This is the second of a series of blog posts looking at the numerous advantages of digital mobile forms over their paper equivalents.

The first post can be found at Mobile Forms - the speed advantages over paper.

There are several features of Formulate, Triangle Software's mobile forms software which we will examine individually.

Mandatory fields

In Formulate, you (the system administrator) can mark each field as either optional, or mandatory. This means that you can ensure that users never fail to fill in a required field.

Multiple selections

You can also mark fields as being a dropdown field. This means that the user must select one of the items in the dropdown list (which you control). This ensures that the user can only select from the options that you have provided, and that the answers are legible and consistent.

Validations

When designing forms, you can apply validation to and field. Validations are tests that Formulate will apply to the field, only allowing those that pass the test. Examples of validation are -

• the date entered must not be before today
• the number entered must be positive
• the number entered must be less than 100

Dynamic fields

With this type of field, you can ensure that your mobile forms only ask the user to fill in relevant fields. For example, if you have a field which "is the site safe for work to continue?", you can make an answer of "Yes" prompt for a second field to become visible, perhaps asking for more details.

Back-office transposing

When reviewing the forms submission in the back-office, all of the data is legible and accurate, plus any transfers to another system are error free, either by using or API's, or by simple cut and paste.

So there are several reasons why using mobile forms, rather than paper ones, can improve your accuracy.