Build a form

Write the questions, choose how each one is answered, and see what a respondent would see. Your work saves as you go — there is no Save button.

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What you’re looking at

Along the top sit the form’s name, a star, the save state, Undo, Redo, Design, Copy link, Comments, Share, Preview, Publish and a three-dot More actions menu. Under them are the tabs: Questions, Logic, Automation, Invites, Responses, Activity and Settings. A badge beside the name says whether the form is Draft, Published, Closed or Archived. Copy link puts the form’s public address on your clipboard without opening anything. You can use it on a draft — the message tells you the link will not open for anybody until the form is published, so you can paste it into an email you are still writing. More actions holds Duplicate, Version history, Share with your team, Print blank form, Publish to registry and Archive. Duplicate takes you straight to the copy. To move a form into a folder, use its three-dot menu on the forms list instead. The Questions tab opens with a header card — the form’s title and a Form description — followed by one card per question. Select a card to open it; the open one is marked by a bar down its left edge and shows its full controls. On a computer, a rail floats to the right of the questions. On a phone or tablet the same buttons sit in a bar along the bottom: Add question, Add title and description, Add image, Add video, Add section, Import questions and Question bank. Question bank opens Import questions straight on your saved questions.

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Write the questions

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Work something out from the answers

A Calculation question shows a number worked out from other answers — a BMI, a total score, a number of days. Nobody types into it.

• The number updates on the form as the respondent answers, and is worked out again when the answers arrive, so what is kept is never simply what the page showed.
• If an answer it needs is missing, or the sum cannot be worked out — dividing by zero, for example — it stays blank rather than showing 0.
• It has no Required switch, because nobody can type into it. Logic rules can use it like any other number.
• A calculation that depends on itself, directly or through another calculation, is flagged in the builder and left blank on the form.

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Let respondents start over

Every form you publish has Reset form at the foot of the page, opposite Submit (or Next in a form with sections). On a phone it sits under Submit, so it is never the button a thumb reaches first. It stays greyed out until the respondent has entered something. Selecting it asks Reset this form? first. Confirming clears every answer, removes any file or signature they added, and takes them back to the first section. Nothing is sent to you. Answers filled in from the patient’s record are put back as they were, not cleared. Resetting does not restart the clock on a timed form. It is not offered when a member of your team fills in a form-backed note.

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Fill answers in from the patient record

A short answer, paragraph, email, phone or date question can arrive already answered for a patient you send the form to. Open the question’s three-dot menu, select Fill in from the patient record, and choose the field under it. Only fields that fit that kind of question are listed — a date question can take a date of birth, not a phone number. It fills in when you send the form to a patient chosen from your records. The patient sees a note saying some answers came from their record, and can change any of them before they submit. A form opened from a plain link is never filled in.

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Ask where somebody is

A Location question asks the respondent’s device where it is. Nothing is asked until they choose to share.

• The respondent sees Share my location and Don’t share, with a sentence saying you will see the place with their answers. Pressing Share my location makes their browser ask their permission, and the place is added only if they allow it.
• Don’t share, a refusal, and a device that cannot tell where it is are all answers, and the response says which one. A required Location question never stops somebody submitting.
• There is no box to type a place into. A place somebody types cannot be checked, so it is not accepted as a location.
• An exact location is kept for 90 days. After that, only the area it was in — to within about 10 kilometres — is kept, in the response and in exports.
• Recording a location needs the Essential plan or above. On a plan without it, the respondent is not asked at all: the question reads Location isn’t collected for this form, nothing is shared, and the response reads Not shared — locations are not included on this practice’s plan. A required Location question still lets them submit.
• When a team member fills in a form at the practice, their device is not the respondent’s, so the question offers Continue without a location instead.

A location typed into a Location question before it asked the device stays as it was, shown as Typed by the respondent.

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Keep an answer out of a respondent’s copy

When a form offers respondents a copy of their answers — see Form settings — select Leave out of the respondent’s copy in a question’s three-dot menu to keep that one answer out of it. Files, signatures and locations are never included, so the option is not offered on those.

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Rearrange, copy and remove

The open card’s footer carries Move up, Move down, Duplicate question and Delete question. On a computer you can also drag a card by the handle above it. More options adds the two extras a question can carry: Add description puts a line of explanation under the wording, and Add help text puts one under the answer box. Both toggle back off from the same menu. Some moves are refused. If a later question depends on an earlier answer, dragging the earlier one below it would break that link, so the builder stops the move and says which rule it would break rather than quietly dropping it. A grid’s rows and columns each have Move up and Move down beside them. Moving one keeps every answer and answer key attached to it. On a one-choice grid, Each column can be chosen in only one row turns it into a ranking — for example, putting treatments in order of preference: the form refuses the same column in two rows, and says “Each choice can be used in only one row”.

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Import questions from another form

Reuse questions you have already written instead of typing them again. Anything that only made sense in the other form is left behind, and the panel lists each one before you close it: a question that appeared only after an answer you did not import now always shows, a rule that jumped between sections stays in the form it belongs to, and a question linked to a chart field this form already fills loses that link. Undo removes the whole import while you are still on the page. The panel has three tabs: Your forms, Question bank and Community. The steps above use Your forms.

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Save questions to reuse them

Keep the questions you write into form after form — a smoking history, a medication list, a consent paragraph with its tick-boxes — and add them to any form in one step. To use them in a form, select the question you want them to follow, open Import questions → Question bank, find them with Search saved questions and select Add to form. They arrive as new questions of that form: changing them there changes nothing in your question bank, and selecting Delete on a saved entry changes no form that already has its questions. Saved questions belong to your practice. Anyone who can create and edit forms can save, add and delete them.

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Add questions other clinics shared

The Community tab lists question groups other clinics have shared. A ClinikEHR reviewer checks every group before it appears there. Select Add to form to put a group’s questions into the form you have open. Already in this form names each shared group you added and the clinic that shared it. Groups are shared on the condition that you credit that clinic. To share your own saved questions, select Share beside them on the Question bank tab. They go through the same review as a shared form — see Forms. Sharing with other clinics needs the Team or Enterprise plan.

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Break a long form into sections

Select a question, then Add section: every question after the one you selected moves into a new section directly below. With no question selected, a new empty section goes at the end. Each section gets its own title and description, and carries its position above them — Section 1 of 3 — so you can keep your place in a long form. Sections have their own Move up, Move down and Delete section controls, and an empty one reads “No questions in this section yet.”

• Drag a whole section by the handle at the left of its header. With a keyboard, move to the handle, press Space, use the arrow keys, and press Space again.
• Collapse folds a section’s questions away while you work further down; the header then says how many are folded. It changes nothing a respondent sees.
• A move or a split that would send somebody back to a section they have already answered is refused, and the builder says which rule is in the way.

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Show a picture or a video

Add image and Add video put something on the form for the respondent to look at. Neither is answered and neither is marked — they sit between questions the way a Title and description card does. Open the card and you get two ways to fill it: Replace swaps what is there and Remove empties the card. A card with nothing in it says No image yet or No video yet when it is closed, so it is easy to spot before you publish.

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Mark a quiz

Open a question’s More options menu and choose Mark this question. The form becomes a quiz, and every question that can be marked gains an Answer key card: the marks it is worth, what counts as correct, and what to say when somebody gets it right or wrong. Turn Mark this question on in each card you want marked. To stop marking the whole form, set Settings → Marking back to Not marked. What “correct” means depends on the question:

• Choice questions take the correct option, or a correct set. Partial credit decides how a half-right set scores: All or nothing, Proportional (correct choices minus incorrect ones, so ticking everything earns nothing), or Points per option, where each option carries its own marks and negative marks are allowed. A question can never go below 0 or above the marks it is worth.
• Numbers, scales and ratings take a value or a range.
• Everything else takes a list of accepted answers. Capitals must match is off by default, and so is Spaces must match too — normally extra spaces are ignored, because somebody who typed two spaces between two words gave you the right answer.
• Or accept anything matching a pattern, when the answers are a shape rather than a list — a reference number, a postcode. An answer is correct if it is in the list or matches the pattern.
• A grid takes one correct column for every row. When different rows have different answers, set them one at a time under A different answer per row. A row left on Not marked is not scored at all — it does not count as correct.
• Explain each option adds a line saying why each choice is right or wrong.

Settings → Marking also decides what happens around the marks:

• When the respondent sees their score — as soon as they submit, once somebody has reviewed it, or never.
• How much of the marking they see — their score only, which ones they got wrong, the right answers as well, or everything including your explanations. Each step gives more of the answer key away, so a quiz you intend to reuse should stay near the top of that list.
• Time limit, in minutes. It is counted from the moment the form is opened and checked when the answers arrive — not by a timer in the browser, so closing the tab does not stop the clock. A few seconds of grace is allowed for a slow connection. The respondent sees a countdown while they work. On a form you send as an invite, opening the link again later does not restart the clock. A public link cannot tell one person’s second visit from somebody new, so each visit there is timed on its own — send a strictly timed quiz as invites. If the time an attempt started cannot be confirmed, the respondent is asked to reload the form and start again.

A choice question can also show its options in a different order for each person — the switch is under the options themselves. That is separate from Shuffle questions in settings, which deals the questions on the page.

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Go back to an earlier version

The builder keeps earlier versions of your draft automatically — one each time you add, remove or reorder questions, at most one every ten minutes, and the 50 most recent.

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Share with your team

More actions → Share with your team lets a colleague work on this form without changing their role. Choose a team member, choose Can edit or Can view, and select Share — they get a notification. Change the choice beside a name, or select Remove, at any time. Publishing, reading responses and exporting still follow each person’s own role.

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Get told about new responses

At the bottom of Share with your team, Notify me about new responses is your own choice for this form — nobody else’s changes when you pick: The choice saves as soon as you select it. Neither the notification nor the email ever shows what anybody answered — open the form’s Responses tab to read that. You only receive them while you can still open the form and read its responses; if your role changes, they stop on their own. If your role does not let you read responses, the section says so instead of offering a choice. Your practice’s Document notification switch, and your own Product & account emails switch, can turn them off too.

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Comment on a form

Select Comments at the top of the form to talk about it with your team. Comments are only ever seen by your team — never by the people who fill in the form. You can Edit or Delete your own comments; deleting asks you to confirm, because it removes the comment for everyone. Anyone who can edit the form can Resolve a comment once it has been dealt with, or Reopen it. Resolved comments are hidden until you turn on Show resolved. A comment stays with its question if you move the question. If you delete the question, its comments stay too, marked On a deleted question, so the conversation about why it went is not lost.

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Print a blank copy

More actions → Print blank form downloads a PDF of the form with empty boxes and lines, on your practice’s letterhead, for somebody to fill in by hand. It prints the version respondents see — the one you last published — so a form that has never been published cannot be printed yet. Questions that only appear after certain answers are all printed, with a note at the top saying some may not apply.

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Check it before anyone sees it

Select Preview. The form opens in a panel exactly as a respondent would meet it, headed “This is a preview. Nothing you type here is recorded.” Close the panel and carry on editing.

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Change how it looks

Select Design. The panel puts the controls beside a live preview, so every change shows on the form itself rather than on a swatch. At the top, Copy from booking page takes your booking page’s colours and font, Reset to clinic default goes back to your practice’s saved design, and Save as clinic default makes this form’s design the starting point for new forms (forms you have already published keep theirs).

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Full design

These controls sit under Full design: The fonts are part of ClinikEHR itself, so a respondent sees the face you chose on any phone or computer, and opening your form never asks another company for anything. The same design carries onto the page someone sees after they send the form and onto the page shown when the form is closed or full. The font in your practice’s saved design — the one Save as clinic default keeps — is also the font of the documents people sign with you: the details filled in on the signed copy, and the certificate of completion attached to it. A document completed before you saved a design, or while your plan did not include the full design, keeps the standard font.

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Appear in search

A form can appear in search engines and show a proper preview card when its link is shared — but only when all three of these are true:

1. Who can open this form (on the Settings tab) is Public — not Anyone with the link, and not a form only for patients or staff;
2. it is published and still taking responses;
3. it is opened at its own address, not embedded in another website.

When they are, the form’s page tells search engines its title, its description and your practice’s name, and a shared link shows a card with your colour, your logo and the form’s title. The description is the Search description from Design if you wrote one (Essential plan and above), or otherwise the description under the form’s title. On your own forms domain, the address on that domain is the one search engines are given. A form set to Anyone with the link never appears in search, and its shared-link card shows no title and no practice name, so a preview in a chat app cannot reveal what the form is or whose it is. When a public form closes or fills up, it stops being offered to search engines.

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Your work saves itself

The save state sits beside Undo in the top bar and says one of four things: Not saved is the one to act on. Your changes stay on the page. The form does not keep resending the same refused change: it tries again when you edit something, or when you select Try again in the red banner. Leave the page with unsaved changes and your browser will warn you first.

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Check it worked

Go back to Forms and open the form again. Your questions, their types, their options and their Required switches are all as you left them. If something is missing, it was in the two seconds before you closed the tab — check the save state before leaving next time.

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If something goes wrong