Online Secret Santa Questionnaire App

Notes

• Requires a Paperform account and a Google Sheets account.
• Here's the template used in the example → Secret Santa Form Template

1. Use this Secret Santa questionnaire template

Go to the template page and click "use this template." If you don't have a Paperform account, you will need to sign up for a free trial first (no CC required).

You could also start from scratch if you would like, but using templates is a great way to get off the ground and familiarize yourself with Paperform. After all, the less time you spend building your questionnaire, the more time you’d have to enjoy the gift exchange game.

2. Start editing your form

This template includes a heading and header image. You can easily change or remove this image by clicking on the image; above, a bar will appear with clickable icons. Click the 'picture' icon to replace it with your own image or clip art. If you wish to delete this particular image, click the 'X' icon. You also can change the placement and even hyperlink the image.

Find out more about adding images to your forms.

We have included example section headings within this template. The text throughout a questionnaire can be treated much like a Word doc.

If you wish to edit or remove it, simply click on the correlating text. You can highlight the text to bring up the design toolbar, allowing you to choose text placement, size, and font options.

You can add more images as well as videos, breaks, or question fields anywhere within your form. To do so, click the area you wish to input an element. A small toolbar will appear on the left; from this, you can choose what you want to add to your form by clicking the corresponding icon. Similarly, to add text within your form, click on the area you wish and begin typing.

Find out more about adding page breaks to your form.

3. Time to edit the Secret Santa questions

We have included a dummy list of questions in this questionnaire template. Those are just simple things that might give you a clue on what Christmas gift to purchase for your Secret Santa.

Editing the fields is quite simple, indeed. To edit the question title, click in the title area. You can also give a question field a description. Furthermore, you can easily duplicate, delete, move, or configure any question fields by clicking the correlating icon found on the right-hand side of a question field. To enter a questions configuration, click on the cogwheel icon.

4. Personalize the look and feel of your Secret Santa questionnaire

Now that you have changed your Secret Santa template’s basics, it is time to have some fun with the form's appearance.

From your form editor's, you can find the 'Theme settings' in the top-right corner (colored waterdrop icon). From here, you can edit the form to feel more personal.

Simple changes such as the font, size, and color of your text can be configured from here, while you can edit your text's appearance in more detail from the 'Typography' tab.

The look and feel of your buttons and questions can be edited from the 'UI Elements' tab, while you can change the background color and even upload a background image from this tab as well.

5. Put through a test submission

Click the 'view" button to go to the live form. Fill in the form and submit it. You can access submissions via the dashboard.

6. Set up the response email

Once someone has enlisted, you will want to send them a confirmation email. You can set this up under After Submission > Emails.

More info on setting up automatic response emails.

7. Connect to Google Sheets

Now it is time to connect our Secret Santa questionnaire to Google Sheets. Setting up this integration will allow us to randomize who will be buying that perfect gift for whom.

Head into your Google Sheets, and create a new sheet. Write column titles for all of the questions you would like to have in the sheet (e.g., Name, Email, Gender, etc.).

Go to After Submission > Integrations & Webhooks, and select Google Sheets > "Add Row to Sheet."

Follow the prompts to connect your Google Sheets account, and then select the appropriate sheet and map over the answers to the desired columns.

Before you click the "Send Test" button to test the integration, you will need to create a test submission.

Now that we have set up our Google Sheets integration, it is time to find out who will be gifting something to whom.

The process is quick and straightforward, using the "Randomize" function. We are going to select all the names found in the Name column and copy them. We will then move to an empty column and paste those names. I suggest naming this new column Secret Santa.

Select the new column, head up and click data, now click Randomize range from the dropdown options. This will randomize the order the names appear in, lining them up and so MATCHING them with another member.

It is possible that after using the randomize function, some of the attendees have matched themselves.

To put in place a quick fix to better seek out who this has occurred for, make sure the new Secret Santa column is selected and click Format > conditional formatting.

Under Format cells, if we will change this to Custom formula is. We will then enter into the value or formula section that if the Name column is equal to the Secret Santa column, then highlight in red.

The value or formula section should look similar to =$A:$A=$B:$B

In my example, it will be =$A:$A=$E:$E

Now every time a person is matched with themselves, this cell will be highlighted red so we know to fix it. In the below example you can see Tim is highlighted in red, therefore he was matched with himself. Simply use the randomize function again.

8. Final checklist before Christmas Party (BONUS POINTS)

Before you go sending out your Secret Santa questionnaire to your friends and family, you'll probably want to do the following:

1. Set the title, description, cover image, and custom URL under Configure > Details.
2. Customize the success page messaging under After Submission > Success Pages & Redirects.

You're almost ready for your holiday party! You can get the URL or embed code of the online order form under the Share menu in the form editor.