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

    • Default Sorting on Related Lists

      Is it possible to set the default sorting options on the related lists. For example on the Contact Details view I have related lists for activities, emails, products cases, notes etc... currently: Activities 'created date' newest first Emails - 'created

    • WebDAV / FTP / SFTP protocols for syncing

      I believe the Zoho for Desktop app is built using a proprietary protocol. For the growing number of people using services such as odrive to sync multiple accounts from various providers (Google, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, etc.) it would be really helpful if you implemented standard protocols such as WebDAV / FTP / SFTP so that alternative inc clients can be used.

    • What's New in Zoho Inventory | Q2 2025

      Hello Customers, The second quarter have been exciting months for Zoho Inventory! We’ve introduced impactful new features and enhancements to help you manage inventory operations with even greater precision and control. While we have many more exciting

    • How to refresh a ticket view ?

      I am doing a widget where I send a rest api call to make a new draft to the ticket I am viewing. The issue is sometimes it refresh a ticket view and I can see inserted draft right away, but sometimes I do not see it even if it is inserted correctly and

    • Ugh! - Text Box (Single Line) Not Enough - Text Box (Multi-line) Unavailable in PDF!

      I provide services, I do not sell items. In each estimate I send I provide a customized job description. A two or three sentence summary of the job to be performed. I need to be able to include this job description on each estimate I send as it's a critical

    • Merge Items

      Is there a work around for merging items? We currently have three names for one item, all have had a transaction associated so there is no deleting (just deactivating, which doesn't really help. It still appears so people are continuing to use it). I also can't assign inventory tracking to items used in past transactions, which I don't understand, this is an important feature moving forward.. It would be nice to merge into one item and be able to track inventory. Let me know if this is possible.

    • Supervisor Rules - Zoho Desk

      Hi, I have set up a Supervisor Rule in Zoho Desk to send an email alert when a ticket has been on hold for 48 hours. Is there a way to change it so that the alert only sends once and not on an hourly basis? Thank you Laura

    • ResponseCode 421, 4.7.0 [TSS04] Messages from 136.143.188.51 temporarily deferred due to user complaints

      Had email bounce. Let me know if you can fix this. Thanks. Michael

    • Zoho Canvas - Custom templates for related lists

      Hi, I see that the example pages load always one of our related lists in a custom template, but I dont know how to work with that:  1) How can i make my own custom templates for related lists?  2) Where and how can i check out existing custom templates?

    • Automation #15: Automatically Adding Static Secondary Contacts

      Rockel is a top-tier client of Zylker traders. Marcus handles communications with Rockel and would like to add Terence, the CTO of Zylker traders to the email conversations. In this case, the emails coming from user address rockel.com should have Terence

    • New Zoho triggers Google Dangerous flag due toabnormal charcters

      Just signed up and doing my first email test. I sent it to my google email account but it got flagged as Dangerous" due abnormal characters. My DNS setup looks ok. Page snips attached Help Please Thanks, Rick DC PowerWorld

    • Is there a API to fetch tasks in a Board/Section

      I am writing a scheduled function that retrieves all the tasks and send an reminder on cliq. I cannot seem to find a API to fetch tasks (by user / board / section) What are the way to fetch tasks?

    • Having trouble fetching contents of Zoho Connect Feeds using the API, requesting alternative API documentation.

      I'm trying to retrieve feed/post data from Zoho Connect using the API but facing challenges with the current documentation. What I've tried: OAuth authentication is working correctly (getting 200 OK responses) Tested multiple endpoints: /pulse/nativeapi/v2/feeds,

    • Adding an Account Name to Tasks/Reminders

      Does anyone know how to add the related account name to a task?  When we look at the list of activities and when the reminders pop up, there is no way of quickly seeing who the account is. 

    • Triggering Zoho Flow on Workdrive File Label

      Right now Im trying to have a zoho flow trigger on the labeling/classification of a file in a folder. Looking at the trigger options they arent great for something like this. File event occurred is probably the most applicable, but the events it has arent

    • SendMail to multiple recipients

      Hi, I'm trying to send an email to a list of recipients.  Right now the "to" field is directed to a string variable. (List variables won't work here). In the string variable, how can I make it work? trying "user@app.com;user2@app.com" or "user@app.com; user2@app.com" just failed to send the emails. Ravid

    • Populate drop down field from another form's subform

      Hello, I found how to do that, but not in case of a subform. I have a Product form that has a subform for unit and prices. A product might have more than one unit. For example, the product "Brocoli" can be sold in unit at 3$ or in box of 10 at 25 $. Both

    • Usar o Inventory ou módulo customizado no CRM para Gestão de Estoque ?

      Minha maior dor hoje em usar o zoho é a gestão do meu estoque. Sou uma empresa de varejo e essa gestão é fundamental pra mim. Obviamente preciso que esse estoque seja visível no CRM, Inicialmente fiz através de módulos personalizados no próprio Zoho CRM,

    • Signup forms behaviour : Same email & multiple submissions

      My use case is that I have a signup form (FormA) that I use in several places on my website, with a hidden field so I can see where the contact has been made from. I also have a couple of other signup forms (FormB and FormC) that slight differences. All

    • getting error in project users api

      Hello, I'm getting a "Given URL is wrong" error when trying to use the Zoho Projects V3 API endpoint for adding users to a project. The URL I'm using is https://projectsapi.zoho.com/api/v3/portal/{portalid}/projects/{projectid}/projectusers/ and it's

    • Change total display format in weekly time logs

      Hi! Would it be possible to display the total of the value entered in the weekly time log in the same format that the user input? This could be an option in the general settings -> display daily timesheet total in XX.XX format or XX:XX.

    • Different Company Name for billing & shipping address

      We are using Zoho Books & Inventory for our Logistics and started to realize soon, that Zoho is not offering a dedicated field for a shipping address company name .. when we are creating carrier shipping labels, the Billing Address company name gets always

    • How to display historical ticket information of the total time spent in each status

      Hi All, Hoping someone can help me, as I am new to Zoho Analytics, and I am a little stuck. I am looking to create a bar chart that looks back over tickets raised in the previous month and displays how much time was spent in each status (With Customer,

    • Zoho Projects iOS app update: Global Web Tabs support

      Hello everyone! In the latest version(v3.10.10) of the Zoho Projects app update, we have brought in support for Global Web Tabs. You can now access the web tabs across all the projects from the Home module of the app. Please update the app to the latest

    • Zoho Community Weekend Maintenance: 13–15 Sep 2025

      Hi everyone, We wanted to give you a heads-up that Zoho Community will undergo scheduled maintenance this weekend. During this period, some community features will be temporarily unavailable, while others will be in read-only mode. Maintenance Window:

    • Agent Performance Report

      From data to decisions: A deep dive into ticketing system reports An agent performance report in a ticketing system provides a comprehensive view of how support agents manage customer tickets. It measures efficiency and quality by tracking key performance

    • Show both Vendor and Customers in contact statement

      Dear Sir, some companies like us working with companies as Vendor and Customers too !!! it mean we send invoice and also receive bill from them , so we need our all amount in one place , but in contact statement , is separate it as Vendor and Customer, 

    • URL validation

      We use an internal intranet site which has a short DNS name which Zoho CRM will not accept.   When attempting to update the field it says "Please enter a valid URL". The URL I am trying to set is http://intranet/pm/ Our intranet is not currently setup with a full DNS name and given the amount of links using the shortname probably isn't a feasible change for us.

    • Pourquoi dans zohobooks version gratuite on ne peut ajouter notre stock d'ouverture??

      Pourquoi dans zohobooks version gratuite on ne peut ajouter notre stock d'ouverture ??

    • How can I adjust column width in Zoho Books?

      One issue I keep running into is as I show or hide columns in reports, the column widths get weird. Some columns have text cut off while others can take a fourth of the page for just a few characters. I checked report layout guides and my settings, but

    • Invalid value passed for file_name

      System generated file name does not send file anymore - what is the problem?

    • Custom Function for Estimates

      Hey everyone, I was wondering if there was a way to automate the Subject of an estimate whenever one is created or edited: * the green box using following infos: * Customer Name and Estimate Date. My Goal is to change the Subject to have this format "<MyFirm>-Estimate

    • This domain is not allowed to add. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details

      I am trying to setup the free version of Zoho Mail. When I tried to add my domain, theselfreunion.com I got the error message that is the subject of this Topic. I've read your other community forum topics, and this is NOT a free domain. So what is the

    • Search in module lists has detiorated

      Every module has a problem with the search function :-/

    • YouTube Live #1: AI-powered agreement management with Zia and Zoho Sign

      Hi there! We're excited to announce Zoho Sign’s first YouTube live series, where you can catch the latest updates and interact with our Zoho Sign experts, pose questions, and discover lesser-known features. We're starting off by riding the AI wave in

    • Search in module lists has detiorated

      Every module has a problem with the search function :-/

    • Sales Receipts Duplicating when I run reports why and how do we rectify this and any other report if this happens

      find attached extract of my report

    • Add Zoho Forms to Zoho CRM Plus bundle

      Great Zoho apps like CRM and Desk have very limited form builders when it comes to form and field rules, design, integration and deployment options. Many of my clients who use Zoho CRM Plus often hit limitations with the built in forms in CRM or Desk and are then disappointed to hear that they have to additionally pay for Zoho Forms to get all these great forms functionalities. Please consider adding Zoho Forms in the Zoho CRM Plus bundle. Best regards, Mladen Svraka Zoho Certified Consultant and

    • Bigin: filter Contacts by Company fields

      Hello, I was wondering if there's a way to filter the contacts based on a field belonging to their company. I.e.: - filter contacts by Company Annual Revenue field - filter contacts by Company Employee No. field In case this is not possibile, what workaround

    • Has Zoho changed the way it searches Items?

      Right now all of our searches have broken and we can no longer search using the SKU or alias. It was fine last night and we came in this morning to broken.....this is impacting our operations now.

    • Next Page