of options available.

Step 5: Edit the Volunteer Opportunities

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Once you have clicked to open the full list of volunteer opportunities you will see a scrolling list with all of the default options. You are welcome to modify this list to your schools’ specific needs. You can change the names of the options by typing directly over an option you wish to change. You can also delete entire options by clicking on the (-) negative symbol next to any option. If you want to add another option field, click the (+) plus sign.
IMPORTANT: If you have data that has been submitted already to your form and you delete an option, that data is deleted as well. Please use caution when deleting fields on forms that have already been used as you may delete information that has been submitted. If you are brand new, this is not an issue, this only applies to sites that have collected Volunteer Information and are now editing the fields. 

Step 6: Update your Form

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When you are finished making adjustments and edits to your form, scroll to the bottom of the form and click UPDATE FORM. This will save your changes.

Step 7: Setting up your email notifications

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After you have saved your form options, hover over the FORM SETTINGS link at the top of your form and select NOTIFICATIONS to set up the email address you want your submitted forms sent to. By default, confirmations will be sent to the administrator, so be sure to change this if you want them sent somewhere else.

Step 8: Click EDIT under Admin Notifications

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Once the Notifications section comes up you will see either nothing set up yet, an Admin Notification or Both an Admin and User Notification. If you have nothing, click ADD NEW and create an Admin Notification. If you have an Admin Notification set up, click the EDIT link when you hover over the title.

Step 9: Specify SEND TO Email address

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There are three different options available for email addresses for the Admin Notifications. The SEND TO EMAIL is where you will receive the notifications. The FROM EMAIL is who the email is sent from. And the REPLY TO is where a reply will be sent if you hit the REPLY button in your email program. The SEND TO EMAIL should be set to the email address that should receive the emails that a form was submitted on your site. This can be your Parent Groups email address or something different. You can also enter {admin_email} and it will send the email to the Admin Account you have set up with your website. This is the default, but we suggest using a different email address if you have one.

Step 10: Select FROM EMAIL

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IMPORTANT: The FROM EMAIL is the address that the email is sent from when you receive it. You MUST change this email address to “[email protected]” or there is a very good chance that your emails will not be delivered as the major email providers have started to match the sending server and the email address together and won’t accept mis-matches in most cases. You can still change where the reply is sent (see below), but it’s very important that the FROM address is [email protected]

The REPLY TO field is below the FROM email and this is where you can enter your groups email address so that if a user replies to the email, it will go directly to your groups email address.

Step 11: Review your Message

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By Default, the notification email will include all the fields that were submitted. If you would like to change that, you can do so in the MESSAGE field. Remember, this is the message that is sent to the Admin, not to the Visitor who filled out the form.

Step 12: Click UPDATE NOTIFICATION

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When you have finished making any additional changes to your Admin Notifications, be sure to click UPDATE NOTIFICATION to save your changes. Once the page reloads, you can click on NOTIFICATIONS again if you wish to review additional notifications.

Step 13: Edit / Create User Notification

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When you return to the Notifications screen, you may also wish to Edit or Create User Notifications. This is the email that a user will receive after they submit your form. If you do not have a User Notification yet, click ADD NEW and create one, if you do have one, click the EDIT link that appears when you hover over the USER NOTIFICATION title.

Step 14: Select SEND TO Address

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More than likely, you will want to send the confirmation to the user that filled out the form. To do that, you will select SELECT A FIELD from the SEND TO Options and the in the SEND TO FIELD, select the email address field on your form. On the Volunteer form, if you haven’t edited it, it will be called Email. Select that field.

Step 15: Specify Name and From Email

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The next step is to set up who you want the email sent from. This will be your Parent Group in most cases. SO, we would suggest entering your Parent Groups Name under the FROM NAME settings, and make the FROM EMAIL [email protected] You can also select the REPLY TO email to send replies where you want them sent.

Step 16: Verify Subject Line and Message

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The final step in the User Notifications is to update the SUBJECT line and the Message that is sent out if you would like to. You can insert dynamic fields (data the user submitted) if you would like as well. To do this, select the drop down arrow to the right of the fields and select a field (such as First Name, or Family Last Name) and it will insert it for you. Modify the email confirmation to your hearts content.

Step 17: Click UPDATE NOTIFICATION

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When you have finished making any additional changes to your User Notifications, be sure to click UPDATE NOTIFICATION to save your changes. Once the page reloads, you can click on NOTIFICATIONS again if you wish to review additional notifications.

Step 18: Click on CONFIRMATIONS

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If you would like to edit the message that the user sees on their screen after they submit a form, click on the CONFIRMATIONS tab on the Left Side of the screen. This will take you to a list of Confirmations. Hover over the title of the Default Confirmation to edit it, or click ADD NEW to create a new one.

Step 19: Select TEXT, PAGE or REDIRECT

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You have three choices for your confirmation screen. This is the screen a user sees after they submit your form. You can display text (the most common), you can send them to a custom page on your website, or you can re-direct them to a page that is not on your website. Typically, we suggest showing Text and will use that as the example. Go ahead and select TEXT for this tutorial.

Step 20: Enter Confirmation Message and Update

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You can type your confirmation in the MESSAGE box. Type whatever makes sense for your group and this particular form. You can add dynamic variables (like First Name) by clicking on the downward arrow to the Right. When you are finished UPDATE or SAVE the content and you are finished! Congrats! You’ve set up your form Completely.

There are additional variables and fields available to you and you are welcome to explore the additional options. This tutorial does not cover them all, but covers the most important steps in setting up your forms. Want to learn more? Click to learn about On Screen Confirmations , User Email Notifications and Admin Email Notifications.