Building a template

The form builder is where a blank form is designed. It is the most powerful screen in Trackapt and the one worth taking slowly, because everything filed against a template afterwards is shaped by decisions made here.

Who may build one

Clearance alone does not let you author a form

Form templates are authored by the account holder and by the people named on the form: its authorised signers, its additional approvers, the approvers on its approval stages, the department's Level 6 members, and the department's appointed head.

Holding Level 6 or Admin clearance grants nothing on a form you are not named on. Being senior is not the same as being party to a document.

Creating a new template still needs Level 6. Editing an existing one is judged purely by whether you are named on it, because a named signer may hold any clearance and a level gate would refuse exactly the people the rule admits.

A consequence worth knowing: a form with no department and no named signers or approvers is editable only by the account holder.

The department's template list only offers the edit action to people the rule actually admits, so an action you can see is one that will work. If you expected an edit action and it is not there, you are not named on that form.

Changing a section's group needs access to that group

Being named on a form lets you author it. It does not, on its own, let you point it at data you cannot see.

So you may add or remove a section's link to a tracker group only if you can already see that group. Repointing a section counts as both at once, and deleting a section counts as a removal.

The reason is worth understanding, because it is what the rule protects: a form's entries are readable by anyone who can see every group the form links to, and a form linking nothing at all is organisation-wide. Without this check, an author could drop a restricted section's link and make that form's entire history readable by everyone.

Only what you change is checked. A save that leaves the links alone never consults the whitelist, so a named signer can rename a field on a form covering equipment they do not personally hold — which is ordinary and legitimate.

Sections

A form is divided into sections. Each holds fields.

Linking a section to a tracker group

A section linked to a tracker group becomes a table with one row per item. This is what lets a delivery note list every product, or a shift sheet list every machine.

It is also what makes several other features possible at all: only a linked section can write readings, feed a balance, or carry values forward, because only a linked section has stable row identity.

Row identity comes from the tracker, never from the row's position

Rows reorder as items are added and removed. Anything that matches rows by position eventually puts one machine's reading into another's row — a wrong number that looks entirely plausible. Trackapt matches by item throughout.

Field types

Type	Captures
Text	Free text.
Number	A figure, optionally with a unit.
Date	A date, from the picker.
Dropdown	One of a fixed list you type in.
Reference	One of a list the system maintains — see below.
Unit	A unit of measure, from the unit library.
Computed	A figure worked out from other fields. See Computed columns.
Signature	A signature.

Required, never, or only sometimes

A field can be required every time, optional every time, or — the setting between the two — Required only sometimes.

A Currency that only matters once a Price has been named cannot be expressed by a plain tick: ticked, it blocks every line that legitimately has no price; unticked, it accepts the one combination that is actually wrong.

So turn on Required only sometimes and say:

Setting	What it asks
Decided by	Which other field on this section says whether this one is needed
Needed when it is	Filled in, Left blank, or — against a dropdown — One of these answers
Answers	Which answers make it necessary

It is read line by line

The deciding field is read on the same row, so each line of a repeating section decides for itself. On every other line the field stays optional, and a form that legitimately leaves it empty can still be submitted.

The answers offered come from the deciding field's own options rather than being typed again, so renaming an option does not leave the rule pointing at a string nothing can match.

Form field only, versus form field plus tracked parameter

When you add a field to a section linked to a tracker group, the picker asks which of two things it is:

• Form field + tracked parameter — the value is published as a reading against the item on that row. Filing the document records the reading.
• Form field only — the value lives on the entry and nowhere else.

Choose the first where the figure is a fact about the item that other screens should see. Choose the second for anything that is only meaningful inside this document — a note, a reference number, a line total.

A field linked to a parameter also carries that parameter's plan, and under it Plan by period — a different figure for each month, quarter or year, judged period by period. The rows belong to the parameter, so what you set here is what the tracker group shows, and the other way round. See Plan by period.

Recording a reading only sometimes

One Job Card covers a scheduled service, a breakdown and a hose change. Left alone, all three write the same reading — so a hydraulic repair becomes the machine's last service, and the next service is scheduled from it.

Turn on Record this reading only sometimes on the field, then pick a dropdown on the same section and the answers that count.

Any other answer records nothing

The number is still captured on the form and still exports. It simply does not become the item's latest reading, so it cannot be mistaken for one.

Like a conditional requirement, it is judged per row — one document may service one machine and not another. And it holds on the way back out: a job card corrected from a service to a breakdown gives up the reading it had published.

Reference fields

A dropdown offers a fixed list you typed in. Fine for a handful of constants, wrong for anything the operation maintains — a list of machines retyped into every form drifts the moment one is bought or sold.

A reference field takes its options from the system. Two sources:

• A tracker group's items — which machine is this job card for. A reference field can point at several groups at once.
• Another form's entries — which approved requisition does this delivery fulfil.

What is stored is the id, so the link survives a rename.

Narrow an entry reference by status

A reference to another form's entries can be limited to approved ones. That is the control that stops a delivery being filed against a requisition nobody authorised. It looks unnecessary in testing, where every entry you made was approved.

A reference can also point at an attribute of the referenced thing rather than the thing itself. That requires a sibling reference field on the same section to say which thing — the attribute lookup has nothing to look up otherwise.

If whatever a reference points at is later deleted, the field goes inert rather than rendering an empty dropdown the filler cannot explain.

Signatures and approvals

Signature fields ask for a signature at fill time.

Signers are named on the template: individual members, and/or whole clearance levels.

A form with a signature field must name a signer

A save is refused if the form carries a signature field but names neither a signer nor a signing level. This applies to an existing form on its next save too: a signature nobody is authorised to give is a field that can never be completed.

Signatures required before approval says how many of the form's signature fields must actually be signed before anybody can approve a submission.

Naming who may sign says nothing about whether anybody did

Left at 0, a form carrying three signature boxes can be submitted with all three blank and approved anyway — and the approved document then reads as though its signatories stood behind it. Set the number where that matters. Approval is then refused until the signatures are in, on a flat count and on an approval order alike.

If signature fields are removed after the requirement was set, the form says so rather than quietly lowering the requirement for you.

Approvals are either a flat count or an approval order. You set one or the other, never both. The order is far more expressive and is almost always what you want.

Notification text

Notification text nominates one field whose answer becomes the message people see when a submission is filed — the job on a job card, the fault on a breakdown report.

The same answer then heads that submission's row on the submissions list, so the list says what each entry is about rather than showing only a date, a status and a name. Somebody who was notified can find the row they were told about without opening entries one at a time.

Left at Summary figures, the notice and the list show the totals instead.

The column is withheld rather than left blank

Three cases show the summary figures instead: a form that nominates nothing (which is most of them), a nomination whose field has since been retired, and a field that already earns a summary column of its own — a second column repeating it verbatim under a different heading reads as two fields.

One entry per item per period

A toggle beside the recording interval. Off by default.

Turn it on where a second document against the same item for the same period would be the first one entered twice — a job card is the clearest case. Two open against one machine for one shift means everything issued against it is counted twice, and the balance is then wrong in a way nobody can see by looking at it.

Alert rules on a field

A field can carry rules that fire when a condition over its value is met.

• The condition is written over {tokens} naming fields.
• Severity is Info, Warning or Critical.
• Channels: a marker on the form itself, in-app chat, push, or email.
• Recipients are named members and/or clearance levels, and are then filtered by who may actually see the item — an alert is not a way around the whitelist.

The message supports {token} substitution too, and the builder shows a Reads as preview so you can see what a recipient will get.

Cadence

A form has a recording cadence — how often an entry is expected. Fields that write readings must agree with it, and the builder tells you when one does not.

Two exemptions:

• Dynamic forms are pinned to a non-periodic cadence, and the picker is hidden.
• Mirror fields on a dynamic form are exempt from cadence matching entirely, because they only ever read. One dynamic form can therefore mirror parameters of mixed cadence.

Before you save

A short checklist that catches most of what goes wrong later:

1. Is every section that needs row identity linked to a group?
2. Does every reference to another form's entries name a status to narrow to?
3. Does every signature field have a named signer or signing level?
4. Have you set an approval order rather than a count, where the sequence matters?
5. Is one entry per item per period on, where a duplicate would double-count?

Next

• Submitting an entry
• Retiring a field — before you remove one
• Deleting entries and templates