What’s the process for creating a form?

Creating a form is a simple, straight-forward multi-step process:

Over the next few sections, each of these steps will be looked at in detail, making sure you have the knowledge needed to create your first form, ready for assigning to either a Service Delivery Profile, or an Incident in Timegate Web.

  1. Before doing anything in Timegate Web, in terms of configuration, it is a good idea to sketch out what you anticipate your form to look like, in terms of the Questions that you will require in your form along with headings and associated help text. You should also consider if you are going to score the various questions within your form or add any logic to the forms (provide addition opportunities to the user to give supporting evidence in response to the way that they have answered a question). Designing the Form on paper will enable you to do this. By coming up with a list of questions, you will be able to work out what their types will be and what questions you will need to create. It may not be necessary to design all new questions for your form. If questions have been created before for forms on your system they can be re-used in different forms. This saves time creating new ones e.g. generic items such as Forename, Surname, Signature of Approval may be used across lots of forms

  1. The next step is to create any new Questions. To enable you to do this, you must ensure that any necessary lists or Template images are created. A question is entered. Depending upon it’s type, a List or Template Image may be necessary

    • A List is a series of pre-defined responses that users can select to answer questions. An example list could comprise the following answers: “Red”, “Amber” or “Green”

    • A Template Image is used as a background to annotate the answer(s) to a question. An example of a Template Image could be a line drawing of a security vehicle, that following an accident could be used to annotate damage upon in the case of an accident

  1. Next, based on your design, you create the form. You enter values such as titles and sections (including weightings for the scores generated by questions) and then drag and drop Questions into the Form. They can be re-ordered as necessary. Additional information such as whether questions are mandatory can be configured at this point. It is at this point in the creation process that you select whether to add Logic to your questions. You also have to add a Data Retention Policy

  1. Once complete, it’ important to preview your form and how it works. Check, double-check and then check the form a further third time! This will help to reduce errors and the need to re-published forms.

When you are completely happy with the form, you can move on to publishing it. Once a form is published, it is key to understand that if you need to make changes to it, you cannot. It won’t change. To change a form, you must publish a new version.