Managing Fields on Form Templates

The Form Templates are at the heart of EdSmart, you can have as many templates as you like, and completely customise the fields on the Form to your requirements. This article describes the many variations and options available to you.

There are five types of fields available:

Long Description - a mini word processor where you can style the size and colour of the text, or just paste in from Microsoft Word
Text Box - a single line text field
Checkboxes - a group of one or more checkboxes, where the user can select one or more of the options. You can have as many options as you wish.
Option List - a drop down list of one or more options, where the user can select one option. Like the checkboxes you can have as many options as you like.
Read Only Text Block - a large formatted text field which will display as read only text to users, great for explanatory text, notes, instructions and other information.

Some of the available Text Boxes are labelled 'Venue Address' and have a globe icon. These work just like a normal Text Box but if you enter a valid address a Google Map will be created and displayed. There are six Venue Address fields.

School Fields

When you edit a field you will find a number of options:

Field Name

The label that will be displayed for this field on the Form

Field Group

You can group fields into sections, and unlock/unlock those fields as the Form moves through the Workflow.

Field Required?

Is the user required to enter a value in this field? This applies to both School and Parent fields.

Read Only?

Is this a Read Only field. This means the actual field will not be displayed, and instead the Field Name text will display read only. It's a great way to display a piece of text amongst the fields on your form. Read Only Text Blocks are read only by default.

Default Value

If you are working with a Text Box you can enter a line of text that will be pre-filled to that field when the user opens the form. For Option Lists and Checkboxes you can select the option(s) you wish to be selected by default when the user opens the form.

Parent Fields

Parent fields are very similar to School fields, but you have an additional option for Default values.

The Default has two choices:

1. Enter value

This is the same as for School fields, you can either enter or select the default value.

2. Use last value entered by parent

In this case if a Parent has filled out this Form once before, and is now completing a new one, the values they entered last time will be pre-filled by default. This is obviously a huge time saver if the Parent does not need to re-type all the responses, but instead simply checks over the information and makes any necessary changes.