Add Conversational Forms to Coda

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Hello, fellow Coda users and makers!

I’m a freelance web developer and I use Coda to create forms for my clients. I love how easy it is to create and customize forms in Coda, and how I can connect them to other parts of my docs.

However, I have noticed that some of my clients and their users find the traditional forms a bit boring and impersonal. They feel like they are filling out a long questionnaire instead of having a friendly conversation.

That’s why I would like to suggest adding a new option to Coda Forms: Conversational Forms.

What are Conversational Forms?

Conversational Forms are a type of web form that ask questions in an interactive environment. Questions in conversational forms appear only one at a time and feel like a real conversation. This helps to greatly improve user experience as compared to traditional forms.

Conversational Forms can reduce abandonment and boost conversion rates by making the form more engaging, personalized, and human-like. They can also help collect more accurate and relevant data by using conditional logic, validation, and feedback.

How could Coda implement Conversational Forms?

I think Coda could implement Conversational Forms by adding a new option in the Form Options menu, similar to how we can choose between Table View and Calendar View.

By selecting the Conversational Form option, we could transform our existing forms into conversational forms with minimal effort. We could also create new conversational forms from scratch by typing /form in the canvas.

Some features that I think Coda Conversational Forms should have are:

  • A customizable welcome page with a title, description, and cover photo
  • A one-question-at-a-time layout with smooth transitions and animations
  • A progress bar or indicator to show how far along the user is in the form
  • A save and continue later option to allow users to resume the form at any time
  • A confirmation page with a summary of the responses and a thank you message
  • A way to embed the conversational form in our website or share it via a unique URL
  • A way to connect the conversational form to other parts of our doc, such as tables, charts, buttons, automations, and packs

I hope you find my suggestion interesting and useful. I think adding Conversational Forms to Coda would make it an even more powerful and versatile platform for creating forms.

I would love to hear your feedback and opinions on this idea. Do you think Conversational Forms would be a good addition to Coda? How would you use them in your own projects?

Thank you for reading my post and happy with Coda! :blush:

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Also known as a ChatGPT agent. :wink:

One way to create better engagement may be to eliminate forms altogether. Users, after all, hate the idea of filling out forms.

Imagine a table containing list of questions you’d like to ask and a “form” that is simply a generative AI agent who’s only job is to compel visitors to complete the “form”. The chat agent would implement a conversation that sequentially ticks off each question and would also have the added advantage of deviating from the script to help a user who doesn’t understand a question. Such an approach is a natural language conversation that is engaging and entices the visitor to provide the data you seek.

This approach is difficult to envision working with Coda AI, but such a possibility is probably achievable.

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try Tally forms. they are meant to be like typeform but more generous and free for most use cases. it can be embedded in coda, and it has coda pack. you can design tally forms in a conversational flow. its designed to be easy to learn and use.