If you use OpenForms to build the forms for your city or council, you can embed these directly onto pages of your OpenCities site to make it easier for your community to access them. There are two ways you can do this:
- Manually copy embed codes from OpenForms and paste them into the WYSIWYG Editor of your OpenCities site pages.
- Select your OpenForms form directly from a list in the OpenCities WYSIWYG Editor when editing your pages.
If you want to select your OpenForms forms from a list, you'll need to be on an OpenForms Enterprise plan, and you'll need to configure the connection between your OpenCities and OpenForms accounts.
If you have the bridge connected:
- SSO users can log into OpenForms via Forms in OpenCities - although local OpenForms users must still log in through OpenForms
- Content authors can add OpenForms to pages through the WYSIWYG Editor.
To connect your accounts, follow these steps:
- Include form permissions for your OpenCities users
- Connect your OpenCities account with your OpenForms account
- Insert OpenForms into your pages
If you're looking for more information about using OpenForms, check out our OpenForms help center.
Include form permissions for your OpenCities users
This task is for users with the following roles: OC System Administrator.
When you connect your OpenCities and OpenForms accounts, your users will be managed from OpenCities. Because of this, you'll need to know what permissions your OpenCities users have in their roles.
This table shows which OpenForms roles correspond to the OpenCities roles
| OpenCities role | OpenForms role(s) |
| OC Power Publisher |
|
| OC Site Manager |
|
| OC System Administrator |
|
| OC OpenForms Account Owner |
|
However, if you're using custom roles, you'll need to decide which roles can access OpenForms and update the permissions accordingly.
These are the permissions you can add to custom roles:
- OpenForms Author (create, edit, delete forms, workflows and custom documents): includes permissions to create and manage OpenForms forms, workflows, and custom documents.
- OpenForms Reporter (See and export responses, files, and custom documents): includes permissions to view and manage OpenForms responses, files, and custom documents.
- OpenForms Reviewer (Assignable as a reviewer to any workflow step): includes permissions to review and action OpenForms responses for forms set up to go through a workflow after submission.
- OpenForms Admin (Manage admin and Integration settings. Assign local users and workspaces): includes permissions to perform administrative tasks in OpenForms
- OpenForms Account Owner (Manage external users, access billing and security tools, access all admin, author, and reporter tools): includes permissions to manage users, billing, and security. By default, Account Owners can also complete admin, author, and reporter tasks.
Remember that once you've connected your OpenCities and OpenForms accounts, the best place to manage your users is in OpenCities admin. To manage their details, and change or revoke their access, go to More > Users > Admin Management, then change the selected user's details and Save. Their updated access will be synced with OpenForms when they next log in to OpenForms via the OpenCities SSO bridge. You can also change the user's role directly by going to More > Roles. If you delete or deactivate an OpenCities user, they will also no longer be able to access OpenForms.
Connect your OpenCities account with your OpenForms account
This task is for accounts using the OpenForms Enterprise plan and users with the following roles: OC System Administrator.
Once you've set up your users with OpenForms permissions, you can connect your OpenForms account to OpenCities.
- Log into your OpenCities admin and select Forms from the main menu.
- Under Manage staff access to OpenForms, select Connect.
- A pop-up window will appear. Select Connect again, and you'll be taken to OpenForms.
- Select Link with existing account or, if you don't have an account, select Register new organisation.
- Follow the prompts.
Once you have connected your accounts, Single Sign-on users can access it through Forms > OpenForms.
Disconnecting your accounts
You can disconnect your OpenForms and OpenCities accounts at any time, but you'll no longer be able to login into OpenForms via OpenCities or insert OpenForms into pages directly from a list in the WYSIWYG Editor, and all SSO users will switch back to local users.
To disconnect:
- Log into your OpenCities admin and select Forms from the main menu.
- Under Manage staff access to OpenForms, select Disconnect.
- All users need to reset their passwords from the OpenForms login screen.
Once disconnected, you can still log into OpenForms directly and manually insert forms into your OpenCities pages using embed codes.
Insert OpenForms into your pages
This task is only available for OpenForms Enterprise plans.
Once you have connected and configured your OpenForms and OpenCities accounts, you can start adding published forms directly onto pages through the WYSIWYG Editor.
- In your OpenCities admin, go to the page to which you want to add the form, and select Update if it's been published already.
- Open the WYSIWYG Editor, and position your cursor in the body where you want the form to appear.
- Select the Insert OpenForms icon from the WYSIWYG Toolbar, and select your form from the list. Your form will appear as a green widget in the body content area.
- Select Save Content and Close, and then Save your page. Preview your page to see how your form looks on the page.
- Publish when you're ready.
We recommend using OpenForms on OC General pages with a full-width template so you have more space to display the form correctly. Additionally, be careful of inserting forms into accordions or tabs; the styling on these containers can affect how the embedded forms display.
If you're not an OpenForms Enterprise user, you can still manually embed an OpenForms form in OpenCities pages without connecting your account.
Check out the OpenForms help center for more assistance with building and managing OpenForms.