Creating a form

In Landscape, a Form is a way to ask custom questions and gather data. A form can be used by any work item, but most organizations get acquainted with them through their use in Site Visits as Monitoring Forms.

In the monitoring workflow, forms then constitute a part of the entire data set (along with photo points, photos, and portfolio record data) that get merged into a final monitoring report.

'What's the difference between a form and a report?'

A form is a way of asking custom questions, like 'What's the weather like?' or 'How many fingers am I holding up?'. A report merges that data (and any other data in Landscape) into a customizable .pdf.

Quick video on how to create a form:

Building a new Form

The form builder is located in Settings > Forms. You must be an administrator to access settings.

From here you can copy, delete, and add new form templates, as well as define custom form sections.

Click on the '+' button to start a new form from scratch.

To build a new form, click the (+) button next to 'Forms'. You'll be taken into the form builder:

Give your form a name in the 'Form Name' field.

'Automatically attach to work items' and 'only attach to specific type' allow you to present the user with the form when a specific work item is created. For example if you select 'Tracked Right Activity' and 'Construction', then any time someone enters that work item, they will be presented with the form. This can be extremely useful for ensuring that users take proper steps when they encounter certain scenarios. If 'Automatically attach to work items' is filled in but 'only attach to specific type' is left blank, then the form will appear regardless of the type selected.

Create the first question by clicking 'Add field', then click on the text block that is created to be taken to the question editor. By default, the first question is always a text question. After you add more questions you can delete it, if you would like.

You can add the next question either above or below the first question. Click on either plus button that appears when you hover over the question type to select where and what type of question to add. If

There are several fields available to each question:

Question is the main question text the user will see when they're filling out the form, like 'What was the weather like?' or 'What is the overall condition of the property?'

Description allows you to add further explanation to the question if you want.

Current Condition allows you to document the state of the item in question.

Show Description allows you to hide the description text when the user is looking at the form.

Question is sensitive allows you to hide certain questions from the final report.

Ask this question can be used to make the question's visibility dependent on another question. So, for example, if you have a question like 'Are there any issues' (yes/no), followed by a question 'If yes, describe the issue', you can make the second question only appear if someone answers 'yes' to the first.

Question to check (only if 'Ask this question' is set to 'Based on the value of another question') is where you define which question the current question's visibility is based on.

Values to check (only after you choose which question to check) is where you specify which response will cause the current question to appear. For example, if you are basing the current question's visibility on someone responding 'Yes', you would choose 'yes'. You can select multiple values.

Available Options (single & multiple choice only) allow you to enter the options you want to be available to the user. Enter the full list of options by typing in the separate options and separating them with semicolons. When you're done, press the tab key to commit the options.

Question History and Editing Forms

While filling out a form in a Site Visit or asset, users have access to the question response history by clicking on the clock button in the lower right corner:

This function of the software works because Landscape assigns each question an ID number that is invisible to the user. However, what this means is that if you or another user deletes the question text and replaces it with something else, the history function will not work as intended, as Landscape cannot 'tell' that the question has changed. It is important therefore that if you are editing a form template that has been in use for a while, you fully delete questions that you are changing and do not simply change the text. If re-ordering a form, do so by dragging and dropping the questions and not by changing the text of the questions.