How to Make Online Attendance with Google Forms

Tutorial on How to Make Online Attendance with Google Forms — Currently, almost all meetings are conducted online, from office meetings, schools, lectures, recitation, seminars, interviews, product promotion, and even wedding receptions are also conducted online. Some online meeting applications such as Zoom actually provide online attendance in the application, but the default attendance is not flexible if we use more than one online meeting application.

Applications that are popular for online meetings include Zoom Meeting, Google Meet, Cisco Webex Meeting, Microsoft Team, Zoho Meeting. However, if the meeting participants are only a few people, you can also take advantage of WhatsApp group video calls.

Lack of Online Attendance, the Built-in Online Meeting Application

Online attendance built in to applications such as Zoom is indeed easy, but there is also a lack of online attendance built into online meeting applications compared to Google Form, namely:

• Attendance data is not centralized, making it troublesome for the admin when doing recapitulation. There are times when we are faced with the condition of having to change applications, for example at this month’s meeting using Zoom, but for some reason next month we have to use Google Meet or Cisco Webex.
• The data that can be collected from meeting participants is limited due to application limitations. Because these features are built-in in the application, sometimes we can’t modify the attendance form according to our needs.
• Due to the incomplete data obtained, the data cannot be used for the purposes of analyzing meeting participant data, for example age, hobbies, favorite products.

Online Attendance Function

Conventional attendance in the form of a sign on the attendance form can no longer be used due to conditions that make it impossible for face-to-face meetings, because online attendance forms are the best choice. Even though there are different media, attendance at meeting participants still has the same function, including:

• This is to find out the data on meeting participants who attended the online meeting. If the online meeting was only attended by less than 20 people, it would be very easy to register the participants. However, if the meeting is attended by hundreds of participants with an open invitation system, of course a detailed online attendance system is needed so that the data is obtained completely and according to needs.
• Attendance data becomes material for event accountability reports. This is different from online meetings that are attended by participants from various regions, so in the activity accountability report we can report participant data in more detail, for example the number of participants, the area of ​​origin of the participants, the agency of origin, and other data if needed.
• Collecting data for future purposes. For example, the committee of an event has a policy that after the event is over, every online seminar participant will be sent a gift. Then the online attendance data becomes the source of data to determine the items to be sent and the delivery address. Mobile numbers and email addresses collected through the online attendance form can also be used for marketing purposes.

Initial step

Before creating an online attendance form using Google Form, there are a number of preliminary steps that need to be taken because this will determine what data we need to enter into the online attendance form, namely:

• Identify these meetings as regular meetings, small gatherings, large gatherings, seminars, classes, product promotions, meetings, etc. If the event is in the form of a small meeting and the participants are permanent, then we can make the attendance form in a simple way, for example, name, position, division, attendance.
• Identify who the participants of the meeting / meeting are. If the event to be made attendance is a class of a school, then the participants are students. To make student online attendance, the data that is filled in during attendance does not need to be too complicated, in fact in some parts it needs to be locked for data validation, for example NIM (student identification number), class, and subject. Conversely, if the meeting is related to the marketing of a product, the committee must be able to obtain more detailed participant data for promotional / marketing decisions.
• Inventory what data you want to get from meeting participants, for example name, address, agency / office / company, cellphone number, and email address. For example, the pantia has a policy after the meeting is over the committee will send souvenirs to each participant / participant, so the online attendance form can be added to the address and cellphone number.

How to Make Online Attendance Using Google Forms

1. First open the Google Drive web, then click My Drive.

2. In order for the files in Google Drive to be neat, first create a folder for the location where the attendance form will be stored. In the example I created a folder called “Google Form”. Later the google form file and the response will be in that folder.

3. Select New> Google Forms> Blank Form. We’ll start with a blank form even though Google provides many templates that we can use for free.

In this example, we will create an attendance form for launching skin care products, later each participant will be sent a product sample, therefore participants must enter an address. In addition, for marketing purposes the organizer will ask participants to enter their cellphone number, email address.

The Google Form online attendance structure is as follows:

Header
Fill in the name of the event and the description of the event. Since this event is aimed at women, a pink color theme was chosen and a cosmetic illustration was added.

a list of questions
There are several questions that will appear in the form, namely:

a. Name> Short Answer> plus a description please “Please fill in your full name to facilitate delivery of product samples”

b. Mobile Number> Short Answer

c. Email address> Short Answer> Response Validation> Text> Email address. This is to direct participants to fill in an email address in an appropriate format. You can get the participant’s email address via the “Collect email address” option in the Send menu. However, the email input menu will appear in the first question and make the display less good, so I prefer to add my own email fields.

d. Address for sending product samples> Short answer.

e. ATTEND> empty question column, and multiple choise answers.

The final result of the online attendance form with Google Form is as follows:

Additional Settings

To share a Google Form link, you can click the SEND button in the top right corner. Use a link shortener (link shortener) so that the links are not too long.
Admin can add setup One person can only send data once in Settings menu> Requires 1 response
To make participants able to view and edit data that has been submitted, the admin can
Check the Respondents option can edit after submit and see summary chart and text response.

Google form can also be embedded (embed) on the website by clicking Send> then select “<>
“, And put it on the website page that has been provided.

How to Make Online Attendance with Google Forms
This is the tutorial on how to make online attendance using Google Form.

Good luck.