That is great news! Will this be only for applicants or will it apply to evaluators as well? For us, evaluators are the ones that use bullet points most often.

Text Area should accept Rich Text. We recently started using Foundant. We're currently using Text Areas for the narrative of the proposals, but it gets hard to see the structure of the document when there is no Bold, Italic, or font size differences. I don't see where anyone else has suggested this, so probably not going to change. We'll probably move back to applicants uploading .pdfs. They can include images as well that way.

Applicants frequently need to provide links in their applications. Long-form links are cumbersome. Add the text editor to allow links to be embedded please.

It would be nice to allow grantees to use underlining, bold, italics, etc. as administrators are able to do so that they can more easily format their text/narrative entries. Related would be the ability to allow people to embed charts/graphics in their text entries. Instead of having a picture get uploaded as an attachment, it could be embedded in the text.

It would be helpful for Administrators and Staff evaluators to have the ability to format text (bold, italics, underline, etc.). Currently, that is the only thing holding us back from using the Evaluation function of a process. Instead, we write our evaluations/recommendations in Word and upload the document, which seems like an unnecessary step.

So this is maybe getting too technical but... if the applicants start formatting their responses, will the HTML code show up in our exports? That happened to me with another website and obviously that makes Excel charts harder to work with. If so, it would force me to start using the report module instead of Excel.

Allowing formatted text is important for our Foundations not just for the applicants but also for our Boards, who expect applications to look like they were written in Word (professional-looking, formatted text), not generic and hard to read for more than a few sentences. We will resort to having most applications uploaded as a separate Word doc, which is not ideal.
Please make this a priority.

As we are moving through our process it is hard to determine what are motions and what are discussion comments because we are so used to used regular type, bold type, and underline options to distinguish each area. It would be great to see these options available on our side.

This would be nice, but as I'm sure Foundant staff is already aware, it could be potentially disastrous if our applicants got the same warning that we see re: "You can't paste text into this HTML editor without deleting the current contents." I don't think that would go over well, so if it's possible to use another HTML editor solution, that could be cool.

I am just experiencing my first grant round using Foundant. (Loving it so far!) I have not had any requests from applicants about formatting but staff is requesting some options. The main request is for tabs. This is because if the program officer wants to include a short table or chart, the formatting does not follow through to the printing; the end result is very hard to read.

I like the idea... but the current admin html is so buggy that I would hope those problems would be fixed before offering it to applicants. I can just see one of our applicants blowing a fuse if their narrative shows up without spaces (through no fault of their own - hidden formatting from a Word paste will do this without warning). If they get docked by our panel reviewers for that, it's bad on us.

We too are getting those requests....even this text box has the option to bold or even the possibility to underline. My applicants would love to have this same text box available so they can add
bullet listsdraw your eye to contentmake it easier to read!Thank you for your work on this!

Thanks for the feedback, Chris. This has been the number request from my applicant organizations so I felt I needed to pass it along. Since administrations can use html in formatting the forms, would it be a stretch for applicants to also use html in this way? Thanks

posted July 18, 2013 by Amy Palmer, Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville

Hi Amy,

Thanks for taking the time to add your suggestion. I can appreciate the fact that applicants - and particularly those involved in the arts - would be sensitive to the visual appeal of their application.

However, at this point, there are quite a few more functional things we need to work through, in addition to doing some work to keep the system stable for an ever-growing number of users.

I'd encourage other folks to comment on this suggestion, and as we continue to make needed improvements, this may be something that we can evaluate.

Thanks again

posted July 17, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies

Would it be possible for the applicant to use html for formatting within their narratives? I work with arts organizations and they are really concerned with making their applications visually appealing. They would really like to be able to bold, italicize, etc.

Idea posted July 2, 2013 by Amy Palmer, Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville