General Discussion

Hi all - we've encountered a new use-case in our organization, and I was hoping to get your input.

Bit of background first might help.  In our Road Maintenance industry, we have hundreds of Activities that can be performed out on the road - everything from a temporary patch on a road, to installing a new cattle guard, to cleaning out culverts.  Each Activity has a set of step-by-step instructions and best practices that go along with them - we call these Work Instructions.  Our Quality and Operations teams have taken a lot of time and effort to build out this library of Work Instructions - currently each individually in a PDF document format - and now they want to make sure that these Work Instructions are available to our workers for them to use when they are out in the field.  We do not want to print thick binders for each worker - we'd prefer to do this electronically.

Ideally, operators on the road would receive Work Instructions in the context of the task they are doing, i.e. get the right information at the right time to do their job efficiently.  Because we use ProntoForms on iPads to track and enter all details of their work (which Activity, what equipment was used, any material used, quantities completed, hours worked, etc.), it would be ideal if we could make Work Instructions available in their ProntoForms form at the time they are filling it out.

So, that's the background.  The question I have for the group is: how could we potentially use ProntoForms to do this?  Again, the documents are in PDF format right now, and we would need different content to show, depending on what Activity was selected from a dropdown.  We would also need all the information in the documents available offline.

A few thoughts that have come to mind:

1. Could use Resource Images with a screenshot of the Work Instructions as a picture - however, we'd need hundreds of such pictures (Work Instructions per activity) and I'm not sure if Conditional Logic could dynamically display a different Image depending on which Activity was selected
2. Could copy/paste the Work Instructions into text in a Data Source, and load the Instructions up in question text / label (perhaps in an expandable Section) - however, I think any document formatting and a lot of the readability of the Instructions would be lost if doing it this way
3. We could host the Work Instructions PDFs in a SharePoint or OneDrive folder accessible to our workers via the internet, and then simply keep the URL to each individual Work Instruction document in a data source that can be displayed in a question text / label when an Activity is selected from a dropdown.  However, this would really only work if a worker is online / connected to the internet (not outside of cell reception) and it would still force them to open a different application (browser?) to view the instructions on an iPad I believe.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how we could dynamically make these Work Instructions available in a form in the context of a selected Activity?  Much appreciated for any input you might have.  Ultimately, acknowledging that ProntoForms isn't really a document repository and may not be a great fit for what we're trying to, we might have to use a different offline document repository (we use a system for offline Safety documentation called SiteDocs), but I'd love to find a way in ProntoForms if possible.

Thanks!
Brian

------------------------------
Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC
------------------------------

Hi Brian,
Are these work instructions mainly written out or are there accompanying images/diagrams that need to be included as well?

The closest thing we currently have in our library is a form for our Start-Up documents. The user selects the type of equipment they need and then the form displays the relevant instructions and input fields. These instructions are mainly text and we were able to get 99% of the information we needed in through information labels (which have pretty robust formatting options available now) and then supplemented with resources images where needed.
This does create a pretty large form though - we have about 30 options currently available and the form is almost 3000 questions.

As for using the resource images to display screenshots, the conditional logic could handle the variation in the form, but I believe that there is a limit to the number of resource images you can include in a particular form which it sounds like y'all would quickly exceed.

However, if resource images are required for each set of work instructions, you could build out a dispatch workflow where the user submits a "Form Request" form in which they specify what they will be working on, and when they submit, the specific form they need will be sent to their inbox. The specific forms would need to be build out individually with accompanying dispatch destinations set up, but you would not have to worry about the resource image limit because you would be working with multiple forms.
Also if you set the forms as "Dispatch Only", the user would only see the Form Request form rather than going through a million different forms to find the right one.

There may also be a way to incorporate the instructions through a push-to-repeat section, but it would definitely limit your formatting options and require a pretty creative data source.

Thanks,
CC

------------------------------
Cecily Stelly
Analyst
Johnson Controls
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 09:22
From: Brian Eshpeter
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Hi all - we've encountered a new use-case in our organization, and I was hoping to get your input.

Bit of background first might help.  In our Road Maintenance industry, we have hundreds of Activities that can be performed out on the road - everything from a temporary patch on a road, to installing a new cattle guard, to cleaning out culverts.  Each Activity has a set of step-by-step instructions and best practices that go along with them - we call these Work Instructions.  Our Quality and Operations teams have taken a lot of time and effort to build out this library of Work Instructions - currently each individually in a PDF document format - and now they want to make sure that these Work Instructions are available to our workers for them to use when they are out in the field.  We do not want to print thick binders for each worker - we'd prefer to do this electronically.

Ideally, operators on the road would receive Work Instructions in the context of the task they are doing, i.e. get the right information at the right time to do their job efficiently.  Because we use ProntoForms on iPads to track and enter all details of their work (which Activity, what equipment was used, any material used, quantities completed, hours worked, etc.), it would be ideal if we could make Work Instructions available in their ProntoForms form at the time they are filling it out.

So, that's the background.  The question I have for the group is: how could we potentially use ProntoForms to do this?  Again, the documents are in PDF format right now, and we would need different content to show, depending on what Activity was selected from a dropdown.  We would also need all the information in the documents available offline.

A few thoughts that have come to mind:

1. Could use Resource Images with a screenshot of the Work Instructions as a picture - however, we'd need hundreds of such pictures (Work Instructions per activity) and I'm not sure if Conditional Logic could dynamically display a different Image depending on which Activity was selected
2. Could copy/paste the Work Instructions into text in a Data Source, and load the Instructions up in question text / label (perhaps in an expandable Section) - however, I think any document formatting and a lot of the readability of the Instructions would be lost if doing it this way
3. We could host the Work Instructions PDFs in a SharePoint or OneDrive folder accessible to our workers via the internet, and then simply keep the URL to each individual Work Instruction document in a data source that can be displayed in a question text / label when an Activity is selected from a dropdown.  However, this would really only work if a worker is online / connected to the internet (not outside of cell reception) and it would still force them to open a different application (browser?) to view the instructions on an iPad I believe.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how we could dynamically make these Work Instructions available in a form in the context of a selected Activity?  Much appreciated for any input you might have.  Ultimately, acknowledging that ProntoForms isn't really a document repository and may not be a great fit for what we're trying to, we might have to use a different offline document repository (we use a system for offline Safety documentation called SiteDocs), but I'd love to find a way in ProntoForms if possible.

Thanks!
Brian

------------------------------
Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC
------------------------------

Thank you Cecily for sharing how you've done this!  Daniel on my team and I had some good conversation.  Basically the options we were able to take from your feedback is:

1. Have text instructions stored in an Information Label, which are selectively displayed via conditional logic
2. Use resource images, and again selectively display them via conditional logic
3. Have a dispatch form to request the correct instructions
4. Incorporate a push-to-repeat section

Part of our challenge is that we'd like our solution to work offline - which might eliminate your good idea #3 about the dispatching forms.  And we are also limited on the number of conditional logic rules that we can use (and we're talking hundreds of different Work Instructions, thus hundreds of rules potentially). so that might negate #1 and 2.

However, your idea about push-to-repeat got us thinking about 2 more feasible options that might work...the Work Instructions we have are quite structured - they are in a template of 10 sections, that cover the Purpose, Materials, Steps, and more.  A prescriptive format like that does lend itself to a push-to-repeat - basically we could have a data source that contains 10 columns, and we'd put the text in there for each of our (hundreds of) activities.  We can build the system to push into these rows - and wouldn't even have to use any conditional logic rules to do so.  Readability would suffer a bit, but it would be available both offline and online - it would just take a while to structure the data!  I'm sure we could write a python script of some kind to scrape the data into a spreadsheet file, something we could look into.

​​Anyways, I think between this option and potentially the SharePoint URL option/idea I had listed above (which would only be available online, not offline), we might be onto something here.

Thanks for your help - and GO COMMUNITY @Pat Cooney @Stu Rathbone!  This was great, and I appreciate your collaboration Cecily.
Cheers,
Brian​​

------------------------------
Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 10:13
From: Cecily Stelly
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Hi Brian,
Are these work instructions mainly written out or are there accompanying images/diagrams that need to be included as well?

The closest thing we currently have in our library is a form for our Start-Up documents. The user selects the type of equipment they need and then the form displays the relevant instructions and input fields. These instructions are mainly text and we were able to get 99% of the information we needed in through information labels (which have pretty robust formatting options available now) and then supplemented with resources images where needed.
This does create a pretty large form though - we have about 30 options currently available and the form is almost 3000 questions.

As for using the resource images to display screenshots, the conditional logic could handle the variation in the form, but I believe that there is a limit to the number of resource images you can include in a particular form which it sounds like y'all would quickly exceed.

However, if resource images are required for each set of work instructions, you could build out a dispatch workflow where the user submits a "Form Request" form in which they specify what they will be working on, and when they submit, the specific form they need will be sent to their inbox. The specific forms would need to be build out individually with accompanying dispatch destinations set up, but you would not have to worry about the resource image limit because you would be working with multiple forms.
Also if you set the forms as "Dispatch Only", the user would only see the Form Request form rather than going through a million different forms to find the right one.

There may also be a way to incorporate the instructions through a push-to-repeat section, but it would definitely limit your formatting options and require a pretty creative data source.

Thanks,
CC

------------------------------
Cecily Stelly
Analyst
Johnson Controls

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 09:22
From: Brian Eshpeter
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Hi all - we've encountered a new use-case in our organization, and I was hoping to get your input.

Bit of background first might help.  In our Road Maintenance industry, we have hundreds of Activities that can be performed out on the road - everything from a temporary patch on a road, to installing a new cattle guard, to cleaning out culverts.  Each Activity has a set of step-by-step instructions and best practices that go along with them - we call these Work Instructions.  Our Quality and Operations teams have taken a lot of time and effort to build out this library of Work Instructions - currently each individually in a PDF document format - and now they want to make sure that these Work Instructions are available to our workers for them to use when they are out in the field.  We do not want to print thick binders for each worker - we'd prefer to do this electronically.

Ideally, operators on the road would receive Work Instructions in the context of the task they are doing, i.e. get the right information at the right time to do their job efficiently.  Because we use ProntoForms on iPads to track and enter all details of their work (which Activity, what equipment was used, any material used, quantities completed, hours worked, etc.), it would be ideal if we could make Work Instructions available in their ProntoForms form at the time they are filling it out.

So, that's the background.  The question I have for the group is: how could we potentially use ProntoForms to do this?  Again, the documents are in PDF format right now, and we would need different content to show, depending on what Activity was selected from a dropdown.  We would also need all the information in the documents available offline.

A few thoughts that have come to mind:

1. Could use Resource Images with a screenshot of the Work Instructions as a picture - however, we'd need hundreds of such pictures (Work Instructions per activity) and I'm not sure if Conditional Logic could dynamically display a different Image depending on which Activity was selected
2. Could copy/paste the Work Instructions into text in a Data Source, and load the Instructions up in question text / label (perhaps in an expandable Section) - however, I think any document formatting and a lot of the readability of the Instructions would be lost if doing it this way
3. We could host the Work Instructions PDFs in a SharePoint or OneDrive folder accessible to our workers via the internet, and then simply keep the URL to each individual Work Instruction document in a data source that can be displayed in a question text / label when an Activity is selected from a dropdown.  However, this would really only work if a worker is online / connected to the internet (not outside of cell reception) and it would still force them to open a different application (browser?) to view the instructions on an iPad I believe.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how we could dynamically make these Work Instructions available in a form in the context of a selected Activity?  Much appreciated for any input you might have.  Ultimately, acknowledging that ProntoForms isn't really a document repository and may not be a great fit for what we're trying to, we might have to use a different offline document repository (we use a system for offline Safety documentation called SiteDocs), but I'd love to find a way in ProntoForms if possible.

Thanks!
Brian

------------------------------
Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC
------------------------------

Hi Brian,
Glad I could help! Also I must say I am a bit jealous at how your work sections are so well organized, that definitely makes things like this easier.

If you do go down the push to repeat route, here are a few things we've learned from similiar-ish projects:

1. While you lose the ability to format directly in the question editor, certain formatting like numbered and bulleted lists in excel will still carry over so you have some control over the look and feel of the instructions. 
2. In order to use resource images in the push to repeat, you will have to add additional columns in your data source for each image or related set of images that will push a value to a field which conditionally shows the images needed. 
3. If you have more than two filter questions to push the data, make sure you use a concatenate field in the data to actually push the fields in the repeatable sections. 

If y'all have used push-to-repeat a lot in previous forms that's probably all old news, but I wanted to include just in case it could be helpful.

Best of luck on your exciting project!
CC

------------------------------
Cecily Stelly
Analyst
Johnson Controls
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 20:32
From: Brian Eshpeter
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Thank you Cecily for sharing how you've done this!  Daniel on my team and I had some good conversation.  Basically the options we were able to take from your feedback is:

1. Have text instructions stored in an Information Label, which are selectively displayed via conditional logic
2. Use resource images, and again selectively display them via conditional logic
3. Have a dispatch form to request the correct instructions
4. Incorporate a push-to-repeat section

Part of our challenge is that we'd like our solution to work offline - which might eliminate your good idea #3 about the dispatching forms.  And we are also limited on the number of conditional logic rules that we can use (and we're talking hundreds of different Work Instructions, thus hundreds of rules potentially). so that might negate #1 and 2.

However, your idea about push-to-repeat got us thinking about 2 more feasible options that might work...the Work Instructions we have are quite structured - they are in a template of 10 sections, that cover the Purpose, Materials, Steps, and more.  A prescriptive format like that does lend itself to a push-to-repeat - basically we could have a data source that contains 10 columns, and we'd put the text in there for each of our (hundreds of) activities.  We can build the system to push into these rows - and wouldn't even have to use any conditional logic rules to do so.  Readability would suffer a bit, but it would be available both offline and online - it would just take a while to structure the data!  I'm sure we could write a python script of some kind to scrape the data into a spreadsheet file, something we could look into.

​​Anyways, I think between this option and potentially the SharePoint URL option/idea I had listed above (which would only be available online, not offline), we might be onto something here.

Thanks for your help - and GO COMMUNITY @Pat Cooney @Stu Rathbone!  This was great, and I appreciate your collaboration Cecily.
Cheers,
Brian​​

------------------------------
Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 10:13
From: Cecily Stelly
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Hi Brian,
Are these work instructions mainly written out or are there accompanying images/diagrams that need to be included as well?

The closest thing we currently have in our library is a form for our Start-Up documents. The user selects the type of equipment they need and then the form displays the relevant instructions and input fields. These instructions are mainly text and we were able to get 99% of the information we needed in through information labels (which have pretty robust formatting options available now) and then supplemented with resources images where needed.
This does create a pretty large form though - we have about 30 options currently available and the form is almost 3000 questions.

As for using the resource images to display screenshots, the conditional logic could handle the variation in the form, but I believe that there is a limit to the number of resource images you can include in a particular form which it sounds like y'all would quickly exceed.

However, if resource images are required for each set of work instructions, you could build out a dispatch workflow where the user submits a "Form Request" form in which they specify what they will be working on, and when they submit, the specific form they need will be sent to their inbox. The specific forms would need to be build out individually with accompanying dispatch destinations set up, but you would not have to worry about the resource image limit because you would be working with multiple forms.
Also if you set the forms as "Dispatch Only", the user would only see the Form Request form rather than going through a million different forms to find the right one.

There may also be a way to incorporate the instructions through a push-to-repeat section, but it would definitely limit your formatting options and require a pretty creative data source.

Thanks,
CC

------------------------------
Cecily Stelly
Analyst
Johnson Controls

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 09:22
From: Brian Eshpeter
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Hi all - we've encountered a new use-case in our organization, and I was hoping to get your input.

Bit of background first might help.  In our Road Maintenance industry, we have hundreds of Activities that can be performed out on the road - everything from a temporary patch on a road, to installing a new cattle guard, to cleaning out culverts.  Each Activity has a set of step-by-step instructions and best practices that go along with them - we call these Work Instructions.  Our Quality and Operations teams have taken a lot of time and effort to build out this library of Work Instructions - currently each individually in a PDF document format - and now they want to make sure that these Work Instructions are available to our workers for them to use when they are out in the field.  We do not want to print thick binders for each worker - we'd prefer to do this electronically.

Ideally, operators on the road would receive Work Instructions in the context of the task they are doing, i.e. get the right information at the right time to do their job efficiently.  Because we use ProntoForms on iPads to track and enter all details of their work (which Activity, what equipment was used, any material used, quantities completed, hours worked, etc.), it would be ideal if we could make Work Instructions available in their ProntoForms form at the time they are filling it out.

So, that's the background.  The question I have for the group is: how could we potentially use ProntoForms to do this?  Again, the documents are in PDF format right now, and we would need different content to show, depending on what Activity was selected from a dropdown.  We would also need all the information in the documents available offline.

A few thoughts that have come to mind:

1. Could use Resource Images with a screenshot of the Work Instructions as a picture - however, we'd need hundreds of such pictures (Work Instructions per activity) and I'm not sure if Conditional Logic could dynamically display a different Image depending on which Activity was selected
2. Could copy/paste the Work Instructions into text in a Data Source, and load the Instructions up in question text / label (perhaps in an expandable Section) - however, I think any document formatting and a lot of the readability of the Instructions would be lost if doing it this way
3. We could host the Work Instructions PDFs in a SharePoint or OneDrive folder accessible to our workers via the internet, and then simply keep the URL to each individual Work Instruction document in a data source that can be displayed in a question text / label when an Activity is selected from a dropdown.  However, this would really only work if a worker is online / connected to the internet (not outside of cell reception) and it would still force them to open a different application (browser?) to view the instructions on an iPad I believe.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how we could dynamically make these Work Instructions available in a form in the context of a selected Activity?  Much appreciated for any input you might have.  Ultimately, acknowledging that ProntoForms isn't really a document repository and may not be a great fit for what we're trying to, we might have to use a different offline document repository (we use a system for offline Safety documentation called SiteDocs), but I'd love to find a way in ProntoForms if possible.

Thanks!
Brian

------------------------------
Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC
------------------------------

Thanks for those final items Cecily - though we do use repeatables with push-to-repeat fairly often, we've never tried formatted questions from a data source nor have we tried an image from a data source before.  Both are great to know, so thanks for the tips.  Have a great day

------------------------------
Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 10-06-2022 09:01
From: Cecily Stelly
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Hi Brian,
Glad I could help! Also I must say I am a bit jealous at how your work sections are so well organized, that definitely makes things like this easier.

If you do go down the push to repeat route, here are a few things we've learned from similiar-ish projects:

1. While you lose the ability to format directly in the question editor, certain formatting like numbered and bulleted lists in excel will still carry over so you have some control over the look and feel of the instructions. 
2. In order to use resource images in the push to repeat, you will have to add additional columns in your data source for each image or related set of images that will push a value to a field which conditionally shows the images needed. 
3. If you have more than two filter questions to push the data, make sure you use a concatenate field in the data to actually push the fields in the repeatable sections. 

If y'all have used push-to-repeat a lot in previous forms that's probably all old news, but I wanted to include just in case it could be helpful.

Best of luck on your exciting project!
CC

------------------------------
Cecily Stelly
Analyst
Johnson Controls

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 20:32
From: Brian Eshpeter
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Thank you Cecily for sharing how you've done this!  Daniel on my team and I had some good conversation.  Basically the options we were able to take from your feedback is:

1. Have text instructions stored in an Information Label, which are selectively displayed via conditional logic
2. Use resource images, and again selectively display them via conditional logic
3. Have a dispatch form to request the correct instructions
4. Incorporate a push-to-repeat section

Part of our challenge is that we'd like our solution to work offline - which might eliminate your good idea #3 about the dispatching forms.  And we are also limited on the number of conditional logic rules that we can use (and we're talking hundreds of different Work Instructions, thus hundreds of rules potentially). so that might negate #1 and 2.

However, your idea about push-to-repeat got us thinking about 2 more feasible options that might work...the Work Instructions we have are quite structured - they are in a template of 10 sections, that cover the Purpose, Materials, Steps, and more.  A prescriptive format like that does lend itself to a push-to-repeat - basically we could have a data source that contains 10 columns, and we'd put the text in there for each of our (hundreds of) activities.  We can build the system to push into these rows - and wouldn't even have to use any conditional logic rules to do so.  Readability would suffer a bit, but it would be available both offline and online - it would just take a while to structure the data!  I'm sure we could write a python script of some kind to scrape the data into a spreadsheet file, something we could look into.

​​Anyways, I think between this option and potentially the SharePoint URL option/idea I had listed above (which would only be available online, not offline), we might be onto something here.

Thanks for your help - and GO COMMUNITY @Pat Cooney @Stu Rathbone!  This was great, and I appreciate your collaboration Cecily.
Cheers,
Brian​​

------------------------------
Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 10:13
From: Cecily Stelly
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Hi Brian,
Are these work instructions mainly written out or are there accompanying images/diagrams that need to be included as well?

The closest thing we currently have in our library is a form for our Start-Up documents. The user selects the type of equipment they need and then the form displays the relevant instructions and input fields. These instructions are mainly text and we were able to get 99% of the information we needed in through information labels (which have pretty robust formatting options available now) and then supplemented with resources images where needed.
This does create a pretty large form though - we have about 30 options currently available and the form is almost 3000 questions.

As for using the resource images to display screenshots, the conditional logic could handle the variation in the form, but I believe that there is a limit to the number of resource images you can include in a particular form which it sounds like y'all would quickly exceed.

However, if resource images are required for each set of work instructions, you could build out a dispatch workflow where the user submits a "Form Request" form in which they specify what they will be working on, and when they submit, the specific form they need will be sent to their inbox. The specific forms would need to be build out individually with accompanying dispatch destinations set up, but you would not have to worry about the resource image limit because you would be working with multiple forms.
Also if you set the forms as "Dispatch Only", the user would only see the Form Request form rather than going through a million different forms to find the right one.

There may also be a way to incorporate the instructions through a push-to-repeat section, but it would definitely limit your formatting options and require a pretty creative data source.

Thanks,
CC

------------------------------
Cecily Stelly
Analyst
Johnson Controls

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 09:22
From: Brian Eshpeter
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Hi all - we've encountered a new use-case in our organization, and I was hoping to get your input.

Bit of background first might help.  In our Road Maintenance industry, we have hundreds of Activities that can be performed out on the road - everything from a temporary patch on a road, to installing a new cattle guard, to cleaning out culverts.  Each Activity has a set of step-by-step instructions and best practices that go along with them - we call these Work Instructions.  Our Quality and Operations teams have taken a lot of time and effort to build out this library of Work Instructions - currently each individually in a PDF document format - and now they want to make sure that these Work Instructions are available to our workers for them to use when they are out in the field.  We do not want to print thick binders for each worker - we'd prefer to do this electronically.

Ideally, operators on the road would receive Work Instructions in the context of the task they are doing, i.e. get the right information at the right time to do their job efficiently.  Because we use ProntoForms on iPads to track and enter all details of their work (which Activity, what equipment was used, any material used, quantities completed, hours worked, etc.), it would be ideal if we could make Work Instructions available in their ProntoForms form at the time they are filling it out.

So, that's the background.  The question I have for the group is: how could we potentially use ProntoForms to do this?  Again, the documents are in PDF format right now, and we would need different content to show, depending on what Activity was selected from a dropdown.  We would also need all the information in the documents available offline.

A few thoughts that have come to mind:

1. Could use Resource Images with a screenshot of the Work Instructions as a picture - however, we'd need hundreds of such pictures (Work Instructions per activity) and I'm not sure if Conditional Logic could dynamically display a different Image depending on which Activity was selected
2. Could copy/paste the Work Instructions into text in a Data Source, and load the Instructions up in question text / label (perhaps in an expandable Section) - however, I think any document formatting and a lot of the readability of the Instructions would be lost if doing it this way
3. We could host the Work Instructions PDFs in a SharePoint or OneDrive folder accessible to our workers via the internet, and then simply keep the URL to each individual Work Instruction document in a data source that can be displayed in a question text / label when an Activity is selected from a dropdown.  However, this would really only work if a worker is online / connected to the internet (not outside of cell reception) and it would still force them to open a different application (browser?) to view the instructions on an iPad I believe.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how we could dynamically make these Work Instructions available in a form in the context of a selected Activity?  Much appreciated for any input you might have.  Ultimately, acknowledging that ProntoForms isn't really a document repository and may not be a great fit for what we're trying to, we might have to use a different offline document repository (we use a system for offline Safety documentation called SiteDocs), but I'd love to find a way in ProntoForms if possible.

Thanks!
Brian

------------------------------
Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC
------------------------------

Hi Brian,

my name is Craig MacMaster and I'm one of the UX designers here at ProntoForms. It would be great to meet up and discuss a little more about what you're trying to accomplish and what a solution might look like. I work closely between product and development and although UX doesn't exactly have a say in what gets built, we have some influence on how something gets built. One of my biggest interests has always been seeing how features we already have could be modified to provide viable solutions to meet the needs of others. If you'd be interested in meeting please let me know and I can set something up, Cecily too if she's interested. Again I can't promise anything from the product side, but it would certainly help us understand your requirements better.

Also I wanted to mentioned too that the back and forth between you and Cecily really helped me a great deal in understanding each of your unique situations. The detail provides folks on our team a tremendous amount of value by getting in-depth insight on how different customers would approach similar challenges. The ProntoForms community is turning out to be a very valuable resource for all  of us... thanks Stu and Pat :) 

Thanks again,
Craig

------------------------------
Craig MacMaster
Senior User Experience Designer
ProntoForms
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 10-06-2022 09:35
From: Brian Eshpeter
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Thanks for those final items Cecily - though we do use repeatables with push-to-repeat fairly often, we've never tried formatted questions from a data source nor have we tried an image from a data source before.  Both are great to know, so thanks for the tips.  Have a great day

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Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC

Original Message:
Sent: 10-06-2022 09:01
From: Cecily Stelly
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Hi Brian,
Glad I could help! Also I must say I am a bit jealous at how your work sections are so well organized, that definitely makes things like this easier.

If you do go down the push to repeat route, here are a few things we've learned from similiar-ish projects:

1. While you lose the ability to format directly in the question editor, certain formatting like numbered and bulleted lists in excel will still carry over so you have some control over the look and feel of the instructions. 
2. In order to use resource images in the push to repeat, you will have to add additional columns in your data source for each image or related set of images that will push a value to a field which conditionally shows the images needed. 
3. If you have more than two filter questions to push the data, make sure you use a concatenate field in the data to actually push the fields in the repeatable sections. 

If y'all have used push-to-repeat a lot in previous forms that's probably all old news, but I wanted to include just in case it could be helpful.

Best of luck on your exciting project!
CC

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Cecily Stelly
Analyst
Johnson Controls

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 20:32
From: Brian Eshpeter
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Thank you Cecily for sharing how you've done this!  Daniel on my team and I had some good conversation.  Basically the options we were able to take from your feedback is:

1. Have text instructions stored in an Information Label, which are selectively displayed via conditional logic
2. Use resource images, and again selectively display them via conditional logic
3. Have a dispatch form to request the correct instructions
4. Incorporate a push-to-repeat section

Part of our challenge is that we'd like our solution to work offline - which might eliminate your good idea #3 about the dispatching forms.  And we are also limited on the number of conditional logic rules that we can use (and we're talking hundreds of different Work Instructions, thus hundreds of rules potentially). so that might negate #1 and 2.

However, your idea about push-to-repeat got us thinking about 2 more feasible options that might work...the Work Instructions we have are quite structured - they are in a template of 10 sections, that cover the Purpose, Materials, Steps, and more.  A prescriptive format like that does lend itself to a push-to-repeat - basically we could have a data source that contains 10 columns, and we'd put the text in there for each of our (hundreds of) activities.  We can build the system to push into these rows - and wouldn't even have to use any conditional logic rules to do so.  Readability would suffer a bit, but it would be available both offline and online - it would just take a while to structure the data!  I'm sure we could write a python script of some kind to scrape the data into a spreadsheet file, something we could look into.

​​Anyways, I think between this option and potentially the SharePoint URL option/idea I had listed above (which would only be available online, not offline), we might be onto something here.

Thanks for your help - and GO COMMUNITY @Pat Cooney @Stu Rathbone!  This was great, and I appreciate your collaboration Cecily.
Cheers,
Brian​​

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Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 10:13
From: Cecily Stelly
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Hi Brian,
Are these work instructions mainly written out or are there accompanying images/diagrams that need to be included as well?

The closest thing we currently have in our library is a form for our Start-Up documents. The user selects the type of equipment they need and then the form displays the relevant instructions and input fields. These instructions are mainly text and we were able to get 99% of the information we needed in through information labels (which have pretty robust formatting options available now) and then supplemented with resources images where needed.
This does create a pretty large form though - we have about 30 options currently available and the form is almost 3000 questions.

As for using the resource images to display screenshots, the conditional logic could handle the variation in the form, but I believe that there is a limit to the number of resource images you can include in a particular form which it sounds like y'all would quickly exceed.

However, if resource images are required for each set of work instructions, you could build out a dispatch workflow where the user submits a "Form Request" form in which they specify what they will be working on, and when they submit, the specific form they need will be sent to their inbox. The specific forms would need to be build out individually with accompanying dispatch destinations set up, but you would not have to worry about the resource image limit because you would be working with multiple forms.
Also if you set the forms as "Dispatch Only", the user would only see the Form Request form rather than going through a million different forms to find the right one.

There may also be a way to incorporate the instructions through a push-to-repeat section, but it would definitely limit your formatting options and require a pretty creative data source.

Thanks,
CC

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Cecily Stelly
Analyst
Johnson Controls

Original Message:
Sent: 10-05-2022 09:22
From: Brian Eshpeter
Subject: Displaying work instructions in a Form

Hi all - we've encountered a new use-case in our organization, and I was hoping to get your input.

Bit of background first might help.  In our Road Maintenance industry, we have hundreds of Activities that can be performed out on the road - everything from a temporary patch on a road, to installing a new cattle guard, to cleaning out culverts.  Each Activity has a set of step-by-step instructions and best practices that go along with them - we call these Work Instructions.  Our Quality and Operations teams have taken a lot of time and effort to build out this library of Work Instructions - currently each individually in a PDF document format - and now they want to make sure that these Work Instructions are available to our workers for them to use when they are out in the field.  We do not want to print thick binders for each worker - we'd prefer to do this electronically.

Ideally, operators on the road would receive Work Instructions in the context of the task they are doing, i.e. get the right information at the right time to do their job efficiently.  Because we use ProntoForms on iPads to track and enter all details of their work (which Activity, what equipment was used, any material used, quantities completed, hours worked, etc.), it would be ideal if we could make Work Instructions available in their ProntoForms form at the time they are filling it out.

So, that's the background.  The question I have for the group is: how could we potentially use ProntoForms to do this?  Again, the documents are in PDF format right now, and we would need different content to show, depending on what Activity was selected from a dropdown.  We would also need all the information in the documents available offline.

A few thoughts that have come to mind:

1. Could use Resource Images with a screenshot of the Work Instructions as a picture - however, we'd need hundreds of such pictures (Work Instructions per activity) and I'm not sure if Conditional Logic could dynamically display a different Image depending on which Activity was selected
2. Could copy/paste the Work Instructions into text in a Data Source, and load the Instructions up in question text / label (perhaps in an expandable Section) - however, I think any document formatting and a lot of the readability of the Instructions would be lost if doing it this way
3. We could host the Work Instructions PDFs in a SharePoint or OneDrive folder accessible to our workers via the internet, and then simply keep the URL to each individual Work Instruction document in a data source that can be displayed in a question text / label when an Activity is selected from a dropdown.  However, this would really only work if a worker is online / connected to the internet (not outside of cell reception) and it would still force them to open a different application (browser?) to view the instructions on an iPad I believe.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how we could dynamically make these Work Instructions available in a form in the context of a selected Activity?  Much appreciated for any input you might have.  Ultimately, acknowledging that ProntoForms isn't really a document repository and may not be a great fit for what we're trying to, we might have to use a different offline document repository (we use a system for offline Safety documentation called SiteDocs), but I'd love to find a way in ProntoForms if possible.

Thanks!
Brian

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Brian Eshpeter
Director, IT
The Dawson Group
BC
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