In April 2019, working with Victoria Forms, Basildon Council became the first Council in the UK to radically simplify the Council Tax Reduction application process.

By treating CTR as a discount rather than a means tested benefit, the Council has been able to hugely simplify CTR administration.

In the first 6 months of operating the new scheme, processing times have reduced from 26 days on average to under 2 days!

We are organising a number of webinars with Basildon Staff, to show other Councils how this project has been approached, and how staff have dealt with a range of challenges.

Webinars dates are as follows:

• Wednesday 23rd October at 2pm
• Friday 8th November at 11am

To book your place on the webinar, please email: VicFormsSales@VictoriaForms.co.uk

Thank you

The Victoria Forms Team

www.VictoriaForms.co.uk

Did you know that you can simplify your form and help users using VF Creator’s dynamic paging feature –  which hides pages that are irrelevant, based on answers to previous questions.

In this post we’re going to take a quick look at dynamic paging.  To use dynamic paging, create your form in Advanced mode.

Take a look at this simple demo form.

https://demoforms.victoriaforms.com/viewer?FormName=Sim%20Card%20Order%20Form%20for%20Blog.wdf&user=anon

Users are given an option to apply to join the “VF Sim Membership”.  If user select “Yes” here, page 2 (which is otherwise hidden) will be shown.

In VF Creator, this is done in Page Properties.

The Checkbox for the “Yes” option in the “Would you like to apply for the VF Sim Membership” question is D76. Click on the Page Properties and enable “Conditional Display” for page 2.  In the “Conditional Expression” cell, we’ve entered “D76 == true”.  This will force page 2 to only display if that checkbox is checked.

When the checkbox is unchecked, only pages 1 and 3 are available to choose from the page menu.

When the checkbox is checked, page two becomes available in the page menu.

The benefits dynamic paging offers become immensely useful for making long complex forms – you may have seen government forms with 30+ pages! It is far less intimidating for end users when they only need to see the few pages that are relevant to them.

So start creating multi-page online forms with VF Creator today, and make life easier both for yourself and for your form users!

Assess your needs

1. Do you want to retain the look of your existing paper forms? Check out the design capabilities of the form software you’re evaluating.  Will it let you easily format your form exactly the way you want? Will you be able to use tables, images, shapes?
2. Do your forms have sections that only certain users need to fill in? Make it easier for your user to fill in your form by choosing a tool with dynamic paging and/or conditional display logic, so that only the pages or fields relevant to the user are displayed.
3. Do you need your users to attach files with their submission? (such as proof of ID, photos, references…) You’ll need to make sure the form software you choose allows for attachments.
4. Do you need your users to sign your forms? Look for a tool that lets you insert Signature fields in your form so your users can sign electronically.
5. Do you need to collect complete form data that is error-free? Add forced-error checking on a page-by-page or form-by-form basis. Users will have to fix errors before they could proceed to the next page or submit the form.

Once you’ve assessed what you need to transform your current forms into online forms, the next step is to consider whether your current paper forms could be optimised to fully harness the power of online forms.

Optimise your online forms

1. Do you have information on the form that could be customised based on your user’s answers? Using a Dynamic text feature could make the form more legible for the user, or save them time by pre-filling certain fields based on their answers.
2. What do you do with the data from your filled-in forms? Are there any calculations that could be applied on the user’s answers to save you time? You could save a lot of time by choosing a tool that lets you apply calculations on the data provided by the user.
3. Do some of your user’s answers need to be in a very specific format? Look for a tool that lets you set validation rules on fields so that your users can’t submit incorrect data.
4. Do you want to provide your users help as they fill out the form? Add help pop-ups that will display beside any fields within your form pages.
5. Think about what you would like to do with the responses to your form. How long do you need to store them for? Do you need them in a print-friendly format?

The right tool will not only allow you to easily turn your existing paper forms into online forms, but it will also allow your business to harness the full power of online forms. If you answered Yes to at least one of the questions above, make sure you try out VF Creator as it provides all the previously mentioned features including a whole lot more.

What the agency were doing before:

“Recruitment is traditionally a sector where there is a large amount of formsbased processes. For candidates, this often meant having to spend up to half an hour filling in lengthy paper registration forms in the agency’s office – often during their lunch hour – or they would print off PDFs from an email and then post them back.” Justin says: “This doesn’t create a favourable first impression of the agency. Plus, it creates an administration headache for staff, who should be spending their time on delivering a stand-out, personalised service to clients and candidates, not dealing with manual admin.” Justin Murray, Director initiated the switch to online forms in June 2017.

How Victoria Forms software is being used:

Big Sky’s forms, were originally created in Microsoft Word and were then either printed, or sent as PDFs. Using VF Creator, these Word documents were turned into smart online forms. The new online forms were then published to Big Sky’s online form library (part of the cloud hosted system provided by Victoria Forms). The Victoria Forms software was used to create a streamlined online registration process so that agency staff simply send an email link to candidates after an initial meeting. At a time and on a device that suits them, the candidate completes the online form, which checks itself for errors before submission. The candidate can submit all the required documentation online, attaching a photo ID and signing the online form. Big Sky can also email clients a link to a pre-filled terms of business forms for online acceptance. Big Sky’s employee reference request form is also available online, and a link can be emailed to referees for online and secure completion. Agency staff receive a PDF of the completed, validated and signed forms immediately upon submission. The PDF also contains any uploaded images as extra pages within the single PDF. For a 100% paper free, and seamless process, the PDFs pass into Big Sky’s CRM system.

Assessing the new process:

Justin Murray, Director, comments: “Switching to online forms has significantly reduced our administration burden and made the process of registering new candidates much faster. They can now submit all the required documentation online, at a time that suits them, rather than having to fill in lengthy paper forms when we meet them or print off a PDF and post it back. As a company we have become more efficient and technology-driven in the eyes of our candidates, clients and staff.” Big Sky use the new software VF Creator from Victoria Forms to make changes to their forms in-house. Justin Murray adds: “This is very beneficial for certain forms which aren’t as standardised such as terms of business.”

See the PDF case study here.