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Google Forms Alternative with GPS Location - Clappia

Google Forms Alternatives

Google Forms is undoubtedly one of the most popular productivity and marketing tools. It allows users to create, update, and share forms, surveys, and quizzes collaboratively. Despite its numerous capabilities, using Google Forms as your primary option might limit your potential as it does not support sophisticated features like GPS location sharing, QR code/Barcode scanner, live tracking, uploading images, signatures, etc.

Forms with GPS location tracking are an excellent tool to collect the GPS location data for incident reports, cargo tracking, factory inspections, and other purposes. Unfortunately, Google Forms does not support the geolocation feature, but the good news is - with Clappia, sharing and tracking GPS location is easier than ever. Clappia allows you to detect, track and share the GPS location by featuring a GPS location block that helps to determine the location from where the form was submitted.

Clappia also addresses various limitations of Google Forms by including aspects such as a QR Code/Bar code scanner, NFC reader, live tracking, uploading images, signatures, etc. This smooth approach lets you make informed business decisions quickly and track your team's daily tasks.

How to Integrate Geolocation Data into Mobile Forms with Clappia?

The first step to building an app with Clappia is to sign up for a free account and create your custom workspace. Once you create your workspace, you can develop mobile apps using drag-and-drop blocks without writing a single line of code.

As a part of the Data Upload Blocks, Clappia offers you the GPS location block that you can use to share or track locations. The GPS location block comes with the following features:

how to add gps location in google forms

Automatically Detect Current Location

By default, this option is disabled. When this option is enabled, the GPS location automatically updates to the current location when the user loads the Clappia app.

Allow the User to Change Location Manually

By default, this option is enabled, thus allowing the user to edit the GPS location manually. When this option is disabled, it will not allow the user to modify their current location.

Mandatory GPS Information Collection

The app will mandate the user to input the GPS location in order to submit the form when this option is enabled.

Multi-location Geofencing

Clappia allows users to set any number of locations as the designated location. You can specify a list of such places and a radius to define the Geofencing boundary. When this option is enabled, the user can submit the form only if they are present in one of the designated locations.

Use Case 1: Attendance Management System Using Geofencing

Scenario: A manufacturer with plants in 3 different locations observed significant gaps and loopholes in their manual attendance process and sought to automate it by enabling workers to submit their attendance directly from their mobile devices when they are 200 meters or less from the factory.

With Clappia's no-code platform, this problem can be solved by enabling the manufacturer to develop and deploy an app within a few hours.

By using the GPS location block and enabling the geofencing feature, the manufacturer can enter the location coordinates of all three plants as the designated locations and can set the geofencing boundary to 200 meters. Along with this, he/she can also mandate the employee to upload a selfie. Thus, an employee can register his/her attendance only if he/she comes to the plant.

Google Forms GPS tracking
Google Forms GPS coordinates Google Forms geolocation

Mobile apps designed on Clappia do not necessarily need an internet connection to work. Almost all industries, especially logistics, can leverage this feature and geofencing to avoid all their last-mile problems by ensuring accurate delivery tracking, even in the most remote places.

Use Case 2: App-Based Field Maintenance And Inspection

Scenario: A construction company wants to improve and automate their field maintenance process as it observed that maintainers delivered field inspection reports via Google Forms without visiting the field.

Being a better alternative to Google Forms, Clappia can easily track the geolocation from where the form was filled and submitted, ensuring that the maintainer visits the field. Clappia also enables the maintainer to develop an app to fill out the field maintenance checklist and upload images, signatures, and other additional remarks, if any.

Google Forms map integration
Google Forms location-based questions
Google Forms location-based surveys

What's better than having a single app to solve all your problems? With Clappia, everybody can build applications to mitigate location-based bottlenecks and improve productivity.

Use Case 3: Location-Based Customer Engagement

Scenario: A travel company wants to improve its customer engagement strategy by providing live content, the latest deals and essential information to its subscribers based on their geography instead of sending a generic email to everyone.

With Clappia, the travel company may choose whether GPS information is required while filling out the form. This helps them gain insight into where the majority of their users are located. This capability benefits the travel company, especially the marketing departments, in strategizing their upcoming campaigns. By adding the GPS feature to their data collection form, the travel company can send tailored, localized content that might interest their audience rather than sending generic mailers to everyone on the planet.

Right panel of the GPS location configuration in the Clappia app design field.
Google Forms GPS integration

Clappia allows you to enjoy specialized features without any restrictions. You can now effortlessly embed Google Maps in your form to save time and bring more quality leads to your business.

Final Thoughts

The days of copying and pasting an address from a form into Google Maps are gone. You can quickly incorporate the GPS location feature in your form with Clappia so that you always know where someone submitted their information. Try out Clappia's GPS location block and other data upload blocks to collect data and take action from anywhere.

Clappia's App Designer Blocks offers a range of blocks to input, upload, and process data, along with provisions to add workflows, incorporate analytics, integrate with external APIs, etc.

Start building mobile apps similar to Google Forms but better.

Build Custom Apps With GPS Location Tracking
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Build Custom Apps With GPS Location Without Coding
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Alternative to Google Forms with GPS Location

Since Google Forms is free and a broadly used Google application, it is without a doubt the first choice that most people think about whenever the term "Forms" or “Online Forms” comes up.

What if Google Forms had a provision of detecting the user’s GPS location data too? Of course, with the user’s permission.

Google Forms is widely used for creating quiz forms, surveys, questionnaires, sending work orders, sales orders, conducting polls, collecting ratings, feedback etc., to collect information such as name, email, phone number, answers, views on products and services etc,.

How to add GPS Location in Google Forms?

Unfortunately, there is no inbuilt feature to capture the Geolocation in Google Forms. The Google Forms creator has to write a few lines of code in the script editor, generate a link and paste that link in the Google Forms. The user has to click on it and then the GPS Location captures. The whole process of script editor is a complex one.

The best and the most efficient way to bypass the complex process of writing all those lines of code in the script editor is to use a No Code platform.

Clappia is one of the best Google Forms alternatives where you can easily create advanced form-based apps or online forms similar to Google Forms with GPS Location, without writing even a single line of code.

Clappia is a No Code platform immensely resourceful for SMEs and Enterprises with productive and efficient features to build simple to advanced form-based apps and business process apps. Clappia’s in-built GPS location feature is capable of both automatically or manually collecting the accurate Geolocation of the user.

Using simple drag-and-drop blocks anyone with basic excel skills are able to create form-based apps similar to Google Forms, without coding a single line.

Alternative to Google Forms with GPS Location in Clappia

STEP 1:

Sign up on Clappia and create a free account. You can easily create mobile apps using all the features without any subscription & without coding.

Create your own custom workplace.
Example: online-forms.clappia.com

Workplace gets created and you can start building mobile apps similar to Google Forms. 
You can create custom workplaces as per your app requirements and create custom apps in specific workplaces.
STEP 2: 

Click on “New App” and the app design field appears which can be seen on the top where “Design App” is selected.

You can rename the app to anything by clicking on Untitled App.
Example: Sales Order Form.

You can rename the sections by clicking on Untitled Section.
Example: Customer Details & Requirements.
Click on the Add Field button and the Data Input Blocks window appears. With these simple drag-and-drop blocks you can easily create a form-based mobile app similar to Google Forms without coding a single line.
STEP 3:

Select the blocks from the Data Input Blocks, configure from the Right Panel to rename accordingly:

Example: Components of Sales Order Form

Single Line Text block as “Full Name”. Similarly, configure for all other blocks.

Multi-line Text block as “Address”

Phone Number block as “Phone Number”

Single Line Text block as “Email ID”

Drop down block as “Select Item”
You can input a list of items for the user to select.

Single Line Text block as “Number of Items”

Single Line Text block as “Price Per Item”

Calculations & Logic block as “Total Bill Amount”
Add excel logic - ‘Number of Items * Price Per Item’. It gets automatically calculated. Learn more.

Date Selector block as “Date of Order”
You can set this to automatically take the current date or manually enter a date.

Time Selector block as “Time of Order”
You can set this to automatically take the current time or manually enter a time.

Unique Numbering block as “Order Number”
Automatically generates the order number. Learn more.

GPS Location block as “Delivery Location”
You can set this to automatically take the current GPS location or enter a manual GPS location. Learn more

Two Signature blocks as “Customer Signature” & Sales Executive Signature”

STEP 4:

To use the online form on Web:

Go to the “Distribute” section on the top and select the Link Sharing option in it.
Click on the Enable Link Sharing option and distribute the below mentioned link to your users.

You can share this link with anyone to access the form and fill it.

Below pictures show how the form looks in both web and mobile views:

To use the online form on app:

Download Clappia App Launcher from the Play Store (Android) or the App Store (iOS). Learn more

STEP 5:

You can click on the ‘Submissions’ option on the top right side and view all the user submissions neatly formatted in a table where the GPS location is present in the form of Latitude, Longitude format. You can also download this data by just clicking on the download option on the top right side in the form of an Excel Sheet.

You now have an online form similar to Google Forms with GPS Location.

Get Started - It's free!
Clappia Apps work in Offline mode too!

Geofencing Capability of GPS Location block in Clappia

Are you absolutely sure about field employees visiting the site or location to conduct a survey and collect necessary data?
How can you tell if the information you are given regarding a site or a location survey is authentic, if not accurate?
This is where the Geofencing feature in the GPS Location block of Clappia plays a crucial role.

You can Geofence your employees or users such that they will only be able to record and submit the data when they are in the designated location or within the radius of the designated location.

Designated Locations & Radius (in meters)

In the "Designated Locations" field, you can add one or more GPS locations. The next step is to enter a Radius in meters that corresponds to the designated locations. This implies that the user can submit the online form if and only if they are physically present inside the bounds of the designated GPS locations.

Get Started - It's free!
Clappia Apps work in Offline mode too!

When you add the GPS Location block from the Data Upload Blocks menu you get a right panel on the right side for editing the block. Label denotes the heading, Description is for instructions (which is optional), ‘Required’ option is to tell the user that it is mandatory to fill the data.

In ‘Advanced Options’ there are a few handy features for the GPS Location block which will help you in making your form more flexible for the end user to input data:

Limitation of Google Forms

There is no inbuilt GPS Location feature in Google Forms to capture the user location. Google Forms can only identify the location with scripting links which makes it mandatory for the user to click it.

Apart from the GPS Location feature, there are other limitations to Google Forms such as:

Conclusion

Google Forms can be used for basic purposes such as quiz, events, surveys, product or service reviews, feedback etc, to collect basic data. If you are looking for advanced features in Google Forms such as GPS Location, then the search for Google Forms alternatives is inevitable.

Clappia is one of the best alternatives to Google Forms where you can create form-based mobile apps similar to Google Forms. Easily build app based forms with the No Code capability just by using simple drag-and-drop blocks.

Get Started - It's free!
Clappia Apps work in Offline mode too!

Alternative to Google Forms with GPS Location

GPS location is a very important piece of information to capture in some use cases such as field surveys, sales visits, field services, inventory management, home inspections, and more.

Since Google Forms is free and a broadly used Google application, it is without a doubt the first choice for most people whenever the term "Forms" or “Online Forms” come up.

Google Forms is widely used for creating quiz forms, surveys, questionnaires, sending work orders, sales orders, conducting polls, collecting ratings, feedback, etc., to collect information such as name, email, phone number, answers, views on products, services, etc.

How to add GPS Location in Google Forms?

Unfortunately, there is no inbuilt feature to capture the geolocation of a Google Forms user. The Google Forms creator has to write a few lines of code in the script editor, generate a link and paste that link into the Google Forms. The user has to click on it and then the GPS Location captures. The whole process of using a script editor is a complex one.

The best and the most efficient way to bypass the complex process of writing all those lines of code in the script editor is to use a No Code platform.

Clappia is one of the best Google Forms alternatives where you can easily build advanced form-based apps as online forms similar to Google Forms with GPS Location, without writing even a single line of code.

Using simple drag-and-drop blocks anyone with basic excel skills can create form-based apps similar to Google Forms, without coding a single line.

With its productive and efficient capabilities, the No Code platform Clappia is incredibly valuable for SMEs and Enterprises when creating basic to complex form-based and business process apps. The in-built GPS location feature of Clappia can manually or automatically acquire the user's precise geolocation.

Get Started - It's free!
Clappia Apps work in Offline mode too!

Build a Google Forms Alternative with GPS Location in Clappia

Step 1: Sign up on Clappia for free and start building

Sign up on Clappia and create a free account. You can easily create mobile apps using all the features without any subscription & without coding.

Create your custom workplace. You can create any number of form-based apps in your workplace.
Example: online-forms.clappia.com

Workplace gets created and you can start building mobile apps similar to Google Forms.
You can create more than one custom workplaces and create custom apps in specific workplaces.

Step 2: Design your form-based app

Click on “New App” and the app design field appears which can be seen on the top where “Design App” is selected.

You can rename the app to anything by clicking on Untitled App.
Example: Sales Order Form.

You can rename the sections by clicking on Untitled Section.
Example: Customer Details & Requirements.
Click on the Add Field button and the Data Input Blocks window appears. With these simple drag-and-drop blocks you can easily create a form-based mobile app similar to Google Forms without coding a single line.

Step 3: Configure the app components

Select the blocks from the Data Input Blocks, configure from the Right Panel to rename accordingly.

Example: Components of Sales Order Form

Single Line Text block as “Full Name”. Similarly, configure for all other blocks.

Multi-line Text block as “Address”

Phone Number block as “Phone Number”

Single Line Text block as “Email ID”

Drop down block as “Select Item”You can input a list of items for the user to select.

Single Line Text block as “Number of Items”

Single Line Text block as “Price Per Item”

Calculations & Logic block as “Total Bill Amount”Add excel logic - ‘Number of Items * Price Per Item’. It gets automatically calculated. Learn more.

Date Selector block as “Date of Order”You can set this to automatically take the current date or manually enter a date.

Time Selector block as “Time of Order”You can set this to automatically take the current time or manually enter a time.

Unique Numbering block as “Order Number”Automatically generates the order number. Learn more.

GPS Location block as “Delivery Location”
You can set this to automatically take the current GPS location or enter a manual GPS location. Learn more

Two Signature blocks as “Customer Signature” & “Sales Executive Signature"”

Step 4: Go live

To use the online form on Web:

Go to the “Distribute” section on the top and select the Link Sharing option in it.Click on the Enable Link Sharing option and distribute the below mentioned link to your users.

You can share this link with anyone to access the form and fill it.
Below pictures show how the form looks in both web and mobile views:
To use the online form on app:

Download Clappia App Launcher from the Play Store (Android) or the App Store (iOS). Learn more

View submissions of the users

You can click on the ‘Submissions’ option on the top right side and view all the user submissions neatly formatted in a table where the GPS location is present in the form of Latitude, Longitude format. You can also download this data by just clicking on the download option on the top right side in the form of an Excel Sheet.

You now have an online form similar to Google Forms with GPS Location.

Get Started - It's Free!
Clappia Apps work in Offline mode too!

Geofencing Capability of GPS Location block in Clappia

How do you determine the authenticity of the information from a site survey or a location survey?

Geofencing enhances field force management by making sure your field executives are visiting the site or location to gather data by conducting a survey or engaging in any other field activity.

You can geofence your employees or users such that they will only be able to record and submit the data when they are in the designated location or within the radius of the designated location.

Designated Locations & Radius (in meters)

In the "Designated Locations" field, you can add one or more GPS locations. The next step is to enter a Radius in meters corresponding to the designated locations. This implies that the user can submit the online form if and only if they are physically present inside the radial boundary of the designated GPS locations.

Why is the search for Google Forms alternatives inevitable?

There is no inbuilt GPS Location feature in Google Forms to capture the user's location. Google Forms can only identify the location with scripting links which makes it mandatory for the user to click it. This is a complex process of setting up and capturing a GPS location in Google Forms.

Apart from the GPS Location feature, there are other limitations to Google Forms such as

Conclusion

Google Forms can be used for basic purposes such as quizzes, events, surveys, product or service reviews, feedback, etc, to collect basic data. If you are looking for advanced features in Google Forms such as GPS Location, then the search for Google Forms alternatives is inevitable.

Clappia is one of the best alternatives to Google Forms where you can create form-based mobile apps similar to Google Forms. Easily build app-based forms with the No Code capability just by using simple drag-and-drop blocks.

Get Started - It's Free!
Clappia Apps work in Offline mode too!

Google Forms Alternatives in Clappia

Below are the articles on features that are in-built in Clappia and missing in Google Forms.
Build your form-based apps using other useful features in Clappia.

Google Forms Alternatives in Clappia