Creating a form

5 minutes

In this guide you will learn how to add a very simple data collection form to a project.

Forms can vary in size from a single question to those consisting of many hundreds of questions. In Coreo, we’ve made building forms easy by enabling you to drag and drop the questions you need into the form builder. You can then specify certain key attributes of the question to determine how it should work.

Getting Started

Once you have created a Project, you can access and create a form via the project overview in several ways:

  1. Using the ‘Build form’ button in the top right of the project overview.
  2. You can choose ‘Forms‘ from under the ‘Build‘ header of the sidebar.
  • Give your form a name and a title and then select ‘Create Form’.

You’ll now be taken to the Form Builder page

A form is built by dragging the required questions into the form builder and then configuring each question accordingly. You can also add questions by using the + button next to the right of each question’s name.

In this example, we’ll work through creating a simple form for collecting location based data on frogs. We’ll create a form to collect the following details:

  • Location
  • Date
  • Photo

Let’s make a start!

Add a Location question

First you’ll add a location question to your form.

  • Find and drag the ‘Add Location/Geometry‘ block into your form.
  • Fill in the ‘Question’ text box. This text is what the user will see when using the form in the Coreo app.
  • Optionally, add a description.
  • Fill out the options as shown below making sure you also set this as a Mandatory field.
  • Select ‘Save Form’ when finished

What these settings mean

Each question type that you add to your form will need certain information to be specified by you. For the location question these are some of the things you can specify (any obligatory information is marked with an asterisk):

General section

  1. Question. This is the main text that appears next to your question in the app. For example, your question might be “Location” or “Please enter the location of your record”.
  2. Description. If your question needs a bit more clarification then use the “Description’ field to add further context.

Location/Geometry section

  1. Geometry Types. You have the ability in Coreo to record:
    • Point – a single point location within a record.
    • LineString – a single linear features such as a ditch, pipeline or route within a record.
    • Polygons – a single area within a record.
    • MultiPoint – multiple points within one record.
    • MultiLineString – multiple linear features within one record.
    • MultiPolygon – multiple areas within one record.
  2. Enforce Bounds. This setting prevents you from placing records outside of your set project boundary if you have added one. To learn how to input a boundary into your project, see our doc on the subject, here.

Properties

  1. Make mandatory. Choose whether it is mandatory for the recorder to add a location before being able to progress or submit the record.
  2. Hidden Question. You can hide non-mandatory questions if you need to. Most of the time you won’t need to do this.

Add a Date question

Now you’ll add a Date question to your form

  • Drag the ‘Date/Time answer’ block into the form builder
  1. Question field. As in the dialogue box below, type ‘Enter the date of observation’.
  2. Answer Label. This is the label that appears next to entered values when viewed in, for example, the map or records interface. E.g. if your ‘Answer Label’ is “Date” then a person viewing your record would see something like “Date: 15/02/2021″.
  3. Leave the Description field blank.
  4. Export Label – when you export data from Coreo the Export Label field determines what column heading your question data is stored under. Coreo will auto-generate unique export labels for you if you leave this field blank, so you might wish to specify your own to make your data easier to interpret.
  5. Select ‘Autocomplete with current date’ – this enables your device to set the date automatically using the system clock.
  6. Select the ‘Make Mandatory‘ toggle. This means that this field has to be completed before you can submit the form.
  7. Now click ‘Save Form’.

Add a Photo question

Lastly, we’ll add in a Photo question type so that you can upload an image with your record.

  • Add in a new ‘Photo’ question
  • Provide an appropriate question title and label (e.g. image or photo)
  • Toggle the Single photo only field to on, if not already
  • Do not make this a Mandatory field.
  • Click ‘Save Form’

You can now install this project in the Coreo app. Clicking the + (add record) button on the project’s home page (the blue icon in the image below) will take you to the form so that you can try it out.

If you have more than one form in your project, clicking the + (add record) button will present you with a list of forms to choose between, as shown in the image below.

Was this article helpful?

Thanks for your feedback!