Designing forms
SurveyCTO facilitates data collection using forms that are customized to meet your needs. Forms can be surveys, registration forms, inspection checklists, or anything else you might imagine.
Creating your forms on the SurveyCTO platform, or on external platforms
The definitions for these forms – the specifications that define how they should look and how they should function – are contained in spreadsheet documents that you can easily edit, save, back up, collaborate on, copy and paste, and manage. You can edit these documents directly in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, or you can use our online drag-and-drop form designer to edit them.
Most users prefer to use our online form designer to edit their forms, particularly when they are getting started. But if you need to work completely offline, do a lot of large-scale copying-and-pasting, collaborate with tracked-changes, or just want to save a record of your form definition, remember that you can always export to Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
Creating your own forms, use sample forms, or import from the Hub
You can either design your own form from scratch, or you can start with one of SurveyCTO's many sample forms and then customize it to suit your purposes. Or even better, find the Workflow that best meets your needs using the SurveyCTO Hub. All of the tools you need for getting started installing or designing forms are located on the Discover or Design tabs of your SurveyCTO server console; many of these tools are also available for use offline, within the SurveyCTO Desktop application.
Testing your forms
You can also test and edit your forms before and during deployment with our form testing interface. The interface allows you to: preview your forms; toggle between test and design views; jump around easily for non-linear testing; save test data and return to continue testing later; and submit real data to downstream processes.
See the full help section on form design for detailed help on designing forms and more advanced techniques, such as pre-loading data and randomizing survey elements.
