Home → Arctic Reservations → Forms Editor → Registration Forms
4.4. Registration Forms
Step 1: Creating Registration Forms
Now that you have created all of the general fields for the Built-in Forms, you are ready to start creating Registration Forms. The Registration Forms are divided into 2 categories as shown here (you may not see both categories, depending on your system configuration):
You can create "Reservation Registration Forms" or "Rental Registration Forms". "Reservation Registration Forms" are specific to the trip types that you offer. You can, if you desire, set up a different registration form for every type of trip that you offer and assign these forms to their respective trip types and Arctic will use the appropriate registration form. You can also make more generalized registration forms, if you choose, that can cover the multiple types of trips that you offer. For example if you offer "Rafting" and "Backpacking" trips then you can create a single "Rafting" registration form even if you offer more than one type of rafting trip and the same for the "Backpacking" form. There are a lot of options and while getting all of the various registration forms that you need set up may take an initial time investment it will save you tons of time sorting through information that may or may not be relevant for the trip your guests are going on.
The "Rental Registration Forms" work on the same concept. The only difference is that these are specifically for the "Rental" portion of your business. Whether you offer snow mobiles or campsites you will be able to create "Rental Registration Forms" that will be specifically suited to the information you need for these services. Registration forms can be selected on a per-item basis.
Another great feature of the registration forms is that you can use them to create fields for specific trips or rentals that you only need to see via the backend. To do this you create the fields in the "Reservation Fields" or the "Rental Fields" depending on what type of registration form you are creating.
In the "Built-In Forms" section, you created various fields that apply to your services regardless of trip type or rental item. These custom fields were applied in the following "Built-In Forms" categories: "Customer", "Reservation", "Rental", and "Reservation Guest". All of these fields will now be available for you to use on the "Registration Forms" that you are creating. The "Customer" fields will be available to both the "Reservation Registration Forms" and the "Rental Registration Forms". The "Reservation" and "Reservation Guest" fields will only be available for the "Reservation Registration Forms" and the "Rental" fields will only be available on the "Rental Registration Forms".
To create a new registration form, choose which type of form you wish to create, either a "Reservation Registration Form" (trips) or a "Rental Registration Form" (rentals), by clicking the "Pencil" icon next to the form type you want as shown here:
This will take you to the "Browse Registration Form" page.
Note: you will only see the forms for the category you chose. You will not see "Reservation Registration Forms" on the "Rental Registration Forms" page or vice versa.
To start creating a new registration form, click the green "Create Registration Form" button. This will take you to phase one of the "Create Registration Form" page as shown here:
The first thing you want to do is assign your registration form to a business group. If you are creating a registration form that is trip group specific or rental group specific, you will assign it to the appropriate business group. If you are creating a registration form that is used more widely, then you will leave the form in the main business group. The business group will effect who can edit the registration form and what trips/items the registration form can be used on/for.
Next you will name the registration form. Make sure the label clearly reflects which trips/rentals you wish to use the form for so that you don't get confused when assigning them to your trip types or rental items later.
Step 2: Adding Registration Form Specific Fields
After you have assigned the new form to a business group and given it a name, click the blue "Submit" button. This will take you to phase two of the "Create Registration Form" page as shown here:
This is where you will add the trip or rental-item specific questions that you omitted from your "Built-In Forms". This would be things like "Boat Preferences," "Bike Preferences" "Camping Gear," "Room Types," etc. -- whatever information that you need for the specific trip or rental item.
For example, if you are creating trip specific registration forms, you may have a boat preference field on every one of your trip registration forms for your river trips, but the boat choices may change depending on the type of river trip that your guests are booked on. So you can add a "Boat Preference" field to the registration that will have only the options that apply for all trips where the registration form is used. Then for the subsequent registration forms you will create other "Boat Preference" fields with only the options that are applicable for the next set of trips. The same holds true for the rental item specific registration forms.
This will make your registration forms easier to fill out and less confusing for your guests as well as streamlining the whole registration process so it is more efficient for your guests to fill out and more efficient for your staff because you will only have to sort through the information needed for the guest's specific trip/rental. You can create "Reservation", "Rental" or "Reservation Guest" field questions.
Remember: "Reservation Guest" fields are for those pieces of information you need for each guest on the reservation and "Reservation" or "Rental" fields are for the information that applies to the whole reservation or rental.
The "Reservation" or "Rental" fields will also be where you can create custom fields that you only need on the backend for the specific items or trips the form is used for. This would be for things like "Train Confirmation Numbers" that only apply to trips that use a train as part of the transportation. This is not a field that the guests will complete, it is completed by your staff so even though you are creating it in the "Reservation" or "Rental" fields for the registration form, you will not actually add it to the form for your guests to complete (see later in this guide for more information on adding fields to the guest registration form.)
You create these form-specific fields by clicking either the "Edit Reservation Fields", "Edit Rental Fields" or "Edit Reservation Guest Fields" buttons. Then you will follow the same steps you used when adding the custom fields to the "Built-In Forms" in the previous section. You will also be able to rearrage these fields so they appeaer in the order you want when they show up on the backend. Any form-specific fields added this way will only apply to the trips and/or rental items that the form is assigned to and will only appear on the backend unless you also add them to the guest registration form. They will not be used for any other trips or rental items.
Step 3: Organizing the Registration Form for your Guests
Once you have created the form-specific fields that you need, you will be taken to the "Registration Form Updated" page, where you will click "Rearrange Fields" as shown here to proceed with your form creation:
This will open the following page:
Notice that you can change the business group you assigned the form to and you can also change the name of the form as well.
The main purpose of this page is to determine the guest-facing aspect of the registration process. That is, when and what information is collected from the guests. These changes effect how the guest will provide their registration details when they are supplying information for their upcoming reservation or rental.
Understanding the Rearrange Forms Page:
The next thing to notice is how the page is divided. Let's look at the last column first. This column contains all of the custom fields you created in the "Built-In Forms" for "Customer", "Reservation" or "Rental", and "Reservation Guest".
Remember: "Reservation" and "Reservation Guest" form fields are only available for the "Reservation Registration Forms" and "Rental" form fields are only available for the "Rental Registration Forms".
You will also see the form-specific fields you created above, such as "Boat Preferences" or "Room Type". These fields can be placed in the other two columns, by clicking and dragging them where you want. You do not have to use all of the fields so if there are fields in the "Potential Questions" column that do not apply you can leave them in the last column and they will not be used for the guest registration form you are creating.
If you created fields that are only completed by your staff via the backend for the specific trips/rentals this form will apply to then you will leave these fields in the "Potential Questions" column and not add them to the guest registration form. If you would like the fields to be part of the "Purchase Process" (asked when a guest is adding an item to their shopping cart), you will drag them into the first column.
If you are creating a "Reservation Registration Form", then you will sort them into the different rows depending on whether the fields apply to the whole group, the primary customer or all of the reservation guests. If you are creating a "Rental Registration Form", you will sort the fields depending on whether they apply to the rental itself or the primary customer. Any fields put in the "Purchase Process" column will be added to the guest facing "Book Reservation" or "Book Rental" pages. For many companies, the "Purchase Process" fields will be related to the "Primary Customer" row, since he/she is the one making and paying for the reservation.
Helpful Hint: It is strongly recommended to only add questions to the "Purchase Process" column that are essential to the reservation process. This will ensure you able to keep the purchasing and checkout experience as streamlined as possible. This will significantly boost your conversion rates as potential shoppers are quickly turned off by long or complex forms with many questions that must be completed before they can complete their purchase. Leave any questions that are not essential to have to make the reservation/rental for the "Post-Purchase (Registration)" that your guests can return and fill out at their leisure.
The next column is for the "Post-Purchase (Registration)". This column is for all of the fields that you need answered for the reservation or rental, but do not need completed during the initial reservation or rental transaction. This is where most of your fields will generally be used. Again, if you are creating a "Reservation Registration Form", you will decide whether the fields are for the entire group, the primary customer only, or for all of the reservation members; and if you are creating a "Rental Registration Form", you will decide whether the fields are for the rental or the primary customer.
Most of the fields on your "Reservation Registration Forms" for the "Post Purchase Registration" will go in the "Guest Information" row because you will need the information for every guest, including the primary customer.
Note: The person who makes the reservation is both the "Primary Customer" and a "Guest" on the reservation. Since this is the case any questions that you need to ask of all guests, whether they are the primary customer or just a guest on the reservation, will go in the "Guest Information" row. Questions that you want to ask only of the person who made the reservation and not the other reservation guests, will go in the "Primary Customer" row and the guest who is making the reservation will be asked these questions and the questions in the "Guest Information" row as well.
Making Fields Required for your Guests:
Next let's talk about "Requirement". Notice the small "Checkbox" located on the end of each field block as shown here:
If the check box is blank this means this field is not required and the customer can leave it blank and Arctic will allow them to submit their forms without this information.
Notice that some of the check boxes have greyed out checks in them. This indicates that this is a field that was created with the "Make Required" set to "Yes". If you decide to add these fields to your guest registration form, they will be required on your guest registration forms as well. These could be system fields like "First Name" or "Last Name" that are required by default or a field that you created. If you created the field and do not want it to be required universally, it can be marked as not required when you edit it either on your "Built-in Forms" or through the "Edit Reservation", "Edit Reservation Guest" or "Edit Rental" fields on the form you are creating. This will allow your back-office staff to omit the information. Once the "universal requirement" is removed, you can then use the checkbox on the guest registration form editor to indicate that you want any guests completing the registration form to be required to provide an answer for that field.
In addition to dragging the questions into the columns and rows you want them to be relevant to, you can also drag them up and down in the cell to control the order they will appear on your guest registration form.
Once you have arranged your guest registration form to your satisfaction, double check your requirement settings for each field. Then scroll to the bottom of the screen and click "Submit". This will save your guest registration form.
Step 4: Assigning your Registration Forms to your Trip Types & Rental Items
Do not forget to assign the form to the appropriate trips or rental items by editing the "Trip Types" or "Rental Items". The form assignments are on the "Forms" tab of both the "Create/Update Trip Types" pages and the "Create/Update Rental Items" pages. Once you have chosen the form you want to use for the trip type or rental item, click "Submit" to save your registration form assignments.
Now, any time a guest books a reservation or rental they will have access to the registration form that has been assigned to their specific trip or rental item through the guest facing site. You can provide easy access to the forms by adding the "Manage URL" to your email templates, which will give guests access to complete their registration form and/or download applicable files and documents. Your staff will also see any backend fields that you created on the registration form once you have assigned the form to the trip types/rental items the form applies to.
Step 5: Editing Registration Forms
To edit any of the registration forms you have created, access them by going to "Settings" page under "Forms" and clicking the "Pencil" icon next to either "Reservation Registration Forms" or "Rental Registration Forms". This will take you to the "Browse Registration Forms" page as shown here:
To add any fields to the registration form you want to edit, click either the "Edit Reservation Fields", "Edit Rental Fields" or "Edit Reservation Guest Fields" buttons. If the new field is one you want to have on the guest registration form. do not forget that once you add new custom fields to the registration form you must then click the "Rearrange Fields" button to assign them to the "Pre-Purchase" or "Post Purchase (Registration)" columns and then sort them into the relevant rows.
To change the requirement levels, rearrange when or to whom the fields are requested, or change the name of the registration form or its business group assignment, click the "Rearrange Fields" button.
Helpful Hint:
Here is a chart that helps explain the various form categories and where they appear in Arctic, as well as the type of information best suited for each category.