Apricot's Secure Web Form feature gives Administrators a secure way to grant external access to submit new Tier 1 records for data entry without requiring login credentials to an Apricot database. This can be especially helpful for non-staff users such as volunteers, donors, or service recipients to submit information or applications directly into Apricot.
Secure Web Forms are generally not a new form, but rather a preexisting Tier 1 form that's set to accept submissions from outside of your Apricot database. They can be applied and removed from a Tier 1 form without any data loss in the process.
Notes:
Secure Web Forms cannot be used with Tier 2 forms and cannot edit existing records. Individuals also cannot undo a submission of a new Tier 1 record.
New records of the Tier 1 Secure Web Form can only be completed in Chrome or Firefox, Apricot's supported browsers. If you'd like for users to fill out external forms using other browsers, you may consider using Intake Forms as opposed to Secure Web Forms.
Wizard-style linking is not supported between Secure Web Forms.
Secure Web Forms may display Quick View fields from related records in your system if the Duplicate Check fields acknowledge duplicate data in the database.
Follow the steps listed below to learn how to create Secure Web Forms and distribute them to individuals outside of your organization.
Step 1: Enable Secure Web Forms
In the Administrator tab of Apricot, expand the Workflow Station category of the navigation bar and select "Apricot Settings".
Then, scroll through the "A La Carte Features" section until you find the Standard Features. Check the "Secure Web Forms" box then click "Save Settings" at the top-right corner of the page to enable this feature.
Step 2: Determine a login user
Once you've decided which form you want to use as the Secure Web Form, you'll need to create or select a Standard User within your database that is assigned to a single program with access to the form. This account will be considered the "login user" for Secure Web Forms.
The login user will require View and Create permissions for the Tier 1 form in order to use the Secure Web Form properly. To learn how to grant users form access, select one of the articles below depending on which permission model your organization uses:
Note: If you use a Guest User as the login user for a Secure Web Form, you'll also need to enable the Tier 1 Form as a Guest Form on the Apricot Settings page. To learn more about this, select one of the articles below depending on which permission model your organization uses:
Step 3: Add a new Secure Web Form
The Secure Web Forms page is under "External Access" on the navigation bar. On this page, select "+ New Secure Web Form" under the Search Actions palette.
Name the Secure Web Form something that easily identifies what information individuals will be submitting (ex. "New Participant Profile Record"). This name does not affect the actual form name in Apricot outside of the Secure Web Form.
Then, select the Tier 1 form you want to use as the Secure Web Form in the next dropdown.
Click the radio button next to the login user you set up in Step 2 in the "Select a user" field, then check the box for the program(s) you want to assign new records of the Secure Web Form to. The available programs are based on which programs the login user has View and Create permissions for the Secure Web Forms within.
Select "Save Record" from the Record Options palette to save your changes.
This will generate two items within the record:
Basic URL: This is the URL you'll distribute to whoever you'd like to access the Secure Web Form.
Embed URL: This is an iframe to be used with HTML so you can embed the link onto your organization's website. The Support team cannot troubleshoot adding this to your website; we suggest working with your internal IT team for this.
Step 4: Test the form
Before sharing the Secure Web Form with others, we highly recommend testing the form yourself to ensure it works properly. In order to do this, copy the Basic URL for the form.
Next, log out of your Apricot session and open an incognito browser window. This is an important step, as you may not be able to access your Secure Web Form or your Apricot session temporarily if you don't. If you do lose access to your Apricot session, you can enter the URL https://apricot.socialsolutions.com/auth/logout to force your session to close and clear your browser's cookies, cache, etc.
In your incognito window, paste the Secure Web Form's Basic URL into the address bar and navigate to the page. The URL will change in the address bar once the Tier 1 form loads, which is expected behavior.
You should be able to fill out the record like any user logged into your database would, then click "Submit" in the Record Options palette to save the data to Apricot.
If someone tries to save a record with duplicate data of an existing record in Apricot, the following error message will appear until they alter the current record.
Users will have the option to print the record for their own reference or close the form; they'll then be brought to the Apricot login page.
Step 5: Distribute the URL
Once you've tested the form successfully, you can confidently share the Basic URL of the Secure Web Form with individuals you'd like to access the form.
The Basic URL is best distributed to participants via email, PDF file, or embedded in a website, as pasting the Basic URL into a word-processing program like Microsoft Word for distribution will cause the link to no longer function properly.