As an Administrator of your Apricot database, you have the power to customize your organization's forms to ensure they meet your evolving needs. Whether you need to add a new field, update field properties, or completely redesign a form, the Form Designer provides the flexibility to make the necessary changes.
Follow the steps listed below to learn how to approach form edits strategically, as certain modifications may impact your existing data and user experiences.
Step 1: Open the form in the Form Designer
In the Administrator tab, expand the Form Designer category of the navigation bar and select "Standard Forms". The next page will display all existing Tier 1 forms available to edit. Tier 1 forms with a black arrow next to the name can be expanded to show the list of associated Tier 2 forms available to edit as well.
Hover over the Actions menu next to the form you want to open, then select "Edit".
Step 2: Edit the form
To learn more about what form details and components are available to you in the "Edit" version of a form, click here.
Note: Before you make any changes, you may consider contacting the Support team to request a copy of the form so you can experiment with a different setup without impacting your users' current data entry workflow. Support can copy a Tier 1 form and make it a Tier 2 form under a different Tier 1 form, and they can also copy a Tier 2 form and make the copy a separate Tier 1 form.
When editing a form, keep the following in mind to consider how your changes may impact your data:
Changing a field's Display Name in the properties will not impact existing data or report columns associated with the field.
Removing a Field Choice value or updating a value within an Option field will not update existing records with the original value selected. The records will instead retain the original value within an "Other" box.
The position or order of fields within a form can be changed without affecting existing data. However, if Form Logic is enabled, you must expand each rule within the form to ensure there are no empty values for field names within a condition or action. If there are empty values, this indicates a broken form rule that needs to be reconfigured. To learn more about form logic, click here.
Important: It is possible for multiple users to make modifications to a form at the same time. When this happens, the changes of one user will be overwritten by the other once their version of the form is saved or published.
Step 3 (optional): Revert your changes
If necessary, you have the option to undo all changes you've made since the form was last published. To revert the form back to its most recently published version, select "Previous Version" from the Form Actions palette.
Note: If you're unsure which recent changes you'll overwrite by reverting the form, you can save the form without publishing and instead view the form from the My Apricot tab. Certain fields or sections may need to be unhidden if form logic is enabled to provide the full picture of the currently published state of the form.
Step 4: Publish the form
Once you're satisfied with the changes you've made, select "Publish Form" from the Form Actions palette to make the new version of the form available to users for data entry.
