Find your way around

Form Designer opens from the Add-ons menu in ServiceM8 on the web. It fills the window, and it has six parts.

1. The top bar: the form's name, and the buttons to open, save and download it.
2. The list of items on the left: everything you can put on the page.
3. The view dock: three views of the same form.
4. The page: your form as it prints.
5. The settings panel on the right: the settings of the form, or of the item you pick.
6. The footer: the number of questions, and where the form is saved.

The top bar

1. Form name: the name of the form in ServiceM8.
2. Badge: up to 10 letters or numbers. ServiceM8 shows the badge on the job. Short badges are easier to read.
3. Undo and Redo.
4. New starts a form. Open opens a form from My forms, or a file from this computer. Save keeps the design in My forms, in your own ServiceM8 account.
5. Your plan, for example Standard.
6. Light or dark.
7. Download makes the form file (.sm8f) to import into ServiceM8.

The Form Designer icon on the far left shows the version and your plan.

The view dock

The dock is the pill that floats over the page. It switches between three views of the same form. Nothing is lost when you switch.

1. Layout: arrange what prints on the page.
2. Questions: every question, in the order the technician answers it.
3. Preview: the finished form, filled in with sample answers.
4. More options: more controls for the view you are in.

Click the view you are in

Click Layout or Questions again to show more or less on the screen. A short note says which level you are on.

• Layout steps through All markup, Simple markup and No markup. Markup is what Form Designer draws over the page to help you, such as frames and labels. No markup is the closest to the printed page.
• Questions steps through Names only, All details and Names and rules.

More options

Click the arrow at the end of the dock. What you see depends on the view.

In Layout:

• −, 100% and + zoom the page. Click the percentage to go back to 100%.
• Off the page shows the question items that do not print, such as hidden questions. The number says how many.
• Field codes shows every field as its Word field code.
• Grid steps through a 5 mm grid, the margins, both, and off. Use it to line things up.

In Questions: Names, Rules and All details set how much each question shows. In Preview: zoom only.

Click the arrow again to close the options.

Move the dock

Drag the dock to any edge of the window: top, bottom, left or right. At the left or right it shows icons only. It stays where you put it.

To zoom without the dock: hold Ctrl (Windows) or Cmd (Mac) and press +, − or 0. Ctrl and the mouse wheel, or a pinch on a trackpad, also work. Zoom works in Layout and Preview.

The list of items

In Layout the list has three groups:

• Layout: Heading, Text, Answer sentences, Columns, Table, Section, Logo or image, Divider line, Shape (box behind), Space and New page.
• Questions: the eight ServiceM8 question types, plus three shortcuts: Yes / No, Photo gallery and Proceed step.
• ServiceM8: details that ServiceM8 fills in from the job, such as the client, the job address, the staff member and your business.

Click an item to add it after the item you picked, or at the end of the page. Drag an item to put it exactly where you want it. Click a group's name to fold it away.

In Questions the list shows the question types only. In Preview it turns into the sample answers (see Preview, below).

The button at the top right of the list hides it, so you get more room for the page.

The settings panel

When nothing is picked, the panel shows Form settings: the settings of the whole form.

• Apply a look… copies the colours, fonts, header and footer of another form onto this one.
• Tidy a converted form… cleans up the page of a form opened from ServiceM8.
• Badge requirement: none, or the form must be completed on Check-In or Check-Out.
• Page: page size, orientation, margins, font and text size.
• Tables: the style of every table, and the form's two colours.
• Header and footer: what repeats on every page, and colour bands.
• Document details: the author and company stored in the file.
• Test job details: sample job values for the Preview. They never go into the form.

Click a heading to open it. The grey words on the right show its setting now.

Click an item on the page and the panel shows the settings of that item, for example Question or Table. Click an empty part of the page, or press Esc, to go back to Form settings.

Drag the left edge of the panel to make it wider. Double-click the edge to reset it. The button at the top right hides the panel.

The item you pick

Click an item on the page to pick it. A small toolbar shows on its top edge.

From left to right: quick changes for that kind of item, then Drag to move, Move up, Move down, Duplicate and Delete. For a question, the quick changes put the label beside or above the answer, and hide the question from the printed page.

Double-click any text on the page to type in it. The Delete key removes the picked item straight away; Undo brings it back.

The Questions view

• List shows every question in the order it is asked. Logic map draws a line from each question to the questions it decides.
• The line under the title counts the questions, the hidden ones and the ones with rules.
• The Logic check line finds rules that break, never match or do nothing. Click it to see the list.
• Click a question to change it. Double-click its name to change the wording.

Preview

The page in the middle is built from the real Word template, filled in with the answers on the left.

• Sample answers: pick answers and watch the page change. Nothing here is saved in the form.
• Run the form: answer one question at a time, as the technician will. Questions that your rules skip are skipped here too.
• The play buttons answer each question for you, one after another. The slider sets the pause.

The tabs on the right:

• Workflow shows the path through the form with these answers: what was asked and what was skipped.
• Navigator shows every page, and has Download PDF: a PDF of this preview with these answers.

ServiceM8 makes its own PDF from the form on each job. The Preview is very close, but a line can wrap a little differently. Always try a new form on a real job.

The footer

The footer shows the number of questions, then Draft saved on this computer and the last time the form was saved to My forms. The draft on this computer is a safety net only: use Save to keep a form.

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