Umbraco Contour is out

Monday, November 16, 2009 by Administrator

contour

Contour - our brand new form designer that makes creating contact forms, entry forms and questionnaires just as easy as editing content - is finally released. It's the best thing we've ever made and it's also the most relevant product we've shipped.

Until this date making online forms with Umbraco have been either developer work, hacks using AutoForm/Doc2Form or other creative but odd solutions. Odd because the techniques used were never meant to deal with gathering form data.

Contour is designed for that purpose only. It has taken nearly three years to come up with the perfect balance where simplicity and functional depth goes hand-in-hand - just like Umbraco. But over the summer the pieces came together and I'm really sure you'll love it. Whether it's simple contact forms, huge questionnaires or making "web2.0'ish" functionality like user-generated content it got you covered.

Contour is also the first product that follows our new pricing strategy where you don't need to purchase Umbraco PRO. Contour is priced at just EUR199, but the rest of the year we're giving it away for a mere of 99EUR.

That was a lot of words. Tim Geyssens have done a great job of showing it instead - enjoy:

You need to have Flash and javascript enabled to use this video tutorial

* and yes, Contour is the artist formerly known as UmbracoForms!

13 comment(s) for “Umbraco Contour is out”

  1. Gravatar ImageDigby Says:

    Looks very good and would like to include with the majority of client projects. How does licensing work. Is it based upon domain? How do we manage use in development?

    Great work

    Digby

  2. Gravatar ImageNiels Kristiansen Says:

    That's just awesome. The Form functionality is here at last. That's one of the thing I missed on some of the projects where I used Umbraco.

    Thanks a lot guys and as Digby said "Great Work".

    /Niels

  3. Gravatar ImageAndré Says:

    Hi,

    is there a way via umbraco api to:

    *apply custom validation to user input data and
    *intercept saving the user input data and execute some custom code to insert into MS CRM instead.

    This impressed me, as i have seen some form builders before, but they required way too much time to gain the desired results.

    Cheers,
    André

  4. Gravatar ImagePer Ploug Hansen Says:

    @andre: We will add custom validation in the next version so you can write your own .net custom validation classes.

    Forms comes with the concept of workflows, so you execute code at certain events, which could be sending the form data to MS crm.

  5. Gravatar ImageFredrik Pettersson Says:

    Awesome!
    But is this going to be extended to MySQL later on? That is a must for me since only one customer of 20 is using SQL Server..

  6. Gravatar ImageTim Geyssens Says:

    @Frederik, yes we are working on MySQL and VistaDB support as we speak.

  7. Gravatar ImageThomas V. Nielsen Says:

    Looks nice!
    Love the music in th vid :P

  8. Gravatar ImageChris Says:

    Hi,

    You've mentioned that Contour follows the new pricing model where you don't need PRO.

    I'm an external provider, so I don't get the subscriber emails, but need to provide advice to the organisations that I work with. Am I correct in that Contour is not included in the PRO subscription - ie that the PRO is just for Courier?

    Similarly, is the new pricing strategy to offer all products as optional, additional cost features - or will some still be offered under the PRO subscription?

    Thanks,
    Chris

  9. Gravatar ImageJon Jenkins Says:

    Couple of ideas...

    It would be nice if the email workflow item allowed you to (a) use a submitted form field as the TO email address (think "confirmation" email), and (b) let you pick an Umbraco site page as the BODY/SUBJECT/FROM (maybe drawing from different properties in some kind of mapping?)... that would make it a great, dynamic feature.

    Just some thoughts for the future.

  10. Gravatar ImagePer Ploug Hansen Says:

    @chris: Contour is available to all PRO customers free of charge, just like concierge and courier is currently.

    @jon, this is already possible. Workflows support a bracket syntax for using record and page data in any field on any workflow.

    This is described in detail in the developer documentation here: http://umbraco.org/products/umbraco-contour/help-and-support/developer-documentation.aspx

    on Page 13

  11. Gravatar ImageChris Says:

    Thanks! This all looks really quite impressive, and definitely fills a hole that previously required third party components. I look forward to having a play with it.

  12. Gravatar ImageJon J Says:

    @PHansen: Great! Thanks, I now see the {tag} syntax. Can a tag reference a dictionary item or a specific page property (on another page)?

  13. Gravatar ImageGregg Duncan Says:

    Please set contour up to work with a multi-site installation of Umbraco. So that admins of each site can create their own forms without seeing forms created by other sites.

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