5 ways to adapt social distancing this holiday season using online forms

5 ways to adapt social distancing this holiday season using online forms

Hello fellow form builders, 

Social distancing measures are being woven into the fabric of daily business practices, ending many forms of direct-contact business. To adapt to this, businesses might want to change their business practices, adding necessary measures that embrace the safety-first approach. Here are a few ideas for how online forms can replace face-to-face activities while increasing efficiency: 

1. Replace fundraising events with online donation forms 

Fundraising and donation collection is common during the holiday season. This year, the chances for hosting in-person fundraising events are essentially zero and collecting donations online can help make up the difference. With a donation form you can collect donor information and the donations themselves, using online payment methods. To get started right away, you can use the ready-to-go template from here. Besides sharing the form's direct link, you can get the word out in a variety of ways:  
  • Embed donation forms onto your webpages
  • Add the donation form link into promotional text messages
  • Add form links to your email and social media campaigns
  • Add forms into your blog posts 

2. Take holiday meetups to virtual space 

Staying connected with customers and clients should be a top priority for your business. Replacing face-to-face meetings with virtual events can keep your business relevant and show customers how much you care about them. The transition to the virtual events may seem difficult, but it doesn't have to be. Zoho Forms can help by making it easy to create online RSVPs and invitations using online forms. Sharing invitations this way lets your attendees quickly register for your events. Read more on this here. 

For examples, gyms can live stream workouts to all their members. To help members enroll for the live stream, they can offer a membership form with a special holiday discount. 

3. Host restaurant forms to encourage on-the-go pickup

As restaurants resume their business, adapting to social distancing is important. Setting up an ordering service lets customers to book online from their homes and collect the orders curbside, spending just a few minutes at the restaurant.

Implementing this service doesn't need to be as technical as it sounds. You can start building a form with ready-to-go templates from here. There are also plenty of themes and custom options in our theme builder, so you can design forms that match your restaurant's other branding. If you need assistance, read this detailed guide to getting started with our theme builder.

Here are a few things you can do while designing takeout order forms:
  • Collect customer orders and specific requests using various question types
  • Acknowledge the order using email confirmation
  • Add options to make order payments online or in person
  • Deliver an e-receipt automatically

4. Allow customers to schedule appointments

To avoid long lines winding through your storefront, you can make it quick and easy for your customers to make appointments with you. For businesses dealing with merchandise, jewelry, or other physical products, this can be a great way to reduce customer traffic at their store.

Giving an opportunity to book via online appointment forms lets customers give their preferred time, share what they are looking for, and receive instructions on how to prepare for the appointment. Once they book, you can confirm on your end, giving them the confidence they need to take the plunge. 

5. Replace physical feedback with scannable forms 

Scannable QR feedback forms are a great alternative to collecting verbal feedback. Using Zoho Forms, create feedback forms tailored to your needs and convert them into a QR code. Placing these codes on the walls of your restaurant, store, conference location, or wherever else you conduct business, makes it easier for your audiences to access the form with a quick scan. 

Later, they can fill out the survey and share comprehensive feedback on your service or product. This not only avoids physical contact, but also makes it easier to collect large amounts of feedback, so you can share it with others. 

Key takeaway: Work smarter 

This holiday season, grow your business easily and safely by using smarter workflows. As you use online forms to connect with your audience, you're minimizing direct physical contact, too! Let us know if these tips were helpful and what your favorite was in the comments below.

Happy holidays!


If you have any questions or feedback to share, feel free to comment below or drop us an email at support@zohoforms.com


    • Sticky Posts

    • 5 ways to adapt social distancing this holiday season using online forms

      Hello fellow form builders,  Social distancing measures are being woven into the fabric of daily business practices, ending many forms of direct-contact business. To adapt to this, businesses might want to change their business practices, adding necessary

    • Online donations: Encourage your audience to give back this holiday season

      Hello fellow form builders, The holiday season isn't just about shopping and festivities. There's a special zeal to give back to the community as a gesture of gratitude. While donation boxes are still around, many businesses are focused on their online

    • Getting your forms ready for the holidays

      Hello fellow form builders! With the holidays coming up, we've all started to get the hang of the new normal as people get ready for all the festivity around. This year is different from others in the past, which means businesses are trying out new ways

    • 5 Ways to pull off holiday events like a pro using online forms

      Hello fellow form builders, This is the fifth post of the five-part series on "Getting ready for the holiday season with Zoho Forms." This series aims to help you make the best of your forms and grow your business this season. Holiday events are suppose to be fun, and so is hosting them. So if you are overwhelmed and it seems like your event organizing is all over the place, then something has gone wrong. Yet, sweat not - we've got you!   The entire event planning process can be made easy by automating

    • 5 ways to improve your holiday fundraising with online forms

      Hello fellow form builders,  This is part four of our five-part series on "Getting ready for the holiday season with Zoho Forms." This series aims to help you make the best of your forms and grow your business this season. Asking for money isn't easy, yet it's a crucial step for any fundraising group or organization. During this holiday season, make collecting donations fun and more effective with our list of the top five ways to improve your overall fundraising process. Let's dive in. 1. Create

    • Recent Topics

    • Slack / Zoho Flow; Repl

      I am trying to add a comment in a zoho ticket when someone reply's to a message in a thread. The Message posted to public channel trigger doesn't seem to pick up thread messages. I also cannot use the thread_ts field as it doesn't seem to pull that in.

    • Get Holiday ready with Zoho Mail's Templates

      As the holiday season approaches, it’s time to step away from work and unwind. You may not be able to respond to every email or send individual messages to wish everyone holidays greetings—but It is still important to stay connected. How do you send thoughtful

    • Customize folder permissions in a Team Folder in a Team Folder via zoho Flow

      HI All, on the nth level folder of a team folder I would like to Customize folder permissions when it's created in the flow of Creating folders. That last level I only want to grant access to a specific group, goup ID 201XXXXXXXX. Can you help with a

    • Associating a Candidate to a Job Listing

      Hello, I am trying to use Zoho Forms embedded on my website for candidates to apply for a job opening. I want the form then to tie directly with zoho recruit and have the candidate be automatically inputed into Recruit as well as associated with the specific

    • Automate reminder emails for events

      Hi team, I am trying to automate send event reminders via zoho campaign to my attendees 1 day prior to my scheduled events. I used zoho flow, autoresponder in zoho campaign, as well as I used workflow and automation - but none of these methods are working.

    • Update related module entry Zoho Flow not working with custom module ?

      Hi everyone. I am facing an issue here on Zoho Flow. Basically what I am doing is checking when a module entry is being filled in with an Event ID. Event is a custom module that I created. If the field is being filled in I fetch the contact with its ID

    • How to disable time log on / time log off

      Hi We use zoho people just to manage our HR Collaborators. We don't need that each persona check in and out the time tracker. How to disable from the screen that ?

    • Dealing With One-Time Customers on Zoho Books

      Hello there! I am trying to figure out a way to handle One-Time customers without having to create multiple accounts for every single one on Zoho Books. I understand that I can create a placeholder account called "Walk-In Customer", for example, but I

    • Zoho Flow - Add to Google Calendar from trigger in Zoho Creator App

      Hello! New to Zoho Flow, but I believe I have everything setup the way it should be however getting an error saying "Google Calendar says "Bad Request". Any idea where I should start looking? Essentially some background: Zoho Creator app has a trigger

    • Email authentication

      أريد التحقق من البريد الإلكتروني

    • What’s New in Zoho Analytics – December 2025

      December is a special time of the year to celebrate progress, reflect on what we have achieved, and prepare for what’s ahead! As we wrap up the year, this month’s updates focus on refining experiences, strengthening analytics workflows, and setting the

    • Marketing Tip #12: Earn trust with payment badges and clear policies

      Online shoppers want to know they can trust your store. Displaying trust signals such as SSL-secure payment badges, return and refund policies, and verified reviews shows visitors that your store is reliable. These visual cues can turn hesitation into

    • The improved portal experience: Introducing the template view for inventory modules, enhanced configurations, and PDF export support

      Availability: Open for all DCs. Editions: All Hello everyone, You can now achieve a seamless, brand-aligned portal experience with our enhanced configuration options and the new template view for inventory modules. Your clients will now be able to view

    • Zoho Analytics Bulk Api Import json Data

      HI, I’m trying to bulk-update rows in Zoho Analytics, and below are the request and response details. I’d like to understand the required parameters for constructing a bulk API request to import or update data in a table using Deluge. Any guidance on

    • Project Management Bulletin: December, 2025

      The holiday cheer is in the air and it’s time to reflect on the year that was. At Zoho PM Suite, we've been working behind the scenes on something huge and exciting all year and now we are almost ready—with just a bit of confetti—for our grand release

    • Inventory batch details

      Hi there, I'm trying to get the batch details of an item, here's what I've done so far. I've sent cUrl request to the below endpoint and I get a successful response. Within in the response I find the "warehouses" property which correctly lists all the

    • Auto check out after shift complete

      i'm just stuck here right now, i wanna know how to do this thing, now tell me, how can i configure a custom function that runs after complete shift time if employee forget to check-out ?

    • How to create a flow that creates tickets automaticaly everyday based on specific times

      Hi guys Does anyone know how to create a flow that will create tickets automaticaly in ZOHO Desk when a certain time is reached. Im havin a hard time configuring a flow that will create tickets automaticaly everyday during specific hours of the day For

    • ZOHO FLOW - ZOHO CREATOR - ZOHO WRITER : Get Related records

      Bonjour, J'ai besoin que vous m'ajoutiez la solution "Get related Records" dans la liste de choix de zoho creator (sous Zoho flow). En effet, j'ai besoin de récupérer les champs d'un sous formulaire pour l'ajouter à l'impression de mon document. Mer

    • Will zoho thrive be integrated with Zoho Books?

      title

    • Connecting email for each department in ZohoDesk

      Hi! Could someone help me to go through connecting emails for each department?

    • How do I trigger a Flow based on a campaign response?

      Is there a way to trgiider a Zoho Flow based upon a lead opening an email sent via Zoho Campaigns? I see that the data is recorded in the 'Campaigns' section of Zoho CRM under 'Member Status' and I want to trgigger a flow based upon that record changing.

    • All Zoho Flows are filtered

      My two flows operate perfectly when I run them as a test, but when they're activated each run ends with a status of neither success, nor fail, but filtered. I haven't set up any filters. I don't see where to turn off filters. When I test run on a sequence

    • Creating Multiple Items on Sales Order

      Hi, I’m trying to automate some processes using Zoho Flow, specifically the creation of sales orders in my Zoho Inventory. However, Zoho Flow's Create Sales Order function can only add one item. I would like to include multiple items in a single sales

    • Problem Connection from Zoho Flow and Gravity Form

      I obtained my API key from Gravity Forms via WordPress. However, when I enter my Zoho Flow, it states: Gravity Forms says, 'You are not authorised to access the API." I tried recreating a new API key, but it is still not working.

    • Eventbrite Email Field in Zoho Flow Returns "Info Requested" Instead of Actual Email

      Hi Zoho team, I'm using Zoho Flow to connect Eventbrite with Zoho CRM. My goal is to automatically add event attendees as leads in Zoho CRM. I’ve set up the flow and mapped the ${trigger.profile_email}} field to the Email field in CRM. However, I'm running

    • "Invalid value passed for Product ID" Error in Zoho Flow "Create Sales Order" Node

      Hello Zoho Community, I’m facing an issue with Zoho Flow while trying to create a sales order in Zoho Inventory using the "Create Sales Order" node. Here’s a detailed explanation of my setup and the problem: What I’m Trying to Achieve I’m building an

    • Associating Project with an Account via Flow

      I'm using flow to create a Project based on a Deal status update using flow. The fields exist to pass the Account Name through properly, but when you view the Projects module in a CRM Account Record it doesn't automatically associate the new Project Record

    • How to follow up a member in a meeting?

      Hello, I make weekly meeting online with a lot of people. I want(I've been using calendly to do it). I want to do a follow-up to it. I want to send messages via Zoho-flow to all the member that participated in the meeting. How can I do it?

    • Setting Delays in Invoice Reminder Flow

      I am currently working on a flow that sends reminders for unpaid invoices. The flow is designed to delay actions until specific intervals before the due date: A reminder should be sent 7 days before the due date. A second reminder should be sent 3 days

    • Get Sales Orders Related to Inventory Item

      Dear Team, I'm just wondering if there is a way to get a list of all Sales Orders related to a specific Inventory Item. I did search all articles but couldn't find any article that could help.

    • Endpoint Central Cloud Asset Update from Fresh Service

      All, Does anyone use the asset management feature in Fresh Service? I'd like some help on building a flow to update asset attributes in Endpoint Central Cloud based off of an update to that same asset in Fresh Service. The trigger is "asset is updated"

    • Zoho Flow Export to Deluge

      It would be great to take a user built zoho flow and export the entire flow as a deluge script including having multiple connected applications (showing the API connections and webhooks) and different functionality in the other applications interacting

    • Action Iteration/Loop using Zoho Flow

      Trying to use Zoho Flow for automating following Context - A zoho form entry which has image upload field with upto 5 images setting and files are saved into Workdrive. After form is submitted need to create folder based on some fields and move files

    • Zoho Flow - Unable to evaluate formatDate with Zoho Invoice Date Field for Calendar Integration

      Hello Community, I'm trying to automate the creation of all-day events in Zoho Calendar whenever a new invoice is created in Zoho Invoice. I'm using Zoho Flow for this automation. My Goal: When an invoice is created with a specific "Event Date," I want

    • Zoho Inventory Sales Order Items

      I'm trying to build automation using Zoho Flow to add items to a Sales Order. In the automation options for both "create sales order" and "update sales order", The item ID is required. However, when I update the Sales Order, it's just replacing the item

    • Permissions for Azure Devops connection

      I am trying to set up a connection with our Azure DevOps org but it keeps giving me this error. On Azure I should be able to have admin-level access to everything. Can you please point me to which permission this is checking for so I can enable it?

    • Best way to start zoho inventory with bulk openning stock

      We are already using zoho book since long time for cars trading company. Now to streamline more, would like to import the excel data of closing stock of inventory to zoho inventory and to start on. Since we need to track each VIN (unique vehicle id number)

    • My IMAP mail suddenly stopped working

      On my iPhone and iPad, IMAP stopped working for my Zoho account with the error "User name or password incorrect" and "Invalid credentials failure" however I was able to access via web with the same credentials. Also stopped working on Apple Mail client.

    • Confused by the distiction between matched and categorized when reconciling a bank statement an how to

      I used to use quickbooks. In quickbooks, it was possible to use the check writing feature to add an expense that was on the bank statement that did not go through the AP and check writing process. I would write a check, assign it a number like etf (for

    • Next Page