Beginner Tutorial Part 3 - Building a Simple Form

Time to start building!

Learning Objectives

In this part of tutorial, you will learn the following:

How to add, delete, and change the order of questions in a form
What some of the different question types are
How to add Question IDs and what they mean
Adding and editing Label Text
How to add a display condition using the Expression Builder
How to add a validation condition using the Expression Builder

1- Learn how to navigate the Form Designer

After hitting "create" or "edit" on your form, you are inside the Form Designer. The Form Designer is Dimagi's easy-to-use interface for building CommCare forms. As mentioned in CommCare Fundamentals it is possible to use other tools as well, once you are comfortable with the process and structure.

Question Types

Along the top of the screen you will see a number of different icons which represent question types. You can click on the drop down arrows to see which types of questions are in each menu.

There are several buttons, each one for a type of question to add to your form. These will appear in your "Question Tree" in the order they will appear on your device. In order, these buttons are:

Text: Inserts a text question or a "label" that does not elicit a user response
Multiple choice: Inserts a multiple choice question that can have a single-answer (yes-no) or multiple answers
- Choice: Inserts the options within your multiple choice question
Number: Inserts a question with a numeric response, such as a phone number or age
Date: Inserts a date or time question
Hidden Value: Inserts a value of one question into another or allows you to perform more complex calculations
Group: Inserts a group question
Multimedia Capture: Inserts a question that captures an image, audio, or video file
Advanced: a list of more advanced, less common question types

You can hover your cursor over the question button to see what it does. For more information on the From Designer and Question types see our Form Designer Help Site.

Try clicking on the "T" to add a text question. You should see the following:

You will now see that there are two sections in the Form Designer main page:

Question Tree - this is where you will be able to navigate among questions and change the order of questions
Question Properties - this is where you control the actual content and properties of each question. This section is further divided into four sections:
1. Main Properties- the Question ID is what you will see in the data export, and the Label is the text that the mobile user will be seeing.
2. Logic Properties- this is where you can control whether a question is required, whether you only want a question to display some of the time, and if you want to put any limits on what type of answer you will accept.
3. Media and Content- for adding multimedia or other special types of content
4. Advanced- advanced stuff that we don't have to look at right now.

In this tutorial we will only be concerned with Main Properties and Logic Properties.

Try adding text in the Question ID and Label Text boxes.

Delete this text question by using the red delete button in the upper right-hand corner.

Why doesn't my Question ID work?

You can't put just anything as a Question ID. Here are the rules:

No spaces (underscores are fine)
No special characters (like "&" and "$")
Cannot start with a number
Cannot be the same as another Question ID in the same form

If you violate one or more of these rules, you'll get a warning message! Try it!

2- Add questions

Let's start populating this form with questions.

Click on the "T" button again to add a text question
Set the Question ID to say: woman_name
Set Label text to say: Woman's Name

3- Add simple logic

Your first form is ready- it's time to test your application. Go on to Part 4.