Completing Forms & Formsets

What is Completing a form?

Completing a form is similar to completing a ToDo or a Task. Completing a form indicates that the user has entered all the required data and is now completing it so that the form can be finalized and submitted to the backend systems or a Reviewer can review the form and finalize it. Completed forms are moved out of your open worklist.

When can I Complete a form?

A form can be completed based on two conditions.

All mandatory fields are filled in. This is indicated by the form fill percentage counter on top of the form. If it reaches 100% you can complete the form.
The form might also require other business requirements to be fulfuilled before it can be completed. This is an optional step that is configured and programmed by the form designer. For e.g. a form might be configured such that only after initial data is reviewed and signed off, it can be completed by the user.

Completing forms as a User

Completing forms as a user can be one of the following:

You as a user are the only one working on the form. When you complete the form its in the final state pending form validations. Once the validations are successful, any configured flows on completion will be executed and data posted to the backend systems. Additionally PDF versions as required may be generated and posted to external systems like Sharepoint etc for finalization.
You are one of the users working on the form. In this case by completing, you are indicating that your part of the work is now complete and the manager (or any primary responsible) can review it.

Completing forms as a Manager

Completing forms as a Manager can be one of the following:

You as a Manager are the only one working on the form. When you complete the form its in the final state pending form validations. Once the validations are successful, any configured flows on completion will be executed and data posted to the backend systems. Additionally PDF versions as required may be generated and posted to external systems like Sharepoint etc for finalization.
You are one of the users working on the form and are also the primary responsible. In this case once every other user completes the form (their part of the work), you can now review the consolidated data. If the data is correct in all respects you can also complete the form and initiate the further configured flows as explained above. If the data is incorrect or incomplete you can fail the review. In this case all the users tasks are reopened and they are alerted with the comment you entered when the review failed. The users can rework on the form and submit for your review again.

Are Formsets different?

Formsets are just a collection of forms. So completing a form in a formset completes only that form. Every form in a formset needs to be completed (unless its optional) before the formset itself is completed. Once the formset is completed the configured completion flows will be triggered and data posted to the corresponding backend systems for further processing.

Other Actions

While completing a form is the primary action to be performed, there are many other actions a user can take.

Save (work is not done and either partial or compelte data needs to be persisted)
Review and complete forms
Resolve conflicts
Cancel
Change the Reviewer
Delegate
Share
Email PDF versions of the filled form
Request other users for feedback via comments / annotations

Completing Reviews

Reviews may be required due to the flow that is setup and are possible in the following scenarios:

All your team members have completed their work and you need to review and complete it finally as you are the primary responsible / reviewer. If the form data is correct you can complete the form and submit it finally. If the data needs to be corrected/completed etc, you can “fail” the review and reopen the form for all the users who were earlier working on the form. Once the users correct the data and resubmit it the primary responsible can approve the review and finalize the form.
A backend flow is configured for the finalized data to be reviewed by another user or maybe even a team. In this case a copy of the form is sent to the new user / team to review and approve the data. If the review is successful then the data is finalized and sent for further flow execution. However if the review fails, the form data is sent back to the original set of users to correct and resubmit the data.

Resolving Conflicts

When multiple users are working on the same instance of the form (group inspection etc), there may be conflicts in the data since a user has updated the data after you may have downloaded it. The forms server will automatically try to resolve such conflicts for you and will merge changes that can be accepted. If this cannot be achieved, then the server sends a copy of the conflicting data to the device or browser.

The entry in the dashboard is shown with a Resolve label to indicate that there is a conflict(s) and it needs to be resolved. When the user taps on the resolve, a merge window is shown. The left side has all the individual conflicts with the current value displayed within brackets (). A tick mark is displayed against the entry if you have already resolved the conflict. Tapping on the entry displays the value on your device and the value on the server and you can accept the right value. Once all the conflicts are resolved, you can tap on resolve to submit the merged content to the server so that it can be accepted.

The conflict resolutions available are:

Accept all server changes - The client data is completely discarded / overwritten with the latest data from the server.
Accept all client changes - The server changes are completely discarded and the client data is resubmitted.
Manual resolution - Each conflicted item can be reviewed and the required values (server or client) can be accepted

Cancelling forms

Forms once created for you to work on exist in your work list until completed. Its possible in certain cases the need to fill these forms is not there any longer. Users can in these cases cancel the form with a comment so that they are removed from their work list and companies can still have a record of the data and the reason for cancellation for audit purposes.

Change the Reviewer

If you are the Reviewer, you can also assign the review role to any other person working on that form. The user need not be a Manager. This is helpful if you want to stay involved in the form but want some other user (for e.g. another Supervisor) to review and complete the form.

Delegating Forms

If you are unable to complete your part of the form you can delegate the form to a colleague or team member. You will also need to provide a comment on why you need to delegate.

When a form is delegated, the delegating user’s task is indicated as delegated and the delegated user gets a copy of the form and the data aggregated until then. If the user is the primary responsible, the delegated user is also set as the new primary responsible.

When others need to be involved in the completion of the form, users can share the form and the data filled in with users or teams. The sharing can be with Internal or External users and with View only or Edit permissions.

Internal Users

Internal users are your colleagues and other team members who work with the forms application. These are other “named” users who can access the forms application and review and submit data.

Tap on the share icon and from the Internal users tab, select the user(s) or team(s) to share with. For each user or team also configure if they need to have View (cannot make any changes) or Edit (can make changes and complete) permissions.

External Users

External users are users who may be part of your vendors, consultants, experts etc with whom the form and data needs to be shared but do not have access to the forms application. These could also be users who need access maybe only for that instance. In such cases an adhoc sharing of the form can be send to their email.

Tap on the share icon and from the External users tab, type in a list of comma separated emails to share with. You need to also configure if they need to have View (cannot make any changes) or Edit (can make changes and complete) permissions. Each user will receive a unique URL and will be valid until the form is completed.

Generate PDF

Users can tap on the PDF icon available for each form. The user can then input the email IDs of the people to share the PDF with. The PDF is generated with the data that has been filled in until then.

History / Flow

Tap on the history or flow icon to get an overview of the form’s lifecycle. This option displays the users who have already completed the form, others who are still working on it, if a review has been failed etc.

Review Comments (Annotations)

One of the most important features of the Turbo Forms App is the collaboration features. Multiple users can work on a form and once the data completeness is verified the form can be completed. If corrections are required the form can be reopened so that users can correct and re-submit. But how do you communicate the issues and/or hints to the users?

There is a built in commenting system. Once you open the form to enter the data, click on the top Menu and choose Comments. A new screen is displayed to help you provide review comments.

This is a read only view that allows to tap and select any text on the screen
Once a selection is made, a review/comment window appears
Enter any comments that you desire. Comments will be displayed with the user’s name and the date time
Annotated text is displayed with a highlight and can be clicked or tapped on mobile to view the comment and reply to it
You can also add tags like “Fix required”, “Info” etc to further help the users