The Build Forms tab consists of two sections that work together as an easy-to-use, but very sophisticated, form creation tool. In addition to building a form from scratch, you use our Forms Library. Forms from the Library can be used directly or as a starting point for customization.

Layout

Tools/Functions – The toolbar on the left-hand side of the page provides a list of available question and container Tools/fuctions. To add a widget/fuction to your form, simply click on it.

Form Canvas – The center page provides a form canvas that illustrates the form in it’s editing process. The “selected” function (which you can now edit) is highlighted in green. To view the form in non-editing mode, you can click the preview button in the upper left-hand corner.

Properties – The properties area on the right hand side of the page allows you to customize the “selected” function. Note that the available properties vary with the question type (see below).

Menu Buttons - Menu Buttons in the upper right of the Build Forms tab provide quick access to the most commonly used functions.

Adding, Moving, Duplicating & Deleting Questions

Adding a Question – There are two ways to add a question to the canvas: click the desired question type from the function toolbar and it will be appended to the form; or use a “drag and drop” motion to place the question anywhere on the canvas.

Moving a Question – To move the position of a question, drag and drop it to the desired location.

Duplicating a Question – To duplicate a question, click on the duplicate icon in the upper right corner of the highlighted question. This is very handy when creating a form with a list of similar questions.

Deleting a Question – To delete a question, click on the delete icon (trash can) in the upper right corner of the highlighted function. You will be asked to confirm the delete.

Creating a New Form

When you start the form builder, a blank canvas will be displayed with an untitled form. If a form is already open, you can use the New button to start a new form. Note that all forms have two possible “states”:

Draft – This indicates that the form is a “work in progress” and not available to any mobile units. This allows you to see what the form will look like before publishing to your mobiles. This is great for usability testing and ensuring your ideas are implemented as you need them to be. 

Published – This indicates that a form is complete, and ready to be assigned. Published forms are automatically added to the Main Project which is subscribed to by all mobile units automatically.

See the Deploying Forms article for more information.

Opening an Existing Form

To open and edit an existing form, click the open button, then select the form you want to open. You can also open a form by selecting File>Open. If you wish to view a form without editing, you can go to the Manage section (in the main toolbar), and select Forms.

Template Library

The “Template Library” is a place where doForms Mobile Forms Consultants (MFCs) post official doForms forms. You can use these forms directly, or as starting points for customization. To open a form from the Template Library, click the Template button. See Form template library for more information.

Saving a Form

Always be sure to save changes to your form before navigating away from the Build Forms tab.

To Save a Draft form under the same name, click the Draft button. You will be provided with an opportunity to name/rename the form if you wish.

Publish - To Publish a form, click the Publish button. When published, the form will automatically be added to the Main Project, and will be available to all mobile devices that subscribe to this project.

IMPORTANT: Once a form has been published under a certain name (ex. “Timesheet”), then that name cannot be used again in your doForms account (unless “Timesheet” has been deleted). This restriction is in place to prevent confusion about which data came from which version of a form. Therefore, when publishing an update to a form, you will need to use a different name (we recommend appending a letter or number to the form name, e.g., Timesheet-2 or Timesheet-B). The only exception to this rule is the Open Special option described below.

IMPORTANT: Once a form has been published, please be sure to notify your mobile users that they must “Update” forms in their doForms mobile app. Otherwise, they will receive the published form until the next time they exit and restart the doForms mobile app (when the update happens automatically).

Editing a Form

Use the Open > Edit option to make light changes to your form. See Making changes to a form without changing its name for more information.

Insert Form

The Build Forms tab allows you to insert a pre-existing form into one that you are working on. This is very handy if you have form elements which you use repeatedly. To insert a form:

• Open the form that you are working on.
• Click the Insert button (In the Menu Buttons). A list of available forms will be displayed.
• Select the form that you wish to insert, and click Insert.
• The selected form will be inserted at the bottom of the form that you were working on. From here you can rearrange them functions as desired.

IMPORTANT: After inserting a form, you may need to edit the “Data Name” property of some of the questions to ensure that there are no duplicates. If you do so, you will also need to review and possibly edit any relevance and skip conditions which use these data names - likewise any affected destination fields in Lookup questions.

Deleting a Form

To Delete a form from the Build Forms tab, first open it in the Build Forms tab, then click the Delete button. Note that doing this only deletes the form, NOT the data in the View Data tab that might have been collected using the form. Alternatively, you can go to the Manage > Forms tab and delete unwanted forms and their data from there. This is the preferred method if you with to delete more than one form at a time.