Overview
Publishing a form template is a vital step to make sure that the form becomes available to all users on your project. Once a form template is published you can begin to create, submit, download and share forms. This article covers how to publish a form template and the prerequisites to submitting forms like adding your signature, how to confirm your form is submitted, what happens once it is submitted, who gets automatically updated, and how to email your completed form to additional recipients if you like.
Table of Contents
- How to Unpublish and Publish a Form Template
- How to Submit a Form
- What does 'Form Incomplete' mean?
- How to Export & Email Forms
How to Unpublish and Publish a Form Template
If you need to make edits to a Form Template, you would first need to unpublish the form template. When a form template is Unpublished, you can't create a new form from that template.
To unpublish a form template, you can do so easily by clicking on the 3 dots at the far right and selecting "Unpublish":
Note: These options will differ whether you are an Admin, Member, or Follower on the Project. (For more information about Project permission levels, take a look at this article: Introduction to Project Permission Levels: Administrators, Members, and Followers).
In addition, the option to unpublish a form template also comes from the Form editor page. There are two ways to access the form editor page:
| Select the '3 dot' button at the far right of the form template then select 'Manage Template'. | |
| Select the Form from the 'Manage templates' drop-down menu in the top-right corner. |
Once you're on the Form editor page, select the 'Unpublish' option in the top-right corner. Now, you are able to make edits to the form template:
To publish an unpublished Form template, click on the 3 dots at the far right once again and select "Publish":
In addition, you can select the 'Publish' option in the top right corner of the template builder to make the form visible and editable to the individuals on your project:
How to Submit a Form
After you have completed all the mandatory sections of the form you can submit by changing the Status section at the top from 'Draft' to 'Submitted':
Alternatively, choose to 'Update status and close'-- change the Form status from 'Draft' to 'Submitted'.
Note: If a member or follower is not the creator or assignee on a form, the button is hidden.
If you try to submit a form without completing a mandatory form field, you will receive an error message to indicate the form field that needs to be completed:
Note: 'Draft' and 'submitted' statuses are indicative of 'editable' and 'non-editable' states. Form statuses are customizable, however, the logic is static; required fields must be filled before the form is moved into a 'non-editable' state.
What happens when a form is submitted?
The Form creator, assignee, and last editor will all get notified on the web and will receive a push notification on any mobile device associated with a Fieldwire account. The form is NOT automatically sent to anyone else, so if you have additional folks who want to see the completed form, you will need to follow the directions below to download the form and email it to whomever else you like.
What if I need to edit a form after submitting it?
If you are a Project Administrator, you can click on the "status" dropdown to change it from 'Submitted' to 'Draft' in order to edit the form again.
If you are not a Project Administrator then you can reach out to a project Administrator to request the edits or ask them to change the status from 'Submitted' to 'Draft'.
Note: You can edit the Form when it is in 'Draft' status again - though you would need to re-download and resend the Form via email to the designated recipient.
What does 'Form Incomplete' mean?
There might be an instance where you'd like to submit a form, but you receive a 'Form Incomplete' error message:
Web Version Error message:
Mobile Application Error Message:
The 'Form Incomplete' error message indicates that the content of the Form has not fully synced with Fieldwire yet. This may be because another user is editing the same Form but on a different device or the Form content was finalized and was syncing to the Fieldwire server but the finalized content is not fully synced yet.
Solutions to the 'Form Incomplete' Error
On the web, wait for a few minutes, then try the following troubleshooting steps below:
- Perform a Hard Refresh in your browser window using "Control + R" on Windows or "Command + R" on Mac.
- Verify you have a high-speed internet connection
- You can verify the speed of your network connection by reviewing this article: Is your WiFi speed 20 Mbps (megabits per second) or faster?
- You can verify the speed of your network connection by reviewing this article: Is your WiFi speed 20 Mbps (megabits per second) or faster?
- Verify the time is exact on your computer.
- if the time on your computer is ahead or behind, changes might not be saved
Connect with other teammates to verify who may be editing the Form
Depending on how your team uses Fieldwire, you could even create a Task and assign the task to them!
If you receive the 'Form incomplete' error message on iOS or Android:
- Ensure that your device OS and Fieldwire are up to date.
- See this article for more information on the latest versions of Fieldwire: Am I using the most up-to-date Mobile Operating System and App version for Fieldwire?.
- Within the Fieldwire app, go to the Forms page and use your finger to swipe down the screen.
- That will re-sync the page. You should see a blue bar moving along the top of the screen
- Disable and re-enable the project.
How to Export & Email Forms
On the Forms tab, there are several ways you can export your forms as a PDFs as well as CSVs. One way to export your forms as either a PDF or CSV is by navigating to the 'Forms' tab in the left menu of any project on Business or Business Plus, clicking on the form template whose forms you want to export, and clicking on the checkbox next to the 'template and number' of the form.
Exporting Forms as PDFs and CSVs
Once you've done that, you'll need to navigate to the 'Actions' dropdown menu, hover over "Export forms" and then select PDF or CSV. If you follow these same steps with the addition of selecting multiple checkboxes instead of only one, you'll be able to export multiple forms as PDFs or CSVs. Whether exporting one or multiple forms, following this flow will send an email to your email address with a link to download the Forms.
Tip: If you select the checkbox to the left of the "Template and #" column header, all the Forms in that folder will be selected.
In addition, as shown in the short video above, you can also download an individual form by clicking on the 3 dots to the far right of the form and selecting "Export". As opposed to the flow listed above, this option won't send you email. Instead, the file will be downloaded directly to your computer as a PDF.
PDF Form Export:
CSV Form Export:
Note: The date/time shown on the Form export is based on the project timezone; you can check or change this under the 'Settings' tab of the project. (See this article for more information on the project Settings tab: The Project Settings Tab on Web and Mobile). The date/time shown in the Form interface is based on the local timezone.
The highest number of Forms that can be exported from your project at one time is 250. Previously, if you attempted to export more than that, an email notification would be received stating that the export exceeded the limitation. This email notification has been replaced by an in-app message titled "Export limit exceeded".
How to email a Form on Web
From the 'Forms' tab on the web click on the form template whose forms you want to email out, click the 3 dots on the far right of the form, and select "Email":
After you select the email option, a pop-up window will appear - here you can enter the recipients, update the subject line, include a message, and choose whether or not to send the form as a PDF or CSV:
Each user cannot send more than 250 form export emails per day. If you exceed this limit, you will not be able to send another form export email until 24 hours have elapsed since the 250th email, and you'll receive the following message:
How to Share a Form on Mobile
When viewing an individual form on your mobile device, you can click on the 3 dots in the upper right-hand corner, which provides you with options on how to share that form with others. You can leverage the 'Export PDF' option to download a PDF version of the form, or 'Share form link' of the sheet.
Choosing 'Share form link' will bring up several different apps, one of which in the example below is 'Gmail'. You can also choose to send the form link via other methods including other mail or messaging apps.
Once you've selected the app, such as Gmail, you'll be redirected to where you can email a direct link to the form. Keep in mind though that the person(s) you send the link to will need access to your Fieldwire project in order to view the form.
More Information:
These articles give more information on how to use Custom Forms: