What to send us
The more of this you can provide, the closer the first draft is to what you mean. None of it needs to be tidy — a working spreadsheet is fine.
An export from your current tool
Most form platforms can export a form’s structure — as a package, JSON, XML or CSV. Export each form, including any subforms and shared option lists it uses, and send the files as they are. We will read them.
Or a spreadsheet of the structure
If you designed your forms in Excel, or can describe them in one, a sheet per form with a row per field works well. Useful columns, in rough order of how much they help:
| Column | Example | Why it helps |
|---|---|---|
| Label | Hour meter, finish | What people see |
| Type | Decimal | Which field type to use — see the field type reference |
| Required | Yes | Whether the form refuses submission without it |
| Options | Pass, Fail, Not applicable | For choice fields; one list per field, or the name of a shared list |
| Section | Checks | Which heading it sits under; mark a section as repeatable if people add rows of it |
| Key | reading_end | If you already have stable names — from a report, a database, a template — keep them |
| Calculation | reading_end − reading_start | Anything worked out from other fields |
| Shown when | fault_reported is Yes | Anything that appears only under a condition |
| Notes | Must be higher than the start reading | Rules, help text, anything else |
Missing columns are fine. Labels and types alone get most of the way.
Or the form itself
A paper form, a PDF, a Word document — a scan or a photo of what people fill in today. We will work out the structure from it and confirm the details with you.
What is not obvious from a structure
Tell us about these in a note, because no export carries them well:
- Shared lists. A list of sites or cost codes used by several forms becomes one Smart List. Say which lists are shared.
- Who fills in what. A form started by one person and finished by another becomes a Send to field. A form that needs a manager’s sign-off becomes a review workflow.
- Records that belong to other records. An inspection whose defects are followed up separately becomes a subform; a form that picks an asset from a register becomes a Record Lookup.
- Where the data goes afterwards. A spreadsheet, a database, a document template — knowing this early lets us set the field keys to match.
Exports that import directly
Some platforms export in a format the builder reads without our help. An iFormBuilder package, for example, imports from Forms → Import with its option lists, subforms and scripts mapped, and the preview shows every element and what it will become before anything is created. The forms arrive as drafts for you to check.
If you are not sure whether yours is, send it anyway.
Existing records
If you have records from the old forms and want them in FormDragon, send them too — as CSV or JSON, one file per form — and we will load them into the new forms once you have approved the structure. Field names in the records should match the labels or keys in the structure, but we can map them if not.