How to Customize the Feedback Form

So, one common request we've received is to allow our clients to modify the embedded LoopTodo feedback collection form.

Our goal with LoopTodo is to focus on simplicity, which is sort of the mortal enemy of complexity. Every feature that we add requires a design change, the question of where to place the controls in the settings page, and of course, support.

We have an evolving API, we decided to give control to our clients through the Feedback Collection Form Integration API, which is part of the embed code. With the API, you can control the message, the placeholders in the textbox, the names of the tabs, as well as the tags that each tab corresponds to. By using the API, we eliminate a major source of complexity, figuring out where to put these controls in settings without cluttering up the interface.

The API is very easy to use. Of course, easy is a subjective term. I'm a developer, so things like this come easy to me, but I'm willing to bet that someone who is careful, detail oriented, and who only modifies the text -- "inside the quotes" and not the code structure itself -- will be able to make changes to the form via the API without any problems. To help make this easier for people who are novice programmers or who are intimidated by code, I've put together a demo.

Look for the "looptodo_feedback_btn_init" line in the embed code, and replace it with the code block below the line that says "with this integration example". Once you see the new form on your website, customize the text in quotes to your liking.

Find this part of the embed code:

    

 looptodo_feedback_btn_init();

And replace the above embed code with this code block:

    
 // Form integration API example
 looptodo_feedback_btn_init({
     tabs: [
         { 
             label: "Tab1-Good",
             desc: "Tab1 - Tell us the good! :)",
             buttonText: "Tab1 - Good",
             tag: "tab1-tag"
         },
         {
             label: "Tab2-Bad",
             desc: "Tab2 - Tell us the bad! :(",
             buttonText: "Tab2 - Bad",
             tag: "tab2-tag"
         },
         {
             label: "Tab3-Ugly",
             desc: "Tab3 - Tell us the ugly?! :|",
             buttonText: "Tab3 - Ugly",
             tag: "tab3-tag"
         }
                
     ],
     message: "Please tell us how we're doing!"
 });

Below is a demo of what the form would look like, using the above integration code. Take note of where the text in the code matches the text in the form, and this will give you an idea of what you can customize.



If you get stuck with the integration process, we're happy to answer any questions that you may have. Just email us at info [at] loopto.do and we'll happily help!

Capture Feedback With Wordpress Plugin

We now have a LoopTodo Feedback Plugin for Wordpress. What's the advantage, you ask? Well, Wordpress is an extremely extensible open source platform, which is used to build and manage custom blogs and websites. Its extensible plugin architecture allows anyone to easily add new functionality to his or her website or blog, without needing to hire a programmer or pour through complicated instruction manuals. Just simply download and install the plugin, retrieve your key from the LoopTodo Application, and you're all set! Keep the feedback all in one place. Share your feedback loop with others so they can reply to feedback or create actionable tasks based on that feedback.

Anyone who has ever worked with a team from a single email inbox understands the frustrations of trying to manage who replies to what without creating confusion. LoopTodo's real time nature keeps all your team members on the same page, eliminating confusion. In other words, if I annotate or reply to a feedback card, everyone sees this right away, so there's no duplicates. So, if you have a Wordpress site, give LoopTodo a try. Let us know how it works. Leave us feedback at http://www.loopto.do. Feedback is absolutely critical to a product's success, whether it be your product, or LoopTodo itself.

We Need Your Feedback

We're now at a position where we're doing some active marketing on our customer feedback management product, and we're looking for sincere, no holds barred feedback from people who are looking for a way to manage customer feedback in a simple, effective, and organized manner.

We believe we're on to something good. We put together a product that's easy to use, where customers can easily leave you suggestions, comments, bug reports, and praise using an embedded form on your website. Our hope is that your support staff can easily sort feedback cards, quickly reply to customer feedback from both the Loop inbox and their email inbox, and create actionable tasks for feedback cards that require work.

If you're looking for a way to manage customer feedback, manage a personal to-do list, or are looking for a lightweight project management application, instantly create an account, check out the app, and leave us feedback below. All you need is a Google account to get started.



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Leave Feedback In Different Languages

We've received some questions asking if our feedback management software supports different languages. At the time those questions were asked, it didn't.  However, we spent some time fixing all of our character encoding bugs, making sure we're using utf-8 in all the right places and forcing any entered data to use utf-8 as well.

We were able to enter the Hindi word "Namaste" as  नमस्ते in the feedback form. Thus, there are no longer question marks appearing instead of these beautiful characters.


If you previously visited our site and asked us if we support other languages, please let us know if this is what you meant. 

Feedback Collection Form Integration API

One of the very first things customers have asked for is the ability for our embedded form to detect who the users are. If your users have to login to your application, then you already know who they are. It's incredibly redundant to ask these users to once again login to yet another system, just to leave valuable feedback.

We noticed Get Satisfaction requires users to login to their application -- not the application the user is leaving feedback for -- before that person can leave feedback or ask a question.

If your users have already logged into your application, then that person shouldn't need to login to yet another system within your application.

Through the embed code, your developers can pass in user data and control some aspects of the form. Here are the 4 available options to control and customize the form:

• name:  This property takes as an argument the name of the currently logged in user. Pass this value into the looptodo_feedback_btn_init function, and the embedded form will prepopulate the form with this information.

• email:  In order to reply or respond to feedback, questions, suggestions, and other submitted requests, you need an email address. Since your user is logged into your application, use their email address as an argument passed into the email parameter, and your support staff can easily reply.

• allowAnonymous:  By default, users can choose to leave anonymous feedback. Set this to false to hide and disable the anonymous option.

• hideNameEmail:  If you are prepopulating the form with a name and email address, it might make sense to just go ahead and hide those fields. Set this property to true to hide the name and email address fields. Just make sure you're also passing in the contact information!

Example Usage:

looptodo_feedback_btn_init(
    { 
        name: nameVar,
        email: emailVar,
        allowAnonymous: false,
        hideNameEmail: true 
    }); 

The example above configures the form to pass in the value stored in the JavaScript variable called "nameVar", and the value stored in "emailVar" into the name and email properties respectively. Additionally, the anonymous field is disabled and hidden, and the name and email fields are hidden. This is the same configuration we use in the LoopToDo application, and it looks like this:

The embed code is easy to obtain. In your Loop, click "Settings". In the "Collecting" section, copy the embed code and place it on your website, before the closing </body> tag:

If you have any questions or need more help, please let us know!