Liferay forms creation and configuration

Liferay Forms lets a company build, configure, publish and track web forms without custom code. Create the form from the site menu, drag in fields, add a success page, set options such as CAPTCHA and authentication, turn on email notifications, publish to get a shareable URL, and read the answers that arrive.

Consider the guest experience manager of a hotel group who wants to know why repeat bookings fell during the winter season. The group has a dozen properties, a portal for loyalty members and a stream of comments scattered across email, review sites and the front desk. Nobody can say how many guests were unhappy with check-in, or whether breakfast is a real problem or an occasional complaint. What the manager needs is the simplest tool in the digital arsenal, a short survey that every guest receives, whose answers arrive in one place. That is exactly the case the original version of this article used as its example, a hotel guest feedback survey built with Liferay Forms.

The original text opened with an observation that is still valid. Websites are no longer limited to being informational portals for businesses, and many aspects of the site contribute to the user experience, forms among them. A web form is one of the best ways to obtain information from customers, and forms are essential tools that collect data for the business. The platform used here, Liferay, includes a robust form creation tool so that organizations can collect the data they need, from simple surveys of one or several questions to complex forms that gather more information. The official documentation on creating forms is the authoritative reference for each version of the platform, and this article walks through the same flow in a practical way.

The guide covers four stages, which are creating the form, configuring it, sharing it and viewing the collected data. If you are new to the platform, our introduction to what Liferay Portal is and what it is used for gives the wider context, and our article on Liferay for the digital experience shows how forms fit into the portal as a whole.

Why would a business build forms inside its portal?

A form built on the portal inherits everything the portal already provides, which is a consistent look, the identity of the user when authentication is required, the permissions model and the security that the organization has already invested in. A form on a separate third-party service is quick to launch, but it creates another login, another place for data to live and another vendor to review for privacy. For regulated industries, such as finance, health or education, keeping the collection of data inside the portal can simplify audits.

There is also a user experience argument. People who receive a form that looks and behaves like the rest of the site are more likely to trust it and to finish it. Our article on UX design and usability in web forms sets out the design principles that apply to any platform, from asking only for what is needed to naming buttons clearly, and the W3C forms tutorial explains how to make forms accessible to everyone. Liferay supplies the tools, and the quality of the result depends on the decisions of the team that uses them.

How do you create a form in Liferay?

The example in the original article is a hotel guest feedback survey. The steps below follow the flow described by the author. The labels of menus may differ slightly between versions of Liferay, so the documentation of your version is the final authority.

Start by opening the menu and selecting the site, which is represented by a compass icon . Then go to the Content section and choose Forms. Click the Add button to start a new form. Enter a name for the form, which in the example is Guest Feedback Survey, then a description, then a page name. If you leave the page name empty, the platform will use the default, which is Untitled Page. Then click the Add button again to include the form elements.

The next step is to drag an item from the list into the form builder. In the example, the first element is a text field that lets the user enter data such as a name or an address. The second is a select-from-list field, to which the author adds the options that the user will be able to choose.

This is how the form looks from the creation side, with the fields in place.

The ninth step is to add a success page. The success page tells users that their form has been submitted and that the information was received, which is a basic courtesy and also reduces duplicate submissions from people who are not sure that the first one worked. The default success page of Liferay is useful, and the author explains how to customize it. Click the three dots that appear at the back right of the form, choose the option to add a success page, and enter the title and the content you want to display. For a guest survey a short thank you with a line about how feedback is used will do more for loyalty than the default message. Finally, click to save the form. For more on the platform from the strategic side, see our article on Liferay for the digital experience.

What options can you configure in a form?

To configure the form, click on the three dots icon at the back right side. The author highlights two groups of settings.

The first is the form options. You can require users to complete a CAPTCHA when they submit the form by checking the CAPTCHA required box. This is a defense against automated spam and bots, and it is especially useful for public forms. Liferay documents the setting in its page about enabling CAPTCHA on form submissions. You can also require that users have an account before they fill out the form by checking the user authentication required box. That option fits internal surveys, member-only requests and any process in which the identity of the respondent matters. Keep in mind that CAPTCHA adds friction, and for accessibility it should be paired with an alternative for people who cannot complete visual challenges, so the choice should reflect the risk of abuse for that specific form.

The second group is email notifications. Check the box to send an email every time a user fills out the form, and enter the address to which the information should go. This turns the form into a lightweight alert system. A complaint in a guest survey can reach the duty manager within minutes, and a quotation request can reach a salesperson the same day. The full list of options, which can vary by version, is described in the forms configuration reference of Liferay Learn.

How do you share a form with users?

To share or publish a form, click on Publish. When the form is published, a URL is generated, and the team can send that link to users so that they complete the form. The link can go in an email, a message, a QR code at the front desk or a button on the portal. Sharing by link makes it easy to reach people through the channels they already use, and it lets the team measure which channel produces the most responses by adding a tracking parameter to each version of the link.

Here is how the published form looks to the respondent.

Where do you see the data that people submit?

According to the original article, the data can be viewed in the emails received when a user fills out the form, and in the form itself. The platform also keeps the submissions, and administrators can review them in the form's records view. The options for browsing and exporting submissions vary by version, so consult the documentation for your release. Whatever the route, the principle is the same. Collected data has value only if someone reads it, so the team should decide before launch who owns the responses, how often they are reviewed and what actions follow.

Data also carries obligations. A form that collects personal details must tell people why the data is requested, obtain consent where the law requires it, and store and delete it according to policy. These are decisions for the business and its legal advisors, and they should be taken before the form is published and not afterwards. The more detailed the form, the more careful the organization must be.

The author closes by reminding us why all this matters. Forms are essential tools on websites. They give potential customers a way to join and to inquire about products in a more specific and personalized manner, and they provide personal details that are useful to the business. When designing a website, including forms is crucial for overall business growth, especially if you want to gain and retain customers online.

How should you design the questions before opening the builder?

The builder makes it easy to add fields, which is precisely the risk. A form assembled in ten minutes tends to ask everything the team has ever wondered about, and long forms lose respondents. The research of the Nielsen Norman Group on web form design keeps returning to the same advice, which is to ask only for what is needed, group related questions and make the purpose of each field obvious. In the hotel example, a guest who is asked to rate check-in, room, breakfast and staff in four quick selections will answer. A guest who faces twenty open text boxes will close the page.

A practical rule is to match the field type to the decision it supports. A select-from-list field produces answers that can be counted, which suits ratings and categories. A text field produces stories, which suit the one open question at the end, for example what we could have done better. Mixing the two, with mostly closed questions and a single open one, gives the leadership team numbers for the dashboard and quotes for the meeting. Sensitive questions, such as contact details, should be optional unless the process truly needs them, and the form should say why they are requested.

Testing deserves the same attention as design. Open the published form on a phone, because a large share of guests will answer from one, and try to complete it with the keyboard only, since that is how many assistive technologies work. Submit a test response and confirm that the email notification arrives, that it reaches the right person and that the success page reads well. These checks take less than an hour and prevent the embarrassing situation of discovering, weeks after launch, that the notifications were going to an unattended mailbox.

How do you know whether the form is working?

A form is a small digital product, and it should have a small set of measures. The first is the completion rate, meaning how many people who open the form submit it. If many abandon it, the form is probably too long or too intrusive. The second is the response time of the team, which is how long it takes between a submission and a human reaction. The third is the quality of the data, such as the share of answers that are usable without cleaning. The fourth is the outcome, which is the number of decisions or improvements that came from the responses. Without the last one, a survey becomes a ritual.

Reviewing these four numbers monthly is enough for most organizations. When the portal also reports traffic to the form page, the team can compare visits to submissions and see where people drop. Small changes, such as removing a field, rewording a question or moving the form higher on the page, are cheap to try and often produce visible improvements. The discipline matters more than the tool, and the same logic applies whether the form lives in Liferay or elsewhere.

What does this mean for the C-level?

For executives, a form is the point where a digital channel turns into information the company can use. The questions that matter are not technical. Which decisions will this form feed? Who is accountable for acting on the answers? How quickly must a response be handled? A guest survey that arrives in an inbox nobody reads is worse than no survey, because it teaches customers that their opinion does not count.

A second question is integration. Data that stays inside the form tool cannot support a complete view of the customer, so the best implementations connect submissions to the CRM or to the service system, where a complaint becomes a case and a request becomes a lead. The portal is the natural place to start, since it already knows who the user is when authentication is on. Our article on how to automate your service platform with a service portal and a CRM describes this pattern. The third question is governance. Forms multiply quickly, and without a naming convention, an owner and a review calendar, an organization ends up with dozens of outdated forms that confuse customers and expose data. A simple inventory, reviewed twice a year, avoids the problem.

How can a director start next Monday?

Choose one process that today depends on email, spreadsheets or phone calls, such as a service request, a registration or a satisfaction survey. Write down the five questions that you really need answered and delete the rest. Ask the portal team to build the form in a test site following the steps above, with CAPTCHA if it is public, authentication if it is for members, and an email notification to a named person. Test it yourself on a phone, send it to ten real users and review the answers after a week. Decide what to change, assign an owner for the responses and set a date to review the results with the leadership team. A small form that works is a better start than a large one that never launches.

How does ICX help?

ICX Consulting designs and implements portals on Liferay, together with the processes, forms and integrations that make them useful for customers, members and employees. Before choosing the platform that will carry your forms and portal, we recommend our Technology Selection Toolkit. We chose it for this topic because deciding whether a platform such as Liferay is the right enabler for forms and self-service is a technology selection question, and the toolkit offers an assessment checklist and an evaluation matrix to make that decision with evidence. You can also learn about our enterprise business portals practice and read about what differentiates a business portal from a traditional website.

Frequently asked questions

Can anyone fill out a Liferay form, or only registered users?

Both are possible. By default a published form can be shared with anyone who has the link, and you can require authentication so that only users with an account can complete it. Choose according to the sensitivity of the data and the identity you need to know.

How do we protect a public form from spam?

Enable the CAPTCHA option in the form settings. Combine it with a short form, a clear purpose and monitoring of submissions, and consider accessible alternatives for people who cannot use visual challenges.

Can the form send me an email when someone submits it?

Yes. In the form settings you can activate email notifications and indicate the address that should receive the information each time a user completes the form.

Where can I check the latest Liferay documentation?

Liferay publishes official documentation for each version on Liferay Learn, including guides on creating forms, configuring them and managing submissions. Because menus and options change between releases, check the guide that matches your version.

A form is a small piece of a portal that carries a large part of the relationship with customers, since it is where they speak and the company listens. If you would like to review how your own forms and portal collect and use information, request a diagnostic with an ICX consultant and we will review it with you.