QEST Platform 5.8 Documentation
Applies to QESTField Forms

This article describes how to create and define the necessary properties for a new form. Use these instructions when a new PDF inspection or testing form must be added to a QEST Platform instance.

Contents

Overview

When a new inspection or testing form is to be added to the QEST Platform, the process begins in the QEST Administrator Console. This page discusses the process of adding a new form, and defines what steps and resources are required to do so.

Form Definition

Requirements

Users that wish to define new forms in an instance of QEST Platform require, at minumum:

System Administrator rights
The desired name of the form. This will appear in both QESTField Forms to end users and QESTLab as the caption of the object. As a result, the name should clearly identify the what the form is and should be used for
The desired prefix for the form report number

Creating a New Form Definition

The following steps will allow a user to create a new Form

Open the QEST Administrator Console and log in as a user with System Administrator rights
Expand the tree to navigate to the following node: Lab->Configuration->Documents->Forms
Right click in the right hand pane and select Add Form
1. When on the forms node, this action can also be carried out by using the Action menu and selecting Add Form

At this point, a new dialog will appear that allows the further definition of the form. The elements of this dialog are described in the table below.

Field	Description
Document Type	Locked to Form and cannot be changed.
No	An internal ID number for the form that will allow QEST Platform to recognize the form's type. This number is initially editable but locks when the forms is first saved. It is recommended that this number not be changed unless a form definition must be replicated exactly from another environment and a template mapped with a different ID is to be attached to this form. This field must contain a value before the form can be saved.
Table	Set to External and cannot be changed.
Report Prefix	If the form is to act as a report that requires a unique report number this is the prefix that will be used for the report number. All QEST Platform reports structure their report numbers as [Report Prefix][Parent Document ID Number] by default, though this can be customized with counters. In the case of QESTField Forms, the parent document will always be the work order. The report prefix should end with a colon if consistency with native QEST Platform reports is desired. This field must contain a value before the form definition can be saved.
Document Name	The text entered here will appear in QESTField Forms when users add, download and synchronize forms. The internal name of the document then will be automatically copied to the document caption since it most often makes sense for these two to be the same. This name will also appear in QESTLab in any configuration user interface (such as user rights etc.). This field must contain a value before the form definition can be saved. This field does not support special characters like apostrophes
Test Method	If there is a specific test method that this form relates to, include it here.
Caption	The text entered here will appear as the caption of the document in the QESTLab tree. The caption will be automatically set to be the same as the name if it is blank and the cursor is moved out of the name field. This field must contain a value before the form definition can be saved. This field does not support special characters like apostrophes
Revision Year	If the form relates to a test method or a design that specifically includes a revision year, include it here.
Tags	Tags are used when uploading a form to Construction Hive in order to categorise and classify a document. Tags allow for filtering of search results and direct searching. Best practice for tags in Construction Hive include: Multiple words should be separated by a hyphen At least one tag should identify the activity that has taken place (e.g. inspection, daily-report) At least one tag should identify where the activity took place (e.g. field-report) Some rules are enforced: Tags must only consist of letters, numbers or dashes Tags must not begin with a number Tags should be separated by a semicolon. The default tags for all forms are: report;field-report;form
Parent Document	Locked to Work Order and cannot be changed.
Group	Defines which sample type group the document will appear under in the QESTLab tree. If an activity is related to one of the sample types, it may be more intuitive to see the document with the appropriate samples in QESTLab. Note that this does not mean Forms will be able to pull in data from the sample types, only that they will appear alongside them in the tree.
Additional Properties	This data entry element allows for more advanced QESTLab-related properties to be set and will not often be used. This could be used for things like changing the icon of the object in QESTLab to be one of the other existing icons.

Once the above properties have been set, clicking Save will apply the changes and create the new object, ready for a template PDF form to be mapped to it. This message will be shown on a successful save:

In order to carry out any further operations on the form definition, such as exporting an XSD file, the QEST Administrator Console (and QESTLab if it was running during the creation of the form definition) will need to be restarted.

After a form definition has been created, it will become available as a workflow in QESTField Forms to users. System Administrators will have provided rights of the form to the locations where the forms workflow is to be enabled. See QESTNet Installation Guide for more information on workflow mappings and how to enable the forms workflows at various locations.

Editing a Form Definition

Once a form definition exists it is possible to edit most of the properties above. The only exception is the ID number (with the prompt No in the user interface above) which is locked after the form is first created.

Editing a form definition is a similar process as described above, with the following changes:

Open the QEST Administrator Console and log in
Navigate to Lab->Configuration->Documents->Forms
On the right hand pane, select the form that will be edited
Right click on the form and click Edit Details
1. When on the forms node and with a form definition selection, this action can also be carried out by using the Action menu and selecting Edit Details.

The same dialog box will appear like when adding a new form. The dialog box will show the same properties available for editing. The only difference is the document number cannot be edited.

Exporting an XSD

Once a form definition has been successfully added and saved, its structure can be exported to an XSD file. This file is required for mapping QEST Platform fields to a fillable PDF form, as described in Mapping Forms.

The following steps should be followed to export an XSD file for a form definition:

Open the QEST Administrator Console and log in
Navigate to Lab->Configuration->Documents->Forms
On the right hand pane, select the form that needs to be exported to an XSD file
Right click on the form and click Export to XSD
1. When on the forms node and with a form definition selection, this action can also be carried out by using the Action menu and selecting Export to XSD
Save the file to the desired location, this file will be used by users that map QEST Platform database fields to fillable PDF forms

Attaching a Mapped Fillable PDF Form Template

Once a fillable PDF form has been mapped with appropriate QEST Platform database fields according to the process described in Mapping Forms it is necessary to associate that template with a definition of a form using the QEST Administrator Console. This will associate the actual PDF with the workflow in QEST Platform.

The following steps should be followed to associate a mapped fillable PDF form file to a form definition:

Open the QEST Administrator Console and log in
Navigate to Lab->Configuration->Documents->Forms
On the right hand pane, select the form that needs the template associated with it and right click Manage External Documents
The form that was selected when right clicking will be pre-selected on the left had side of the Manage External Document Mappings dialog that appears under the Forms grouping
1. When on the forms node, this dialog can also be opened out by using the Action menu and selecting Manage External Document Mappings.
The right hand side of the dialog lists the various external documents that can be mapped to QEST Platform documents. If a document is already mapped to the form definition a checkbox will appear next to it on the right hand side of the dialog. Assuming that this is a new form definition, no document will be checked

In order to map a fillable PDF form to the form definition, the PDF file will need to be uploaded to the database through an external document. If no appropriate forms external document yet exists, one will need to be added. To add a new forms external document, click the Add Document button on the top right hand pane of the window. This will add a new document of type Reference Material with the name (New Document), automatically selected and mapped to the selected form definition. Since this document is mapped to the form definition it is indicated by the checkbox on the right hand panel when the form definition is selected on the left. This will open up a user interface for interacting with the external documents to show the newly added document.

The following settings will need to be set in order for QEST Platform to recognise the newly added document as a PDF template that users can download through QESTField Forms workflows:

Change the Class to Forms
Set the description to an appropriate name, a good choice is the name of the form followed by the word "template"
Browse to upload the mapped fillable PDF form

To upload a file, locate the mapped PDF file in the Select External File dialog that appears after clicking the Browse to upload a new file button and click Open.

Once the file is uploaded, the user will be presented with options to open, save, print and otherwise interact with the file. After all of the changes listed above have been made, the Manage External Document Mappings dialog should look like the below screenshot.

At this point, the document can be saved and the dialog closed.

The Manage External Document Mappings dialog does not have to be opened while a form is selected and the active selection can be changed in order to manage mappings across all QEST Platform document types. More information on the functionality of this dialog and the other supported document types is available in the External Document Administrator Guide.

Exactly one mapping to a fillable PDF form should be created for each form definition. If a form definition has no mapping, no PDF file will be able to be downloaded by users when selecting the relevant workflow in QESTField Forms, they will instead see an error message.

If more than one mapping is present for a form definition, it will not be possible to determine which is the correct file for users to download when selecting the relevant workflow and an error message will be shown to users instead.

Laboratory Level Document Permissions

When Laboratory Level Document Permissions are enabled, it is necessary to define which forms are permitted for each laboratory under the Laboratory Documents tab of the Regions & Laboratories node.

Note that a document will only appear in this list if that document is permitted for all parent regions.

User Rights

Access

Access can be further controlled for individual users. Users that have been granted access to a specific form definition will see the workflow available in their actions on a work order while those users that do not have access will not see the workflow for that particular form.

Access rights to a particular form type is granted through QESTLab Roles only and is done using the Forms roles category.

Modified user rights will take a few minutes to be honoured in the QESTField mobile app, it is possible to see the changes immediately by logging out and then logging back in.

Signing

Signatory rights can be granted to Forms in much the same way as access rights are. Users that have signatory rights will be able to sign all instances of a particular form type through QESTLab, the QESTField Forms smartphone app or the QESTField Forms web view.

In order to able to sign instances of a form type in QESTLab, a user will require the general Signatory user right in addition to the above signatory rights.

Publishing

In order to be able to publish a form, a user will require access rights to the form and the general Publish Test Reports user right. Publishing of forms can occur from QESTLab, the QESTField Forms smartphone app and the QESTField Forms web view. Forms can be published whether they are signed or not. For more details see Signing and Publishing Forms in the Field (Web) and Signing and Publishing Forms in the Field (App).

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