Pre-fill or extra form fields

Feature Requests
#1

I am looking at the Form options of Seatable. I can easy create a Form to fill in a table. That works perfectly!
I like to add some extra information that somes with the Form and lands in the table.
Let’s give an example:

  1. I deploy a form to register issues. Every new issues has a status of “new”, so I would like to give this status automatically with the form to the table, so the user who fills in the form won’t have to select the status.
  2. I have different forms for different moments. Form A for situation A and Form B for situation B. Both forms write info in the same table. I would like to write in the table which situation the form regards. Some extra attribute to determine the situation? Or perhaps pre-fill a field with the correct value?

Hope this makes sense.

Peter

#2

Hi Peter,

as for 1.) You don’t want to let your users choose the status. (Some jokesters may decide to register a “completed” issue.) You’d want the system to do it automatically.

At this point, there is no great way to do it. Yes, this could be scripted, but that is “shooting at sparrows with canons” as we’d say in German :wink:

Keep patient with us. We’ll add this feature in 2021. In fact, the implementation is not very complicated. The feature is called “column default value”. The name is pretty self-explanatory: this default value is automatically added to a record every time a new record is created.

As for 2.) Keep in mind, you can create as many forms for a base as you want/need. So the easy, quick and dirty solution for your problem is to create two different forms. Form A for situation A, form B for situation B.

There is a better solution though: Make the form fields condition!

Using your use case as an example, the first question in my survey is the situation. The situation can either be “Incident” or “Question”.

All the following fields are then conditional field. Whether or not they are shown in the form is determined by the choice made in the situation field. The screenshot below demonstrates how it’s done.

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If the user choses situation “incident”, this is what the form looks like:

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If she choses “question”, the form looks like this:

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Speaking the obvious, you can add as many other fields as you desire. This is just a dumbed down example to demonstrate the idea.

#3

The point is, I want to see in my table which form is used. How can I determine in my table which form is used? An other example to clarify: I have two groups of users who have to fill out a form. In the results table I want to know which records belong to which group, without having to ask this question in the form. Your solution is very interesting, but because it is asking the user the info.

Having two forms would do the trick if I had any kind of info that I could pass through to the table. (Like a hidden field I could fill with the right info. Or a placeholder, variable, parameter or…)

#4

I think there is an easy solution to this: in the table, you’ll have two columns for the same identification question, for example, “name”.

You’ll create two such columns “Name A” and “Name B” and use “Name A” in the Form A, “Name B” in the Form B. So when people fill in the forms, and you see their response in your table, you can immediately recognize who filled Form A and who filled in Form B. You can even make a grouped view, separating people with Name A and people with Name B.

Hope this makes sense! As I type, I think we’ll all agree, that SeaTable is a new kind of tool, and we’ll adapt ourselves a little bit for this tool, while it adapts itself to us, too. Efforts in both directions should be made, because with new toys there’s always new games!

#5

Right! I get what you are doing, very clever! And will do the trick! Thanks !

And regarding your last remark. You are absolutely right!

I have made a lot of posts, having a lot of questions… This is because I am very enthusiastic about the Seatable and giving it a serious try! I know the product is very new and you guys are developing your ass-off :slight_smile: So please look at my posts as an effort to make the product better.
Wanting to know all details is a way for me to know what adoptions / changes are necessary to make.
(My profession is in the Quality Assurance of IT systems/Applications/Projects, a sharp eye is part of the job :wink: )

You guys are doing a perfect job!!! Keep on going!

#6

You are not alone on this Forum :wink: I myself am QA and I know exactly what you mean! When I go to restaurant and open the menu, the first thing I look for is not the meals, but the spelling errors!

And hey, feel free to post any thoughts and discoveries here, that’s what the forum is for. Thanks for your efforts and posts!