Home → Arctic Reservations → Forms Editor → Built-In Forms
4.1. Built-In Forms
Arctic Reservations has a powerful Forms Editor that will help you gather and sort the various information you need; for your guests, for your office and for your trip coordinators or guides. Arctic comes with preset forms that have been streamlined to gather just the basic information most of our clients collect to complete reservations. With the Forms Editor, we place the power to create custom fields to collect only the information that your business needs in your hands. This will keep your reservation and trip processes streamlined while still providing you and your staff with all of the important information that you need to run your business smoothly and efficiently.
By being able to create fields for the specific information you and your staff need, there will never be any confusion about what is supposed to go in the "notes" box or forgotten information because there will be a specific data field for each piece of information you need to collect. The Forms Editor also offers a comprehensive tool for creating registration forms that can be customized for each of your trip types and an evaluations form so that you can collect valuable feedback from your guests.
To access the Forms Editor, go to the "Settings" page, , then click the blue "Forms" text. This will open the Forms Editor.
Notice that the Forms Editor is broken into three categories:
- Manage Built-In Forms
- Manage Reservation Registration Forms
- Manage Rental Registration Forms
In each of these categories you will be able to create and or modify the forms that you need for your business.
Manage Built-In Forms:
To begin let's start with the "Manage Built-In Forms" section. To access this section of the Forms Editor, click on the "Pencil" icon in the "Manage Built-In Forms" box as shown here:
This will take you to the "Edit Built-In Forms" page.
Notice that this page is divided into many categories, commonly including Customer, Rental, Trip, Reservation, Reservation Guest, Booking Agent, Inquiry, Social Profile, Guide, Vendor and Retail. Depending on your installation's configuration, you may see different options. Each of these categories will allow you to add custom fields to your backend forms as well as create questions for your registration forms and for the purchasing process of your guest-facing site. Once you have created the additional fields you think are best suited for your business and have added them to the appropriate forms you will be able to add these fields to your registration forms. The built-in forms apply throughout the system, so it is best to add only those questions that are universally applicable throughout your offerings. For more specific questions that pertain to only certain trip types or to only certain rental items, you will add fields directly to the "Registration Forms" (see the Registration Form section of this guide). You will also be able to tell Arctic whether these fields are required or optional.
Below is an explanation of the types of information that should be put in some of the most commonly used categories and where the new fields will appear in your Arctic Installation. Remember these forms are for the system-wide information that you gather for all aspects of your business:
Customer: For the Built-In Customer form, you will add custom fields for the information you want to store with each customer record such shirt size and shoe size. This will often contain information that does not change much for most people. For repeat guests, these fields will be prefilled based on their customer record. Your guests will be able to modify any of the information that is inaccurate during their registration process. These custom fields will also appear in the backend on the "Create Person" forms or when you edit a "Person Record" that is marked as a "Customer".
It is not recommended to include important information like medical needs, dietary needs or emergency contact information in the customer record as this information will be prefilled on the registration forms for existing guests. It is easy for guests to be complacent when fields are prefilled and they may not examine the information closely, resulting in out of date information. For such important fields we recommend that you put them on the "Reservation Member" form. By putting these questions on the "Reservation Member" form, your guests will have to fill out these fields each and every time they make a reservation which will ensure this critical information is up to date and accurate.
You will be able to use any of the fields created in the Customer Form or Reservation Member Form for each guest that you have whether they are the primary customer or a reservation guest.
To view or change the information in the custom fields for the "Customer Form", you will click "Edit" next to the customer name you wish to view or edit as shown here:
Reservation: The Built-In Reservation form will be where you can put "group" fields such as whether this is a birthday; anniversary; family reunion; corporate retreat; etc. These fields should only be the common questions that you ask for each reservation no matter what trip type the guests are going on. Reservation fields about a specific trip type should be added to the "Reservation Registration Form" under the "Reservation Fields" (discussed in the Registration Form section). The Built-In Reservation fields and the pre-purchase "Reservation Registration Fields" will be accessible on the "Create Reservation" page as well as on the registration forms you create. To view or alter this information on the backend you will click "Edit" on the "View Reservation" page as shown here:
Reservation Guest: The Built-In Reservation Guest form will probably be your most prolific form. You will put fields like medical needs, allergies, dietary needs, emergency contact information etc. in this form. Any information that you need to collect for each of your reservation guests will added to this form. If you have fields that are specific to a particular trip type (e.g. boat or bike preference), but are not related to all of your other trip types, do not add them here. You will be able to manage these trip specific fields on the individual registration forms that you create by adding them to the "Reservation Guest Fields". We will discuss this further in the "Registration Form" section of this guide. Any of the "Reservation Guest" fields that you create for either the Built-in Forms or for the trip specific Registration Forms will be accessible on the backend by clicking "Edit" next to each guest on the "View Reservation" page as shown here:
For your guests, they will be accessible through the Registration Form link on the "Manage Activities" page of your guest-facing site.
Rental: For the Built-In Rental form, you will put custom fields that apply to your rentals. If for instance you like to know how many total guests are going to be in a cabin or campsite you can add this field here. You can also ask about room types. Be aware that all of these fields will appear on the backend "Create Rental" form for all rentals created. If you have questions that are item-specific, it is recommended that you add these to the "Rental Registration" forms and use the "Built-In Rental" form for only those fields that apply to all of the rental items you offer.
To access or edit the information collected in these fields you will click "Pencil" icon next to the Rental you wish to view or alter as shown here:
Inquiry: On the Built-In Inquiry form you can add fields for the type of trip your guest is interested in if they don't specifically know which trip they want or they don't have a specific date in mind. Or you can create fields for information about group type and the number of guests they are looking to accommodate. Basically any information that you think would help you have a better understanding about what they are inquiring about and information that will help you answer their questions. These custom fields are only added to the "Create Inquiry" or "Edit Inquiry" forms on the backend. They do not appear on the online inquiry form so these fields can reference specific in-house notation.
Trip: The Built-In Trip form should contain any thing that is specifically trip related that your guides may need to know about a particular trip such as pick up and drop off locations, trip equipment (this is not for guest boat preferences these will be handled elsewhere), exchanges, etc. The trip information fields you create can be added to your trip rosters for quick access by your guides. You can also decide if this information should be required or optional. Be aware if you make these fields required you will have to fill them in when you create your trip types. If this information is often the same for all trips of a specific trip type, then it might make sense to make these fields required to ensure the information is provided at the time of creating the trip type. However if this information varies from trip to trip you may want to leave these fields as optional, so that you can opt to only fill information in once you create all the individual trips. Also again be aware that all of the fields that you create will appear on every trip form when you are creating trip types so make sure you label the fields as clearly as possible to avoid confusion; especially if not all of the fields apply to every trip type you have.
The custom Trip Form fields are accessible through either the "Create Trip Type", "Update Trip Type", "Create Trip", or "Update Trip" pages by clicking the "Other" tab as shown here:
Guide: The Built-In Guide form is specifically for the information you need to collect and maintain about your guides. Their certifications, when those certifications need to be renewed, the date they were hired and which trips they are qualified to guide are all things that you can create on your guide form. These fields show up on the "Create Person" or "Update Person" forms when you click the checkbox next to "Guide" as shown here:
In the next section of the Forms Editor Guide we will address the Registration Forms for Reservations and Rentals.