Overview of the Forms Creator

If you are using Eko as an Administrator, your responsibilities may require you to customize and publish the forms which your employees will be sending, and to choose who can send which ones. For both of these tools, all you need to do is navigate to the Forms area in the Admin Panel. This area is what we refer to as the Forms Creator, and it includes all of the customizable tools and options you will need for designing your very own forms for your users. 

Once here, you can choose to Edit, Publish or Unpublish any forms or form drafts you’ve created, or create entirely new ones from a pre-existing template or from scratch. Here, we’ll be going over all of the various options you have for designing your forms, so you can start setting up even the most complex forms with ease and confidence.

1. Accessing the Forms Creator

To access the Forms creator, you will want to navigate to the Forms area in your Admin Panel. From here, you can click the large button near the top titled ‘+ Create new form’ to start a new one from scratch, or you can choose one of the preset templates to work off of. Once you’ve clicked one of the options, you’ll be taken to the Forms Creator page.

Note: Creating a new form from a template will not limit any of your customization options. Instead, it will send you to a version of the creator that has certain sections and fields pre-populated for you, but you can still choose to rearrange or add/remove these sections and fields, in accordance with your own needs.

2. The Editor Tab 

The Editor tab is the first major tab you will see when you reach the Forms Creator. This is where you will be editing the appearance and fields of the form, and where much of the work to create the form will take place. There are three main sections here that we’ll cover to explain all of those options.

The Basics - Template Name and associated fields

• The Template Name is the title which your Form will be referred to when people see it in their list of options.
• The Form Description should be a brief summary that will explain when, how, and why your form should be used. Put any info in here that you think will help guide people who are unsure if it fits their needs.
• The Allow user to add Form subject checkbox allows you to give users who send your form the option of including a subtitle. This may be helpful if you think there are many instances where your form could be used, and a subtitle will help explain the specific scenario better for recipients.
• User access is where you will choose who can send this Form, according to their directory group. However, if you uncheck the box ‘Restrict to specific directory groups’, anybody in the workspace can use your form.
• Admin access is where you will choose who can edit your Form template, according to their directory group. However, if you uncheck the box ‘Restrict to specific directory groups’, anybody in the workspace who has access to the Forms section of the Admin Panel can edit your template.

The Body - Form Editor

• The Form Editor is the area where you will drag, drop, and rearrange all of the various fields you wish to add to your template. The order in which they appear in the editor is how they will appear to users sending your form, so be sure to order them in a way that will make the form easy to understand and fill out by those users.
• The Response Buttons area is where you can design what responses to you form will be available to recipients. ‘Reject’ and ‘Approve’ are your defaults, but you can edit the wording as you see fit, and even check the first box if you want to remove the option to ‘Reject’ option altogether. The second checkbox will enable recipients to include an E-signature in approval, for forms that you think should require an extra level of approval verification.

 The Building Blocks - The Add New Field Area

The Add New Field column on the left-hand side of the Forms Creator is a list of all of the potential field and question types you can choose to add to your form. We’ve included any possible options for field types that we think users will need, so that all you have to do as a creator is to drag and drop the fields you need, in the order of which you want them to appear on the form.

We’ll go over all of the types here, so you’ll know how and when to use each one:

• Short Text - A single-line text field. Works best for collecting quick data (first name, last name, etc.) or contact information (phones, emails). You can also choose what type of answer you prefer, to customize it further - text, numeric or email.
• Paragraph - A larger text box field. Recommended for collecting longer form text answers, such as feedback, reviews, ideas and other detailed answers.
• Single choice - A question accompanied by multiple possible answers (2-10), from which the person filling out the form can choose only one. You can choose to include those answers as multiple checkboxes, or as a single dropdown list.
• Multiple choice - A question accompanied by multiple possible answers (2-10), from which the person filling out the form can choose as many as they wish.
• Image - This field allows the user to attach an image file, and is recommended for collecting any visual information (ID scans, etc.) or confirmation (visual proof of work done, visual proof of maintenance need, etc.).
• Attachments - This field allows the user to attach a file, and is recommended for collecting any additional documents or any supporting files you think they may need to include.
• Date picker - A question that comes with an interactive calendar in place of a standard answer, allowing the person filling it out to pick a certain date.
• Time picker - A question that comes with an interactive clock in place of a standard answer, allowing the person filling it out to input a certain time.
• Section Break - A unique option which allows you to break groups of fields or questions into specific sections. This field type will likely not be used often, but is good for those rare forms that require a heavy amount of information, and allows you to break that information into bunched sections.

Note: Each field you include has the option of being set as ‘required’, for those fields that are absolutely necessary on the form, or ‘allow user comment’, for fields where you may want a very specific answer type, but in which an additional comment field can still help the sender add context around the answer. 

3. The Settings Tab 

The Settings tab is the second major tab you will see when you reach the Forms Creator. This is where you will be editing how the form will be routed after it is sent - in other words, how many stages of approval and recipients it will require, who can be a recipient at each stage, and more. We’ll go over each of the fields here so that you can route your form like a scheduling pro. 

• The Stage deadline type dropdown at the top is useful for forms which will require a specific completion date every time they are sent. Absolute allows users to set their own deadline upon sending the form, whereas Relative allows the due date to be preset by any Admin with editing rights over the form.
• For each Stage of the form, you can arrange multiple fields to fit your needs:
  • Stage name allows you to include your own subtitle for each stage, in situations where a certain title (or even a stage number) can help identify what the recipient is approving at that stage.
  • Number of approvals needed allows you to set how many people are required to move a form beyond that stage, with a default of 1. In cases where multiple people are required to have a say, or where high-level users may need to vote on an approval, you can choose to require multiple recipients, and then either require approval for all of them or simply a certain threshold of them, to proceed.
  • Stage description allows you to include more detailed summary information, to supplement the stage name.
  • Recipients or Group Name allows you to preselect certain recipients to send to, either as individuals or in batches by group (ex: all HR personnel). If left blank, the person sending your form or moving it to the next stage can choose any user in the workspace as a recipient.
  • The Stage Due area at the bottom allows you to select a due date for each stage, for forms which require a certain timely response (ex: 1 week). You can also choose to opt out of them altogether, by marking the No due date for this stage checkbox.
  • The +Add More Stages button at the bottom allows you to start adding on more approval stages to your form. Many forms may only require a single approval stage, but other high-priority or high-level forms may warrant multiple stages of approval, with different areas of users or management for each stage. You can create up to ten stages as necessary, so feel free to include multiple.
    

4. Finishing Up

When you’ve finished designing your form template, or if you simply want to save your progress before taking a break, the buttons in the bottom right corner will help you out. Preview will let you view your in-progress form from the perspective of a sender. Save Draft will let you save all of your work in Draft form, so you can return to it later. Or you can choose Publish, and your new template will be finished, saved, and added into the Forms area of the Eko app for sending by users in your workspace.

Congratulations on making it this far! You’re well on your way to creating your own beautiful new forms.