Quick Guide to Using Forms  
 

Pendragon Forms VI allows you to create electronic forms for use with any device that has an HTML5-capable web browser.

This Quick Guide gives you an overview of how Pendragon Forms VI works.

You can right-click here to download a printable Quick Guide to Pendragon Forms VI.

Creating a Form

To start Pendragon Forms VI on the PC, click:
Start…All Programs…Pendragon Forms VI…Pendragon Forms Manager.

The Pendragon Forms Manager is a Microsoft Access application that allows you to design forms.
 

To create a new form, click the New button in the Pendragon Forms Manager window.

The Form Designer window will be displayed. Type a name for your form at the top of the Form Designer window. For each question on your form, type the question in the Field Name section, and select a Field Type to represent the type of data that you want the handheld user to enter. Click the + button to add a new field to your form.

Pendragon Forms VI supports 20 Field Types, including Text, Numeric, Currency, Date & Time, Popup Lists, Lookup Lists and Yes/No Checkboxes.

• Chapter 7 in the Pendragon Forms VI Reference Guide provides details on the 20 different Field Types you can use on your form. You can click here to download the Reference Guide.

The tabs in the Form Designer window give you various options that will affect the selected field. For example, the Script tab allows you to write scripts to perform calculations or to do branching. The Sizing tab allows you to allocate more than one line for an answer.

When you have finished entering the questions on your form, click the Save and Exit button.

Freezing and Distributing Your Form

After you have created a form, the next step is to freeze the form design. Freezing a form creates a database table within the Pendragon Forms Manager Access database, for storing all the records associated with that form.

To freeze a form design, click on the name of the form in the Pendragon Forms Manager window, and then click the Properties button.

The Properties window is where you freeze the form design, and is also where you select Data Persistence options for how long you want the data records to remain on the handheld.

Click the Freeze Form design button to freeze the form design, then click the OK button.

The next step is to distribute the form design to the handheld. Click on the name of the frozen form in the Pendragon Forms Manager window, and then click the Distribute button.

Synchronizing the Client to Receive Form Designs

On the PC, click Start…All Programs…Pendragon Forms VI…Locate My Server.

This will display the URL where you can go to receive your form designs.

To receive form designs, open the handheld web browser and enter the URL.

You will be taken to a Pendragon Forms VI installation screen. Tap the link to Install/Run, and you will be taken to a Synchronization screen.

If this is the first time you are synchronizing, tap the Setup screen to enter your handheld User Name and Password. For the first handheld device, the User Name and Password are selected during installation of Pendragon Forms VI on the PC. For additional handheld devices, User Names and Passwords are added by clicking the Users button in the Pendragon Forms Manager window on the PC.

After entering your User Name and Password on the handheld, tap OK. You will be returned to the Synchronization screen. Tap the Sync button to begin synchronization.

Note: The handheld must be online in order to synchronize.

After synchronization, tap the Launch button to view the list of form designs.

Tap on a form, and then tap the New Record button to start filling in the form. Each record is an instance of filling in the form.

Tap in each field on the form to fill in that field. The onscreen keyboard of the device will pop up if necessary.

When you have finished filling in the form, tap the End button.

After you tap the End button, you'll return to a list of records.

Records that have been modified on the device appear pink in the list or records.

Tap the blue Back button, and then tap the Sync button to synchronize the handheld.  Synchronizing your handheld send your data records to the Pendragon Forms Staging Server, and downloads any new content distributed by the administrator.

Viewing Data on the PC

In the Pendragon Forms Manager window, click on the name of your form and then click the Edit/View button. You will be prompted to synchronize with the Staging Server.  Records are synchronized from the Staging Server to the Pendragon Forms Manager Access database in the background, but clicking Yes ensures that the latest records are synchronized immediately.

Data is displayed in a spreadsheet-like format. Each row is a record, and each column is a field on your form.

As you can see, you can build forms, deploy them, and start getting data in minutes.

For more information, download the Pendragon Forms VI Reference Guide.

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