Creating and editing your forms (Admin only)

Forms are used to submit data on The Conservation Hub by users as part of their projects. You can either use one of our many templates for different use-cases to get started quickly, or edit your form in our intuitive form editor to customise it for your specific goals.

Creating a new draft form

1. First log into the app and select a group.
2. Then, in the left sidebar, press Forms
3. In the top right of the page, click on Create form.
4. Fill out the fields on the page:

• Form name: The name of the form, users will see this on the web and mobile app.
• Form tagline: Provide a short sentence explaining the purpose of the form.
• Tell us about the form: Users will read this before submitting a new form entry. Use this area to explain more about the purpose of the form, how people should use it, etc.
• Health & Safety policy (optional): Users will read your health & safety policy before they start submitting data."
• Shared: Tick this if you would this form to be used as a reference in other forms, such as a station, trap installation, contact, etc.
• Editable: If this is ticked, non-admin users will be able to delete and edit their own form records after submission.
• Select a template: This is the starting point for your form fields, select the option that best fits your use-case. On the next screen, you will be able to preview and customise your form fields, as well as replace the template if you change your mind.

5. Once you are done filling out your fields, press Save and continue to proceed to the form editor screen.

The form editor

On the form editor screen, you can: customise your form fields, preview your form, and change your form template.

At the top of the page, you have buttons to:

• Edit settings: modify your form settigns, such as the form name, health and safety policy, etc.
• Change template: This lets your overwrite your form fields with one of our template options.
• Preview form: This lets your simulate how the form fields will look and work before you submit your changes. Any data submitted in the form preview will not be saved.

Editing form fields

To edit form fields, press the button on the right of the form field. A drawer will open with the form field's settings. These settings are:

• Field Type: The type of field, refer to our documentation below for more information.
• is this field required?: Tick this if you would like this form field to be required for users to submit.
• Field label: This will show as the label of the field in the web and mobile app.
• Field name: This will be used for storing data, and as the column name in any exports. The field name must be unique, and changing the field name will create a new field with your new field name.
• Help text (optional): This will show below the form field in the web and mobile app to provide additional context and information.

Other settings may be shown depending on the specific form field type. Refer to the form fields below for more information.

Advanced settings

Each form field also has the following advanced settings:

• Show as table column?: If ticked, the field will show in your table view for this form.
• Show in board preview?: If ticked, the field will show in your board view for this form.
• Show map preview?: If ticked, the field will show in your map view for this form.
• Show field label in previews?: If ticked, this field will have the form label as the prefix in the board and map view.
• Platform Visibility: You can choose for each field to either show on all platforms (web and mobile), or only on the web (hiding it on mobile).
• User Visibility: You can choose for either all users to see this field when submitting data, group administrators only, or users only.

Visibility conditions

You can choose to hide this field unless certain conditions are met. This is useful for conditional fields that should only show based on other inputs.

To add a new condition, press Add condition. Each condition has the following settings:

• Field: The determining field that will control whether or not this field shows or not.
• Relation: The type of condition you want to apply, can either be Equals or Does not equal.
• Value: The value that the determining field with need to equal or not equal depending on your relation. If the field is a checkbox and you want the condition to be based on if the checkbox is ticked, enter true into the value field.

The form field types

The form field type determines how your form field will be presented to users, as well as stored and exported. We currently support the following field types:

Text field

For a basic text or number field. This field has the additional settings:

• Input type: Either text for text fields, or number for number fields.
• Default value: The value that will show in the field when the form is first opened.
• Media thumbnail: You can optionally show an image thumbnail next to this field.

Text field

For the number input type you also have these settings:

• Number controls: If checked, the field will show a + and - button.
• Number step: This determines how much the number increments and decrements by when then + or - buttons are pressed.

Number field

Textarea

Textarea works the same as the text field, but is a larger text field.

Textarea field

Status field

The status field is for selecting from a list of statuses. You must have at least one status field to show the board view. For each status option, you can set the colour, the key (value stored in the database), and name (label showed to users). You can also set a default value.

Status field

Select field

The select field is for selecting from a list of options. It works similar to the status field, except you can enable multiple selections and custom entries.

Select field

Geo field

The geo field is for selecting a point or area of interest on the map.

Geo field

If you enable the Allow polygons or Allow lines setting, you can also draw polygons or lines on the map.

Geo field (Polygon example)

Position field

The position field is for setting a bearing and distance relative to a geometric coordinate. To use this field, you need at least one geo field in your form.

Users can either manually enter in a bearing and distance, or they can press Show map at the bottom of the field and click on the map to have the bearing and distance automatically calculated.

Position field

Checkbox field

The checkbox field is for yes/no data.

Checkbox field

Date field

The date field is for entering a day and/or time.

In the field's settings, you can pick to either format the date selection as the date only, time only, or both date & time. If you check default to current date & time, the date field will match the current time when the form is opened.

Date field

Photo field, audio field, file field

Each of these fields work the same, but accept different types of files.

The photo field accepts photos only, and on mobile users can take a photo with their phone camera.

The audio field accepts audio only, and on mobile users can press a button on this field to record audio.

The file field accepts either PDFs only, PDFs and Word documents, or spreadsheets only, depending on the What type of file do you accept setting.

With each of these fields, you can optionally make the field data private. If enabled, the data from the field will only be accessible from the web app. If disabled, you will be able to share a unique link or export the field data to access it externally.

File field

Calculated field

The calculated field automatically calculates and updates it's value based on other fields in your form. The calculated field has the following additional settings:

• Operation: This is the type of calculation you will do, options are:
  • Sum (Repeatable): Sums a field from a repeatable field. The target field must be a number field.
  • Sum (Fields): Sums multiple fields together. The target field must be a number field.
  • Count: Counts the total amount of entries in a repeatable field.
  • Add: Adds two number fields together.
  • Minus: Minuses one number field from another.
  • Multiply: Mulitplies two number fields together.
  • Divide: Divides one number field with another.
  • Difference in hours: Shows the differences in hours between two date fields expressed as a number.
  • Difference in minutes: Shows the differences in minutes between two date fields expressed as a number.
  • Count (+1): Counts the total amount of entries in a repeatable field and adds 1.
• First field: The target field.
• Second field: The second target field, if applicable.

Users can also press Switch to manual on the field to change it from being automatically calculated to instead work as a manual number input.

Calculated field

Repeatable field

A repeatable field lets you repeat fields of data. This is useful for tracking multiple records in one form entry, such as participant info, events, or kiwi calls. Inside of the field settings, you can set the fields that will show within your repeatable fields.

Users can duplicate, delete, or add new records of the repetable field data.

Repeatable field

Resource field

A resource field refers to another piece of data within your group, such as a user, spot, or other form.

If you select Form data as your resource type, the form you select must have sharing enabled to work, and the form needs one of the following field ids (names) to show as a preview when selecting: name, title, label, or identifier.

If you enable Allow filtering by spot? the results shown will be filtered based on a selected spot. This requires you to have at least one resource field with a resource type of Spot in your form.

If you enable Allow custom entries? the user will be able to optionally fill out their own copy of the fields, instead of referencing an existing record.

The subfields are what will be shown when a resource is selected. Inside each field, you can optionally disable editing on the field (so that it's shown to the user but not editable), or optionally only show the field if the user is creating a custom entry.

Resource field

Once a resource is selected, you can reset your selection by pressing Reset selection at the top or bottom of the field area.

Example of a resource field once a resource is selected, in this case a user.

Add new form fields

To add new form fields, press Add new field, then refer to the steps above to fill out the settings, make sure to give your field a unique name, and press Save. Your new form field will be added to the bottom of the form fields.

Reordering form fields

The order of the form fields on the left side of the screen reflect the order that they will show on the web and mobile app when submitting data. To reorder the form fields, press and hold the 9 dots (also called thumb or grip) on the right side of the form field, then drag the form field to where you would like it go and release the mouse.

Deleting form fields

To delete a form field, press the button on the right of the form field, then press Delete field.

Publish your draft form

To publish your draft form, follow these steps:

1. First log into the app and select a group.
2. Then, in the left sidebar, press Forms
3. Under Draft forms select the form you would like to publish.
4. Click on Publish form in the top right of the page.

Once published and added to projects, users will be able to see and submit data to the form.

Editing your form settings

To edit your form settings:

1. First log into the app and select a group.
2. Then, in the left sidebar, press Forms
3. Then, select the form you would like to edit.
4. Next, press Edit form in the top right of the page.
5. Then, press Edit form settings.
6. Update your form settings, then press Update form to save your changes.

Adding new projects

To add new projects:

1. First log into the app and select a group.
2. Then, in the left sidebar, press Forms
3. Then, select the form you would like to edit.
4. Next, press Add projects at the top of the page.
5. Add new projects to the Projects field, then press Update form.

Deleting a form

To prevent accidental deletion of critical data, you cannot delete forms from the web or mobile app. To delete a form, please contact us and we can delete the form for you.