Note: Forms are only available to Project Owners and in the Professional, Business and Enterprise editions.

A form is a great way to get information from users into BasicOps. You can use forms to receive information, feedback, requests, etc. A form can be shared as a link, for example to be shared on a social network, or a form can be directly embedded into your website. A form is associated with a project, and submitting a form will create a task in that project.

A form consists of these three parts:

An optional welcome page where you can set the user’s expectations
The form page, containing input fields, such as text fields, drop-downs, files, etc.
A thank you page that is displayed after successful completion

In this article we will cover:

The Forms View
Edit Form
Preview Form
Get Share Link
Get Embed Code
Submitted Forms

The Forms View

To get to the Forms view, navigate to a project, then select the Forms tab. Note that only the project owner has access to the Forms tab.

The Forms view lists all the forms you have defined in this project. Click the Add Form button to add a new form to the project.

Forms are by default not enabled, which means that any user with a link to the form will not be able to see the form until you explicitly enable the form. You can do so using the control in the Enabled column. You will also be asked whether to enable the form when you get a link to the form.

The Date Published column shows when you enabled the form.

The menu at the end of the row contains these options:

Preview - preview the form as it will appear to the end user, see Preview Form
Duplicate - duplicate the form
Share Form - get a sharable link to the form, see Get Share Link
Edit - edit the form, see Edit Form
Delete - delete the form

Edit Form

When you add a new form or you edit an existing form, you will see the list of forms being replaced with the edit form view. To get back to the list view, you can click the close button in the upper right corner, or the Cancel or Update Form buttons at the bottom right.

The Edit Form view consists of the following areas:

The header - buttons for previewing the form, share links, and close button
The left panel - fields that can be used in the form
The center panel - an interactive representation where you build the form
The right panel - common properties for all pages of the form

The header

The header contains the following buttons:

Preview button, click this to preview the form, see Preview Form
Share Form button, click this to get a link to the form see Get Share Link - note that this is available only after having saved the form once
Embed Code button, click this to get embeddable code, e.g. to show the form on your website, see Get Embed Code - note that this is available only after having saved the form once

The left panel

The left panel shows the fields that can be used in the form, but not the ones already used in the form. You also have the option to add a new custom field.

Available Fields: This lists the fields that you can place in your form. To add a field to the form, drag the field from the right panel into the center panel, representing the form. To make it easier to find your fields, the fields are organized in up to three sections:
- Standard fields - the standard fields available in BasicOps
- Project fields - custom fields that are currently used in this project, i.e. in the Table view or in the task detail view
- Other fields - other custom fields
Add field - if you need another custom field, click this button to add a new custom field. Once the field is added, it will appear in the Project fields section.

The center panel

This represents the form, which consists of these parts (which will be presented as three pages to the end user):

An optional welcome page where you can set the user’s expectations
The form page, containing input fields, such as text fields, drop-downs, files, etc.
A thank you page that is displayed after successful completion

The welcome page

The welcome page is by default disabled. When you hover over this section you’ll see an on-off control in the upper right corner. Click this to enable the welcome page.

Click the title, message and button to edit the texts.

The form page

The form page will contain all the fields you choose to present to the end user. At the top of the page you have an optional title and message. Click those to edit the texts.

When the form is empty you’ll see a section named ‘Drop elements here’. This denotes the area where you can add your fields by dragging them from the left panel. Once you have added more than one field you can change the order of them using drag and drop.

When you hover over a field you’ll see two icons appear over the top right corner. Use these to customize the field and to remove the field from the form. When you remove a field from the form, it will appear in the left panel.

This is the dialog appearing when you choose to edit a field. The contains the following:

Field: the name of the field in BasicOps
Name: this is the name used for the field in the form, this is initially set to be the same as the Field name, but can be edited
Description: An optional description that will appear below the name of the field
Required field: if this is checked an asterisk (*) will be shown next to the name, and you can’t submit the form without having entered a value (unless the field is not displayed, see below)
Condition for showing field: you have the option of specifying a condition for whether to show the field in the form using the values of other fields in the form. As the end user fills out the form such fields will hide or show depending on the values entered.

The right panel

The right panel contains properties applying to the entire form:

Name: the name of the form. This is used in the forms list view and may also be used for the form page title if no title is defined for the form
Logo: optional logo that will be displayed at the top of the form pages
Image: optional background image for the form pages
Background Color: background color for the form pages
Button Color: color of the buttons on the form pages
Cancel button: cancels any changes you’ve made
Update Form: updates the form with your latest changes

Preview Form

You can preview the form either by clicking the Preview link in the list of forms, or by clicking the Preview button when editing the form. Both options allow you to preview the form even when the form is not enabled. If you click the Preview button when editing the form, you will even see updates to the form that you haven’t saved yet.

The preview shows the form exactly like the end user will see it, except that the view contains an Exit Preview button in the upper right corner. It is always a good idea to test an updated form using the preview, e.g. to test whether conditions for showing various fields are correct.

Note that if you submit the form in the preview, a task will be created in the project. You can use that to verify that you’re getting the expected information.

Get Share Link

To get a share link to the form, edit the form and click the Share Form button in the header.

If the form is not enabled yet, you’ll see this dialog asking whether you want to enable the form. You don’t have to enable the form yet, but you should enable it before posting the share link - otherwise any visitor will be redirected to BasicOps instead of seeing your form.

In the Share Form dialog you have an option to require login, which can be useful when the form is used internally in your company. If Require login is checked a non-logged in user will first be presented with the BasicOps login page before being redirected to your form. Click the Copy button to copy the link to the clipboard.

Get Embed Code

You can embed the form directly on your website using embed code. To get the embed code, edit the form and click the Embed Code button. Just like when getting a share link you will be asked whether you want to enable the form if it is not enabled, see above.

In the Embed Code dialog you have an option to require login, which can be useful when the form is used internally in your company. If Require login is checked a non-logged in user will first be presented with the BasicOps login page before being redirected to your form. Click the Copy button to copy the embed code to the clipboard.

The embed code looks like this:

The form will be embedded in an iframe. You may want to edit the embed code, which has a fixed size of 600 x 600 pixels. You may choose any size, the form will automatically adjust to the selected size. If you place the iframe in a flexible element where you’ve set the css position property to relative you may want to change the embed code to the following:

This will allow the form to resize as elements on your website resize.

Submitted Forms

When an end user submits the form, a new task will be created in the project. If the form contains the Title task field, the name of the task will be set to the value entered by the end user. If the Title task field is not present in the form, the task will be named Form: <name of the form>.

You may want to customize either the Table view or the task detail view to show the fields you’ve added to the form, see Custom Fields. You can also use project automations to add information to the tasks or for example send an email to a specific user when a form is submitted, see Using Automation.

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