As much as you can have fun building customized surveys – as we demonstrated with our Valentine’s Day and Holiday surveys – using FormsCentral also makes a lot of business sense. But don’t take our word for it. Take a look at what PC Mag had to say: “For businesses that rely on analysis of their current and potential client base, Adobe FormsCentral could prove to have real ROI.”

More important to making business sense, Adobe FormsCentral is so easy to use, even a caveman…ok we won’t go there, but you get the idea. Need proof? PC Mag said, “FormsCentral is a good way to create some neat forms for interacting with visitors and customers to your site—without having to beg your developer buddies for help (or hire one!).”

As great as last week was for the Adobe FormsCentral team, it’s just the beginning. We have a lot more exciting features in store for the coming year, so stay tuned!

Now, raise your hand if you’ve seen FormsCentral’s all-new templates, released last week. What?! None of you?? Get with the program, people! These new templates have been created for you by professional designers who have a sincere interest in helping you create beautiful, functional forms. Check out the Emergency Information form:

Really good-looking, right? Even better, check out one of the new volunteer sign-up forms:

We added about 15 new templates, the complete list of which is below. The best way to get to know them is to get in there and splash around with them. If you want a little more information about how to get started using templates, check out this how-to video on Adobe TV.

New templates as of January 16, 2012:

Admissions Application
Emergency Information
Employee Referral
Event Registration
Event Survey
Event Survey (2)
Rental Application
Request for Leave
Request for Leave (2)
Sponsorship
Teacher Evaluation
Time Tracking
User Experience Survey
Volunteer Application
Volunteer Application (2)

However, you noticed with some dismay that the perfect gift had evaded Aunt Gertrude. On the third night of Hanukkah, she proudly presented you with what you thought was a fuzzy throw pillow. How sweet, you thought naively, a homemade present. Then you noticed it smelled of moth balls and – was that the odor of gasoline? You never got a chance to investigate; when the pillow began to crawl away on what looked like thousands of tiny legs, you chose not to pursue it.

Now, you’re dreading Aunt Gertrude’s return to the family’s annual holiday party; who knows what she might bring along? She’s senile, she can’t help it, your mother says. She means well, your father says. But what does one say to a smelly pillow that walks? What should you tell your Aunt Gertrude?!

Fear not, dear reader. This year, the team at Adobe FormsCentral has put together a fool-proof plan to help you respond to any kind of terrible holiday gift, even the kind that come from Aunt Gertrude. Moldy Christmas fruitcake from the neighbors? “Art” from your sister’s weirdo husband? We’ve got you covered. Take the quiz, and go forth to your holiday gatherings with the confidence that you’ll have the perfect reply for whatever the holiday season has to offer you.

Starting with the File Attachments Field in FormsCentral, users can now collect and store one or more files (including audio and video) from respondents, making things like requests for proposals and resumes, easier to gather and manage. Everything is stored in one central place too, taking the pain out of managing the collection process. Consider this scenario: you’re applying for a grant, which asks you to provide a variety of accompanying files such as images and previous work. Instead of filling out the proposal and then sending the files separately via email, with the new attachment feature in FormsCentral, it’s all done within one form – a one stop shop. This goes for employment applications as well; where the HR department needs to gather resumes, cover letters, references, and more in order to properly consider a candidate. So stop making your life complicated and do yourself a favor by checking out the new attachments feature.

But wait, there’s more.

Nothing is more frustrating than not getting the information you need. This is a huge problem for market researchers – but now, they can stop respondents from entering invalid dates, typing endlessly in a field, or choosing every option when the limit is supposed to be 2. Yes, there is such a thing as too much information. With the new FormsCentral Field Validation features, users can set minimum and maximum values for the number of characters, date or multiple choice fields within their forms – making life simpler for everyone involved.

We’re also introducing some additional functionality to the Submissions Receipt feature we announced in October. Form authors now have the option to protect their anonymity by preventing replies from being sent back to them, as well as exclude or include empty fields in the submission receipt email.

Oh, and you know that convenient little feature called Hyperlinking? We’ve been doing it all through this blog post! Well, we finally support creating hyperlinks in forms (hello 21^st Century) so form authors can make it easier for respondents to go directly to a website for more information or to send a note directly to an email address.

Whether you’re in marketing, sales support, procurement, HR, or IT, we think you’ll find today’s updates will make your jobs of collecting and organizing data in such uses as applications, client intake, and registration forms that much easier. Watch this video for a quick overview, and check out these new features for yourself.  And please continue to send us feedback – the more we know about how you use FormsCentral, the better FormsCentral will become.

–Randy Swineford, FormsCentral Product Manager

Well, now you can be certain that your form has been received.

Submission Receipts is a new paid feature of Adobe FormsCentral that does just that. FormsCentral users can now automatically send a form filler – the customer, registrant or student, for instance — an email receipt after they have completed and submitted the HTML form. Using Submission Receipts, the form author picks which field in the form contains the email address to send the receipt. The author can also customize the reply‐to, subject and body of the email message. And if they want, they can include the data that was submitted by the form filler.

The benefits of Submission Receipt are clear. Form fillers get confirmation that their data was entered correctly and that their response was successfully received by the organization. They also get proof that they actually filled out the form with the data they entered, and the submission can be printed or archived. Plus, the form author can communicate additional information to the form filler (e.g. conference location, contact phone number) via e-mail.

Submission Receipt is a paid feature of FormsCentral and is available now. You can watch this video to get a good idea of how it works. But you should also give it a try to see how it can add a new dimension to your sales and marketing programs.

Randy Swineford, FormsCentral Product Manager

To track information about calls and requests, DAHMW recently switched from using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to Adobe FormsCentral in its call center—reducing what was a 30-minute process to only 5 minutes. What’s more, Adobe FormsCentral enables advocates to improve the accuracy of data they capture and submit during their shifts on the helpline, with an easy-to-use solution.

Adobe FormsCentral makes the digital forms intuitive, easier to complete, and much more manageable. An added plus is that Adobe FormsCentral can also be customized and helps prevent data corruption as the forms pass from user to user. And of course, the affordability and ease of using Adobe FormsCentral strike the right chord with DAHMW, as the organization looks to maximize the dollars available to support its public-facing programs.

As a national non-profit agency that relies partially on donations obtained through grants to run its day-to-day operations, DAHMW grant writers are busy developing the content to share with potential donors. Here, too, Adobe FormsCentral plays an important role; by giving grant writers high-quality, reliable service information to present to potential donors.

During our conversation, Garo Green, board member and consultant for DAHMW noted, “Adobe FormsCentral delivers outstanding value to our organization. It aides clear communication and collaboration across groups to help ensure that we are all focused on our mission and that we are providing the best service possible.”

To find out more about how DAHMW takes advantage of the powerful, affordable Adobe FormsCentral solution, click here.

Randy Swineford, group product manager, Acrobat Solutions

We’re always eager to gain the perspective of our users, and the FormsCentral polls were no exception.  The information gained through these Facebook questions will be passed on to our development teams as we continue to tailor Acrobat Solutions to our customer’s expectations.  If you’re interested in the results of these polls, please find some of our favorite insights below.

• We were thrilled to see so many different answers in our ‘What do you use Forms for the most?’ question!  Collecting contact information and business feedback was the most popular choice, but job appications, educational uses, and event registration were also choices
• Over 1/3 of our Facebook participants create and distribute more than 5 forms annually, and often over 10
• 43% of you valued ‘Ease of Use’ as the number 1 factor in choosing a forms service
• Security and Accessibility, with slightly over 20% of the vote each, were the other largest contributors to this decision
• Finally, we asked our Facebook community their favorite new feature of FormsCentral: so far, the newly available form templates are the most popular choice

Thanks again for your input, and keep an eye out for future chances to participate in the Acrobat community!  You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, or reach out via this blog’s comment section anytime you’d like to share your perspective. Check out FormsCentral for yourself and let us know what you think!

If you missed an earlier poll, visit the Facebook questions page where you’ll find a list of all poll questions and results. Thanks for sharing your answers and stay tuned for a results summary on the blog!

You can find the latest Acrobat Poll on our Facebook page here.  By chiming in, you can help us make FormsCentral, and the Acrobat family, an even better tool for social business!  We’re always thrilled to see new feedback from our users, so thanks very much for participating.  Don’t forget to check back soon here at the Acrobat blog for poll results and analysis!