Autumn '23

In this release

Catapult Form Converter

Transforming a paper-based form to a mobile app is no easy task. You have to drag each field onto the form manually, assign names, configure properties, etc. And only then can you move on to creating formulae and improving aesthetics (the ‘fun’ part of form creation?)

Do you know what would be great? If the system could do the boring work for you…

That’s right, we’ve been prototyping this idea for months now. We’ve called it ‘Project Catapult’ internally. How it would work is you’d upload a paper-based form in its digital format (Word, Excel, or PDF), and the system will try to generate your form fields for you. What you’ll get is the start of your mobile form, and you can go straight to the formulae and aesthetics.

It’s still a work in progress, but we recognise what value this could add. Hopefully, this is as exciting for you as it is for us!

Overlay An Image On The Media Field

You’ll soon be able to pre-define an overlay for a Media Field. This way, when your workers in the field need to take a photo of something specific, they’ll have pinpoint guidance in order to snap the picture correctly.

This could serve a wide variety of uses, from the dentist’s office to the industrial workplace. Here are a few examples to get the creative juices flowing:

1. Safety Inspections: highlight specific areas or equipment and accurately document potential hazards, safety compliance, or equipment conditions.

2. Quality Control: indicate the ideal framing or angles for capturing product details or defects, ensuring standardized and comprehensive documentation for quality assurance processes.

3. Maintenance and Repairs: outline specific components or areas of equipment or machinery.

4. Asset Management: provide overlays that outline the desired framing or positioning that accurately represent the assets.

By providing overlays as visual guidance for capturing photos, workers can consistently capture images as they should be.

Isolate Text On OCR Field

The OCR Field is getting an upgrade! With this extended functionality, you’ll be able to isolate specific text within your scanned images. So you’ll no longer have to manually try and isolate or remove the unwanted text by hand.

For example, if all you need is the serial number, you can scan the whole label and isolate only the number. The serial will be transferred to text, and there’s less room left for manual errors.

Populate Gallery Field From Data Source

You’ll soon be able to populate the Gallery Field directly from a Data Source – similar to how the Table Field functions.

For example, you’ve got a Data Source with a variety of images, and you’d like to present it in the app in a clean and accessible way. With this feature, you’ll simply populate the Gallery Field directly from your Data Source, which gives your users a quick and comprehensive view of all these images.

Enable Email-Less Login

This one may seem familiar to you.

Carried over from the last cycle, this will enable login with Ping Identity. This should result in a more streamlined user experience. If this sounds even a little worrying to you, rest in knowing that security is a top priority at FormsFly.

Improvements To Our Notifications Area

We’re improving our notifications regarding stuck or pending Connectors to help better manage things. That way, you’ll know of any issues sooner and not have to sit in the dark.

The two specific cases are listed below.

Notification When Connectors Are Stuck Due To Media Files

When media files don’t upload correctly, there are a few issues that can arise. The first is that customers never get the files, and sometimes they can completely slip through the cracks as a result.

Another issue is if you use the Process Step field, the process can halt in its current step and never move on. Finally, it can also stop Connectors from firing, meaning your data never reaches its intended endpoint.

So once this goes live, a notification will appear in the Pending tab in your notifications area. You’ll even automatically get an email if you have that set up.

We’re confident this will curb this frustrating occurrence.

Notification Logs To Manage Pending Connectors

The other improvement to our notifications has to do with pending Connectors. When you experience connection issues, FormsFly will automatically retry the connection up to 6 times before failing. All the while, you have no idea what’s going on.

That’s because no notifications are sent from our side – until a Connector eventually fails.

We aim to change that – with earlier notifications alerting you that there is an issue. Once this change goes live, a notification will appear under the ‘Pending’ tab after the first attempt to retry. You’ll also get an email, as above, if that’s set up.

This way, you can take action sooner and maybe even prevent having to take manual action later.

Custom Categories For Examples Catalog

Here’s a nice one for vendors. Our examples catalog is currently organized by industry (such as health and safety, sales, mining, etc.)

What if you want to target only a certain industry and change the categories to suit your target market? Currently, that’s not possible – but we’re changing that. Once this goes live, you’ll be able to customize your examples catalog completely.

For example, you can sort by needs – such as Inspections, Checklists, Quotes, Sales Orders, etc. This is so you can offer your customers a more tailored user experience.

Allow WaaS Clients To Whitelist And Embed The Web Portal Into An iFrame

WaaS customers, have you ever wanted to display your branded web portal within your BI tool? This can help monitor the data flowing into your dashboard in real time.

That’s why we’re adding this feature. You’ll be able to embed your web portal into an iframe after this goes live. You will need to whitelist the domain in your Branding Center (Branding > Advanced Access).

Data Tables - Row Option Links

We recently made a change to the Screens page that has been very well received. This change involved removing the menu items when hovering over Screens and instead adding icons to the right-hand side of the table cell on the Screen Page to make them easier to find.

Given the warm reception of this change, we’re rolling it out to more pages on the platform.

Choices Field Checkboxes

When using our Choices field with a list of choices on a wide-screen device, the padding between the text and checkbox can often make it difficult to tick the correct box whilst working.

In an attempt to solve this, we’re moving the checkboxes over to the left. This should help to cut any confusion and make it way easier to use this field on any device. This also works with the auto-complete search configuration within the choices field.

Add Cancel Button To Open Saved Dialog

This one is rather simple. When you’re opening a form on the app that has saved entries, the ‘Open Saved’ dialogue only offers two options. To create a new form or open a saved one – but what if you clicked the wrong form in the first place?

To solve this little annoyance, we’re adding a cancel button there, so you can back out and save some time if you have clicked the wrong form.

In-App Log Out Button Colour

Another small one relating to your log-out button; iOS users will notice that it always defaults to red, whereas Android users can set a default button color.

So to help our iOS users, we’re sorting this out so you, too, can pick a button color that suits you.