SD Forms

Summary This module covers SD forms in PaT. It shows how to build a form in the SD Form Builder, preview it on a desktop, tablet or phone, and share it as a link. It also shows how to use the same form elements inside an SD template, where the answers are stored in the form results table. It has two parts: “Building, previewing and sharing a form, as a form page or in an SD”, then “What an SD Form is and where its answers are stored”.

Building, previewing and sharing a form, as a form page or in an SD

Summary This part covers building a form in an SD's Form Builder by dragging form elements onto the canvas, previewing it on desktop, tablet and mobile, and sharing it with a link for one submission or many. It also explains the two ways to use a form: a Form UI, filled in through a link, which collects the answers in a datasource (similar to a spreadsheet); and an SD Form UI, where the form elements sit in the SD itself and can trigger automated tasks and workflows.

Introduction. Strategy Documents (SDs) have powerful form-building capabilities. PaT forms serve many purposes, such as surveys, data collection, inspections and audits. They support automated workflows, built into PaT's task management engine, so you can develop modern, computer-managed strategies that ensure processes never fall over again. Move from paper, forgotten Outlook Calendar reminders, Excel checklists and cumbersome Word documents that can't control data entry to a robust database that systemises and automates your processes.

Step 1

Open the SD you want to build a form in, then click Advanced, in the row of grey tabs above the column headings. A menu opens on the left of the SD.

Step 2

Click SD Form Builder in the menu (on some screens it is labelled SD Form). The Form Builder opens.

Step 3

The Form Builder has two main areas: the Controls panel on the left and the Canvas on the right. The Preview Form and Share buttons are at its top left.

Step 4

The Controls panel holds your form elements. Form elements are grouped into what PaT calls controls: choose a group in the dropdown at the top of the panel. For example, the Logical group has four form elements: Switch, Single Checkbox, Radio / Multi Select Boxes and Button Select. There are currently 12 groups of controls, such as Read Only, Text Input and Date & Time. The Form builder: field types module covers them.

Step 5

Build your form on the Canvas: drag form elements from the Controls panel and drop them onto it. The canvas gives a reasonable approximation of what the final form will look like to a user.

Step 6

For a precise look at the final form, click Preview Form, the green button at the top left of the Form Builder. The preview shows what people will actually see when they click the form link you send them. A form filled in through a form link is called a Form UI (UI stands for User Interface). Form UIs are great for surveys, audits, 360 staff reviews and inspections, and work well on mobile devices. In the preview, switch between Desktop, Tablet and Mobile, at the bottom of the preview, to see how the form will look on different devices.

Step 7

When you are ready to send your form out, click Share, the blue button to the right of Preview Form. A box opens for sharing the form, and PaT generates a form link.

Step 8

In the dropdown at the right of the box, choose the type of link: - Single Submit: the link can be used only once. - Multiple Submits: the link can be used many times, which is useful if you want to inspect several assets.

Step 9

Click Copy Link, at the bottom of the box, to copy the link to your clipboard. Paste it into a PaT chat or an email and send it out: anyone with the link can fill in the form. Each form submitted through the link is automatically added as a new record to the form's datasource (similar to a spreadsheet), which is connected to the SD.

Step 10

To review the form responses stored in the form's datasource, click SD Form Responses, in the menu on the left, just below SD Form Builder.

Note. Advanced users can also trigger events from the datasource, such as pushing out a report when a particular value is inserted.

Form UI or SD Form UI

Once you have built form elements in an SD's Form Builder, you have two options. The steps above build a Form UI, which people fill in through a form link. The other option is to drag the form elements back into the SD itself, through the SD's Note element, to create an SD Form UI. Understanding this is key. SDs are dynamic digital documents supported by a database, with far more automation than traditional documents such as MS Word and Excel. That makes them better for many business purposes, including project management, LMS training documents and even applications such as a CRM that uses PaT's advanced task management. And because an SD can be converted to a template, SDs excel at repeatable work such as onboarding workflows and some kinds of data collection.

An SD Form UI is an SD template with form elements in it, for example two text entry boxes and a checkbox list. The SD is converted to a template: the Template box in the grey bar at the bottom of the SD is ticked. Whenever a new copy of the template is spun up, two things happen automatically: - the new copy is filed in the template master SD, so there are no admin filing issues; - data entered into the new copy is added to the datasource of the original SD template. You don't have to use form elements for data entry in an SD: you can use SD notes, and teach people how to open, edit and save them. With form elements, though, people don't open a note: they just start typing, and PaT saves the entry automatically, which makes it easier for them. All copies of an SD template save their form entries to the Form Results datasource of the original SD template, so you can analyse the data from many SDs in one place, and use further database functions to automate other processes based on the values captured.

SDs must be converted to a template for the form function to work. Once you have finished building the form in your SD template, you can use it in either of two ways, A or B.

Step 11

A: share a link. In the Form Builder, click Share, then copy the link and send it, so others can click it and fill out your form.

Step 12

When people click the link, they see the Form UI, which looks exactly like the preview for the device they use. Form UIs are ideal for surveys and inspections, where you mostly want to collect data, and they work brilliantly on mobile devices.

Step 13

B: pull the form elements you built in the Form Builder into the SD itself, by inserting SD notes and using their Form Elements option. This is called the SD Form UI. It is better suited to applications where you want to extend what the form does, to automate tasks, as in a new employee form.

Step 14

Once you have spun up a copy of an SD template with embedded form elements, you can share the copy in two ways: - click the new SD copy's share button (the white button with the share icon, at the right end of the SD's toolbar) and send the link to someone, who can then open the SD and fill in the form elements; - embed the new SD copy in another parent SD, and use the security framework built into SDs to restrict who can access it and enter data.

Which to choose

The Form UI is ideal when you need to capture form data and then analyse many results in a datasource, such as a spreadsheet.

The SD Form UI is better suited where you want to keep the data in a page format, to read in future: for example, customer contact details that are part of a Customer SD. It is also better suited to a new employee workflow, where you want both to collect the employee's details and to trigger tasks automatically to set them up in your systems. PaT's auto-escalation fires if a task's assignee fails to manage the task, which makes it impossible for the process to fall over, unless the CEO ignores an escalation that reaches them.

What an SD Form is and where its answers are stored

Summary This part covers what an SD Form is: an SD template that uses form elements instead of notes for data entry, commonly used for customer information, employee records and onboarding. It shows how to open the SD Form Builder from the Advanced tab, how the form elements appear in the SD, laid out with section headers, and where the data entered is stored: the form results table.

An SD Form is simply a normal SD that has been marked as a template, with form elements inserted to control how data is entered, instead of notes. SD Forms are usually for internal use only. They are great for customer information forms, employee records and onboarding forms.

Step 15

To see an SD Form's form builder, open the SD Form and click Advanced, in the row of grey tabs above the column headings. A menu opens on the left.

Step 16

Click SD Form Builder in the menu. The Form Builder opens.

Step 17

The Form Builder is where all the form elements are built. The first part of this module explains how to build a form.

Step 18

Click Back to SD, at the top of the menu on the left. The SD opens again.

Step 19

The form elements from the Form Builder have been pulled through into the SD, where people fill them in. The How to upload form elements to an SD module covers pulling form elements into an SD.

Tip. SD Forms take advantage of the SD's logical structure: section headers lay out the page, much as a Word document uses headings and paragraphs, which makes the data easier to read. You can also enrich the reader's experience with notes that show extra context, images, videos and interactive demos.

Step 20

When people enter data into the form elements in the SD, PaT automatically stores the values in the form results table (the datasource). This happens for every copy of the SD created later. The SD Form Responses: finding and exporting form responses module covers form results.