When you buy a toolkit at Home Depot, what’s in the box is what’s in the box. If a particular tool or wrench isn’t in the box, you have to purchase it separately.
Some software tools are similar…what’s in the software is what’s in the software. If you need it to do something that it doesn’t do, or if it doesn’t contain a particular form type, you can’t use it for that. Or can you?
Continuing the toolkit analogy above, XForms includes a form template designer tool that’s like a Leatherman® multi-tool wrench
With the XForms Designer, you can create your own unique forms, by yourself, on your own time. It’s one of the reasons XForms is so versatile, like a Leatherman® multi-tool. So if you need a particular form type that doesn’t exist anywhere, you can build it pretty easily, without having to outsource and pay big money to get it built. And if you don’t like a particular form design that comes standard with some software, you can build your own unique, quirky versions, just for you and your team.
And if you need a little help, you can ask us to help build it for you. But you can do it yourself too, which is nice because you don’t need to call someone to adjust or tweak a form for you. Sorta like self-checkout. You don’t need to wait in line…you just use the machine to do it yourself 🙂
Speaking of which….oftentimes, the forms that come standard with vertical-specific software packages are overkill for your particular purpose.
So build your own form, without all that extra crap you will never ever use.
Read on to learn how to build form templates in XForms
How to build a form template from scratch using the XForms Designer
Login to the XForms Designer
This is located at designer.xformsweb.com. Once you are in, your screen should look something like the one below.
Start a new template by clicking on the blue “+ New Template” button on the top left of the screen. Alternatively, an even better approach is to clone an existing form (by clicking on the green “Clone: button on the top center of the screen). But we will talk about that later.
Give your new form a short name that field users will understand what the template is for.
Checkbox | Note |
Calculated | Paragraph |
Date | Signature |
Image | Table (this field is more complex that the others) |
Lookup | Text |
Multichoice (single and multi-select) | Time |
Number | User |
- Save the form by clicking on the “Save” button
- Publish the form by clicking on the “Publish” button. Note that if you want to check the form out before publishing it, once you save it, it will appear in the mobile app in “draft” mode but only visible to users with admin rights. This allows you (the admin) to test the form in a live setting before deploying it to your field teams.
- Activate the form by clicking on the “Activate” button (the same button as the Publish button)
Note that the form templates in XForms have version control built-in. This is so that the template and form data on submitted forms can match up correctly. Each time you edit the form’s schema, you need to create a new version of the form template.
While there’s more to it than what’s explained above, this will give you a good start, and once you begin building these forms, it gets easier, especially since you can clone existing forms.
And if you would prefer to have us build your forms for you, we can do that too. The nice thing about that is that we can build you a single form, teach you how we built it, and then you can go from there, cloning that form and building others on your own.
Want to chat about your particulars?
Click/tap on the button below to contact us.