Checkbox questions, and name and email first

A connect card asks a visitor which programs they'd like to hear about — children, youth, Sunday school, the 10:15 service. Most people want to hear about two or three. A dropdown makes them pick one. That's been the one place our custom questions couldn't keep up with the Google Form it was replacing. Now they can.

The short version: Custom questions get a fourth answer type: Checkboxes (pick any). List the options the same way you would for a dropdown and volunteers check as many as apply. A follow-up question can appear when one particular box is checked. And every sign-up form now asks for name, email, and phone first, then your questions. On every plan, including Free.

Check all that apply

In the Custom questions card, the answer type menu now reads short answer, dropdown (pick one), checkboxes (pick any), and yes/no. Checkboxes take their options comma-separated, exactly like a dropdown — “Share the Feast, Operation Christmas Child, Thanksgiving Dinner” — and show up on the form as a list of boxes.

The answer is stored as the checked options in a row: Children, Youth. That one string is what you see on the sheet's Sign-ups tab, in the table view, in the CSV, in your sign-up emails and Slack posts, and in the Planning Center note if you've turned that on — nothing downstream had to learn a new trick. Mark the question required and at least one box has to be checked.

Follow-ups that watch one box

Conditional questions work on checkboxes too. Set “Your kids' grades” to appear only when “I'd like to learn more about” includes Children, and it shows the moment that box is checked — whatever else is checked alongside it — and stays out of everyone else's way.

Importing from Jotform? Its checkbox fields used to come over as a pick-one dropdown, with a note to reword them. They now import as checkboxes with the same options, so the form you paste in is the form you get.

Name and email first

The smaller change, and the one more people asked for: the public form now asks for name, email, and phone before your questions, not after. It's the order every paper form, Google Form, and connect card already uses, and it means someone filling out a long interest list has already told you who they are if they trail off halfway down. On a plain form the optional note moves to the end, right above Send, where a catch-all belongs.

Both are live now on every plan. Open any sheet's Questions tab to add a checkbox question — and the help article has the details, conditions included.

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