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Form library

The form library keeps forms your organisation can use again. A maker saves a form page or a registration form to the library once, and any app can then use it. Other organisations pick a form up as a file or from GitHub.

A library form holds the form and nothing else: its fields, steps, logic, presets and the text people read after sending, plus the definitions of the schema properties its fields write to. It never holds records.

Save a form to the library​

  1. Open the form page in the page designer, or open a registration form in the case type's form list.
  2. Choose Save to form library.
  3. Give the form a name, pick one of the four categories (the same ones the app store uses for templates) and fill in the publisher.
  4. Save.

Buildiq reads the schema the form saves into first. When a field writes to a property that schema does not have, the save is refused and the property is named, so a broken form never reaches the library. Pick the schema the form saves into before you save it.

Find a form​

Open the app store and choose Forms, next to Templates and Blocks. The view lists:

  • the forms in your library, with their category and publisher;
  • forms published on GitHub in repositories with the topic buildiq-form.

Search by name, description or publisher, and narrow the list with the category filter. The category stays in the link (?category=), so a colleague who opens the link sees the same list.

Use a form in an app​

Choose Use this form on a library form. The dialog shows what the form asks and then lets you pick:

  • the app and the version to add it to;
  • what to add: a new form page, or a registration form for a case type (give the property that holds the case type and the case type itself);
  • the schema the form saves into. This maps the form onto one of the app's schemas.

When that schema lacks properties the form needs, the dialog lists them. Tick Add these properties to add them from the definitions the library form carries. Nothing is written until you choose Add to the app. A registration form arrives as a draft, so you can check it before it goes live.

Share forms with other organisations​

As a file​

Export on a library form downloads a JSON file with the envelope kind: "form-template" and a schema version. In the other organisation, choose Import a form in the Forms view and pick the file. Buildiq checks the envelope and the form before it adds anything: a file of another kind is refused with "This file is not a form export.", and nothing is created.

Through GitHub​

Publish the exported file as form.json at the root of a GitHub repository and give the repository the topic buildiq-form. Every Buildiq that browses the Forms view finds it there, and Add to my library creates a local library form from it. Using it is then the same as any library form.

Good to know​

  • A shared form can carry a confirmation text or presets that do not fit your organisation. Read what the dialog shows before you add it.
  • Buildiq does not moderate what others publish on GitHub.
  • Library forms follow OpenRegister's access rules on the form-template schema in the buildiq register: everyone signed in can read them, and administrators can create and change them.