How to create a replicator group

Replicator groups help to easily duplicate groups without having to copy and rename the group for each duplicate required. The video above demonstrates how to use replicator groups to easily allow visitors to register additional family members in an online registration form.

VIDEO TEXT:

This video will explain how to use replicator fields within an online form on your website. First, here's a glimpse of what we're about to create. We've begun creating a form that visitors will use to register at your parish. Specifically, we've added some replicator groups. Replicator groups make the form responsive in a sense. In this particular case, the replicator group allows the visitor to determine how many additional family members they'd like to register.

For example, if a visitor needs to register two additional family members they can select "2" and the form responds accordingly. If they have 4 additional family members that need to be registered, they can select "4" and again, the form responds accordingly. Let's take a closer look and start from the beginning.

To begin, as always, click on Add Content in the bottom left corner of your website. In the Core Modules section, you will find the Forms module. Drag and drop it onto the page. 

First, I'm going to add some Custom Text at the top and paste that in. Then, I'll create a group and call it "Head of Household." Click Save. I'm also going to add some Prebuilt fields into the "Head of Household" group.

Now, click into the Basic tab and find the Replicator field. Drag and drop it into the form. This opens up the Replicator Group dialog box, which is where you can control the settings for your replicator group. In this case, we want the Replicator Counter Name to be "Number of Additional Family Members." We want each replicated group to be named "Family Member." The minimum number of replicated groups, in this case, should be zero in case somebody is just registering themselves at the parish. You can determine what you'd like your maximum number of replicated groups to be. In this case, we'll set it to 12. We'll leave the initial number of replicated groups at 0 and click Save.

Our replicator field has been created, but now we actually need to determine what sorts of information we want to gather for each family member. Click into the Prebuilt tab and drag and drop the First Name/Last Name field into the replicator group. 

We also want to gather each family member's date of birth. To do this, grab the Date field, drag it into the replicator field, click the Date field's settings icon and name it "Date of Birth." Click Save.

Next, click into the Basic tab and drag and drop the Checkboxes field into the replicator group. We can use the checkboxes field to gather which sacraments each family member has received. Once you've added all the options, click Save.

You can continue adding additional fields if you'd like to gather additional information. Within the replicator group, you can click on the orange bar that appears on the right edge of each field and drag and drop to rearrange the order of the fields within the group.

It's as simple as that! Once visitors arrive at this portion of your form and select the number of family members they'd like to register, your form will respond accordingly.