Note: this is a guide for account admins. If you're not an admin user, your existing Beacon admins would need to change your user type.
We recommend storing feedback on its own custom record type. Creating custom record types requires the Standard, Premium, or Ultimate plan.
There are times where you may want to collect feedback from your supporters, and store this in Beacon. Maybe you've just run your first Summer Gala and want to send out a form to your supporters to collect feedback about the event. The best way to do this is by creating a custom record type specifically for feedback. This will allow you to capture feedback as its own entity, rather than as a field on another record.
In this guide, we'll show you how to create a new record type to store your feedback, as well as how to create a form to collect this data, which you can send directly to your supporters. Let's get started!
Create your custom record type
Navigate to Settings > record types, and click Create record type at the bottom left hand side (alternatively, see our guide on creating custom record types here).
Create your new record, and click Save changes. Add the record to your sidebar.
2. Add some custom fields to your Feedback record. You'll want to think about what kind of feedback you're looking to collect, before you create these fields. For example, you may want to include:
A point to another record field, to identify who gave the feedback.
A point to another record field, to specify which record type the feedback is about (for example, a specific Event, like the Summer Gala, or Volunteer shift).
Any other fields you need, such as text fields for comments from supporters, or rating fields for reviews. To use our earlier example about the Summer Gala - you may like to collect information about how supporters heard about the event, how well organised they felt the event was, or if they'd be likely to attend another. You'd need to create a field for each of these feedback points.
To set up these custom fields, you'll need to add your first Feedback record, and click Create (you don't need to worry about entering any data here - just create a blank record for now).
From here you can enter customisation mode and create your custom fields, to configure the feedback record as you like.
3. Create/change your Primary field, if you wish. The Primary field is the key way that your team will identify the Feedback record in Beacon - when you create a custom record type, this will default to the Name field. However, there may be a way of identifying records that makes more sense to your team (for example, a combination of the person's name who gave the feedback, and the event they are giving feedback for). In this case, you may like to change the Primary field to reflect this.
Create your sign up form
Now that you've got your custom record type set up, it's time to set up a form that people can submit their feedback through!
Head to the Forms section of your account, and click Create form. Make sure you select Sign up form as your form type.
2. Add your questions to your form.
First, add a General fields section to your form. Change the record type that you are collecting data on, to the Feedback record you just created. This means that the data collected in this section will be stored on the Feedback record type.
3. From here, click Add item to add each of your questions to your form. You'll be able to choose from any of the fields that you added to your Feedback record type when setting it up.
Not sure how to add questions to your forms? Read our guide here.
4. Make sure to include a lookup or dropdown field that allows form submitters to select the relevant record from your account that they want to give feedback on. This ensures they are giving feedback for the correct event.
And you're done! 🎉
You may like to run a test submission through your form, to make sure all the data is pulling through correctly. Now you can send your form out to your supporters and start collecting feedback from them!