Forms

The forms are the heart of Amber. A form describes how the data will be collected, with a built-in support for multilanguage. The form’s schema is made of:

• Items, which can be data input fields, structural items (group, section) or computed fields.

• Translations, which is a list of translation keys with values for each language.

Different versions of a form can be saved, which allows to safely edit a form while a version is used for data capture. Form versions also ensure that the data collected are properly described by the form that was used to collected them, avoiding variable renaming errors, options addition/removal conflicts, changes in the labels which could affect the question semantic etc.

List of forms

From the list of forms the following operations are available:

Add a form

When creating a form, a name is required, a description is optional. This is purely informative for management purpose and will not appear when the form is administered.

It is possible to pre-populate the form with a schema that was previously exported from another form. This is optional and can also be done later.

Delete form(s)

To delete several forms:

• Select one or more forms in the list,

• Press the Delete selected forms button and confirm.

You can also delete a specific form by pressing the form’s Delete action button.

Note

The removal of a form will fail when there are associated case reports. Make sure to extract the recorded data (if necessary) before removing them.

Single form

To navigate to a form page, click on the form’s name or the pencil icon. The page that is opened has two tabs:

• The schema tab, with a form item’s builder and translations editor,

• The list of the form’s versions.

Export

Export the form’s schema in text file (JSON format). Advanced users can edit this file, which can be convenient for the translations section for instance.

Import

Import a previously exported form schema. This operation will replace the whole tree of items and the translations.

Tag

Creates a new form revision. Giving a comment that describes the changes in the form is recommended.

Items

The form items is a tree which root is the form itself.

The following form item types are available:

Type	Category	Description
Auto Complete	Select	Select a single or multiple values by filtering a (long) list of options.
Dropdown	Select	Select a single or multiple values in a menu.
Image Select	Select	Select a single or multiple areas on an image.
Multiple Choices	Select	Checkbox choices.
Single Choice	Select	Radio choices.
Date	Temporal	Date value, in yyyy-MM-dd format (ISO 8601).
Date and Time	Temporal	Date and time value, in yyyy-MM-dd mm:ss format (ISO 8601).
Time	Temporal	Time value, in mm:ss format.
Geographic data	Geographic	Select a single or multiple geographic features (point or polygon).
Number	Number	Input field with numeric value.
Rating	Number	Gradual numeric values, rendered as icons.
Slider	Number	Gradual numeric values, rendered as a slider.
Paragraph	Text	Long text.
Short Answer	Text	Short text.
Group	Structure	Group one or more items.
Section	Structure	Information text.
Toggle	Logical	True or False.
Computed	Other	Not visible, data is computed with the other item’s data.

The following definition settings are common to all items:

Setting	Description
Type	The type of item (see above).
Name	The name of the item is not visible: it will be associated to the data collected.
Label	The label is usually a question or a title.
Description	The description gives some guidance about how to enter data, what are there meaning etc.
Required	Whether an input is mandatory (does not apply to structural items such as Group and Section).

Some settings are expressed by a script which is evaluated at each data entry.

Setting	Description
Condition	The condition makes an item visible or not depending of other data. It is a small script which returns a logical value. True when item is visible.
Validation	True when item value is valid. Does not apply to items not capturing data (such as Group or Section).

The scripting language is Javascript. It allows to express complex logic with a single line. See detailed explanations:

• How to make fields conditional?

• How to validate field values?

Translations

The translations are a list of tuples:

• A translation key,

• Associated texts for each of the defined languages.

The translation key can be a real text (example: “What is your age?”), but to avoid confusion when the wording of the question changes it is recommended to use a short (yet meaningful enough) text (example: “age_label”). When a language has no translation for a given key, the fallback language is English (en). If no translation can be found for the fallback language, the translation key is returned.

Add translation

Add a translation key

A translation key can be added manually. First enter the key in the dialog, then once a new line has been added in the list of translations, click in each language cell to set the translated text. The list of translations will be saved automatically.

Merge with items translations keys

This operation automatically adds translation keys for each item setting representing a text to display (Label, Description, Hint, Close label etc.). If the translation key already exists, it is not modified, only new entries are added. See How to translate field labels? for details.