Google has a “forms” tool that can be used as a convenient way for you to collect information about which chapter members are attending which meetups your chapter has, and a link to this RSVP form can be included in your event calendar to make it easy for members to RSVP!
Your members simply click a link, check the boxes for meetups they will attend, click send – and you get everyone’s responses in a single easy to use spreadsheet.
This can be filled out by anyone who has the link – they do not need a google account, but you will need to have one to make the form (They are free, so you can make a google email for your chapter if you don’t already have one).
If you do not have a google account and you’re a chapter, then you could designate someone to be your event coordinator who manages a chapter email account (yourchaptername@gmail.com) and use that for Chapter matters.
How to make a Google Form.
In any Google product page when you’re signed into your Google account, click on the square of dots to open the menu of Google products.
Scroll right down to find the “forms” option.
Then once you’re in the Forms screen, click on the first option with the + symbol titled “Blank Form” to start a new form.
We have an example Hoot/Meetup RSVP form that you can use as a guide for making your own – View the Form here
You can add the questions for people to answer by clicking the plus “add question”
And change the type of response by clicking on the down arrow and selecting a different type.
To add the events for them to mark off, you will need to use the “Checkbox Grid” option.
It’s best to keep both the ROW and COLUMN options using as few short words as possible, so that they don’t take up too much space in the spreadsheet later.
Eg instead of “Lunch at Stamford in Rowville on February 14th at 12noon“, use something really short like “14/2/27 – Stamford”
You can put a link to the full calendar at the top of the form description so they can check what’s on the dates without you having to put all that information in the form.
You can give Yes/No/Maybe options, but we like to have an idea of why members say no (whether it’s because they can’t make it or don’t want to come), to help us know which types of activities people want or which days of the week they can’t do.
Get the link
Once your questions are made, you need to generate a link to give to people. Click the icon of a link “Copy Responder Link” and use the option that will shorten the link to get rid of a lot of the random numbers/letters.
Copy the link and you can then use it to send to your chapter members (perhaps add the link to your google doc calendar)
To view the responses you get from the form, click on the “responses” tab and click the option to “Link to sheets” – after it has made the spreadsheet, this button will then change to “view in sheets” and is how you can view all the responses. You might want to bookmark that response sheet so you can find it later.
Formatting the response sheet
The first time you open the response sheet it might look like a jumbled mess, but don’t panic, you can make it easier to read by changing a few simple things.
Click to highlight the first row (1) that is the headings of the activities, and select “Format” then “Rotation” then “Rotate Up” so that they take up less space. This is why I recommended keeping the options to few words, but you can also change the font size and even delete words to neaten things up, which will help make the columns a little neater.
If columns are wider than they need to be, you can drag them closer together.
You’ll end up with responses neatly organised like this, making it very easy to see who is marked off as coming to an activity and who isn’t.
Editing it afterwards
If you need to add more activities to the list later, you can simply add more, and you can delete old activities – and ask the ladies to fill the form out again. You don’t need to make a new form, which means you won’t need to change the link!
Just be aware that if you change the questions, including adding/removing options, the responses that were submitted before your change will still have answers to those old questions. Any deleted questions will have empty columns for new responses, and new questions will add columns on.
You can delete rows in the spreadsheet if they are no longer needed (like old outdated responses) by right clicking on the row you no longer want, and select “delete row”.
Emailing you notifications
The last step you might like to do is to set the form to email you whenever someone submits a response. To do that, click on the “responses” tab of your Google Form, then click the 3 dots and click the option to receive responses (it will show a tick when activated)
If you want to share the response sheet with your members (so they can see who is coming and what they responded), you can share the link to the spreadsheet the same way you share any google doc (just remember to set it to be viewable by anyone with the link).
