Colorado Technology Student Association

COTSA is the state affiliate of the Technology Student Association (TSA) and has been existence since 1986. They use Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) to foster personal growth and leadership among students. Currently, they have nearly 3,000 members in more than 75 chapters around the state of Colorado.

COTSA exists as a professional/technical association for students; the association provides professional development for students as well as opportunities for students to participate in conferences and competitions.

The State Advisor of the association, Tony Raymond said:

“We needed a way to collect URLS and documents for our early submission events in advance of our conference. We were using Google forms to do the task, but by itself, it was clunky. Then we found Formplus which works with Google Sheets and we had our solution.”.

Just like Performance Equipment, COTSA used Google forms to collect submissions, but they needed to be able to collect video entries directly via forms, and that was when they decided to explore other online form builders.

“We did look at other systems like WuFoo, but they were cost prohibitive for us,” Tony says. “Formplus was more reasonable as far as cost, was easy for us to use, and it still allowed us the ‘backend’ of Google Forms.”

Formplus has a native integration with Google Sheets and Google Drive and this allows COTSA to receive submissions directly in Google sheets. The forms can also pass files directly into their Google drive storage and so they could go completely digital with the use of online competition forms.

Using Formplus online form app has had a significant impact on COTSA in several areas.

“The Formplus tool has made collection of URLs and forms WAY easier! And it allows us to be all digital. Before we went online with this, we would have to literally collect thousands of pieces of paper for each conference. Now, through Formplus we can collect the data digitally and store it that way — nothing ever needs to be printed out.”

The conference typically receives entries from more than 2,000 participants and each entry has to be properly combed through to determine authenticity and eligibility.