Creating and Managing Smartforms

In this lesson, we will explore the key features and functionalities of Smartforms within the SAP Mobile Field Service application. Smartforms are electronic forms used to capture data and guide users through the steps needed to perform tasks, dynamically responding to user input. This makes them highly adaptable for various scenarios, and the captured data is stored electronically for immediate reporting purposes. Smartforms can be used on FSM mobile applications as well as on the web.

Key use cases for Smartforms include providing information to technicians through text blocks, step-by-step instructions, links to online resources, and incorporating small pictures and PDF documents. Additionally, Smartforms facilitate data collection in the field with checkboxes, text and number inputs, pictures, measurements, and signatures.

The Smartforms and Feedback module is where Smartform templates are designed and managed. You can access this module directly via the FSM landing page or from the dropdown menu at the top of the FSM web UI. This module allows you to efficiently and effectively create and manage templates and feedback forms. You will learn to develop and modify template content, including adding questions and adjusting formats to meet specific needs. Organizing templates into categories for easier access and management helps maintain a structured and efficient template library.

Maintaining template header data involves adding labels, modifying statuses, and handling revisions to keep templates current and accurately labeled. You will discover how to export templates for external storage or transfer them to a different FSM company, which is crucial for sharing templates across platforms or organizations. Additionally, generating translations for your templates ensures they are accessible and understandable to a global audience.

Furthermore, you will gain the ability to preview sample reports generated from your templates, allowing you to verify the accuracy and completeness of the content before finalizing it. Creating shareable links for your templates and editing Smartform instances online will enable real-time collaboration and updates, enhancing flexibility and responsiveness.

The Smartforms and Feedback module offers a comprehensive set of tools, including an intuitive drag-and-drop interface for creating and editing templates, library management for handling your Smartform template collection, maintenance of template header data with labels, statuses, and revisions, template export and import, the ability to add language translations, a preview feature for Smartform-based reports, and the creation of shareable links to edit Smartform instances online.

As your template collection grows, the template management interface will allow you to quickly define Smartform categories, import, export, and duplicate templates, manage template labels, statuses, and revisions, as well as to search, filter, and sort templates. Key Smartform template information can be created or edited directly from the Smartform Templates screen, making it easy to keep your templates organized and up-to-date.

Smartforms are electronic forms, primarily used to capture data and to provide a script for service execution. They can guide the user through the steps needed to perform a task, capture the relevant data, while dynamically responding to the user input. As such, smartforms can be adapted to suit many different usage scenarios. The captured data is stored electronically and is immediately available for reporting purposes. Smartforms can be used on the FSM mobile applications as well as on the web.

Example use cases for smartforms include:

• Providing information to the Technician by:
  • Text blocks with instructions and explanations
  • Step-by-step instructions and guidance
  • Links to online resources
  • Small pictures and PDF documents
• Collecting data and information in the field, like:
  • Checkboxes
  • Text and numbers
  • Pictures
  • Measurements
  • Signatures

The Smartforms and Feedback module is the place where the smartform templates can be designed and managed. You can reach the smartform module directly through the link on the FSM landing page, or from the dropdown menu at the top of the FSM web UI.

The Smartforms and Feedback module within the SAP Mobile Field Service application is designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of creating and managing templates and feedback forms. This lesson will cover key features that will help you develop and modify template content, including adding questions and adjusting formats to meet specific needs. You will also learn to organize your templates into categories for easier access and management, ensuring a structured and efficient template library.

Maintaining template header data involves adding labels, modifying statuses, and handling revisions, keeping your templates current and accurately labeled. You will discover how to export templates for external storage or transfer them to a different Field Service Management (FSM) company, a crucial feature for sharing templates across platforms or organizations. Additionally, you will learn to generate translations for your templates, making them accessible and understandable to a global audience.

Furthermore, you will gain the ability to preview sample reports generated from your templates, allowing you to verify the accuracy and completeness of the content before finalizing it. Lastly, the lesson will cover how to create shareable links for your templates and edit smartform instances online, enabling real-time collaboration and updates for enhanced flexibility and responsiveness.

The Smartforms and Feedback module offers a comprehensive set of tools, including an intuitive drag-and-drop interface for creating and editing templates, library management for handling your smartform template collection, maintenance of template header data with labels, statuses, and revisions, template export and import, the ability to add language translations, a preview feature for smartform-based reports, and the creation of shareable links to edit smartform instances online.

As the template collection grows, it is important to have the tools necessary to manage them. With the template management interface, users can quickly:

• Define smartform categories
• Import, export, and duplicate templates
• Manage template statuses
• search, filter, and sort templates

Key smartform template information can be created or edited directly from the Smartform Templates screen. These fields also form some of the columns used to filter and manage smartform templates. For an existing smartform template, details can be edited by choosing the three dots option menu "..." beside the smartform template and selecting the Edit Details option.

The version of a template is controlled by the system and incremented automatically when making changes to the template content. At the same time, the revision field can be specified by the user, for example to reflect that the template is aligned with a certain document in your companies' engineering document system.

Labels can be used to help in filtering the template list. Also, enhancements (in the form of business rules) could use labels to automatically create smartform instances and assign them to activities. This would increase efficiency by avoiding the need to create smartform instances manually.

Smartform template filters can be applied for sorting and filtering the templates. The following filters are available:

• Category: The category associated with the smartform.
• Label: One or more labels associated with the smartform template. Labels are added when creating or editing smartform templates or template details.
• Creator: The user that is the creator of the smartform template. This filter could be utilized if there is more than one user creating and managing smartform templates for a company.
• Language: The language of the smartform template. This filter can be applied for translated and default/master template languages.
• Status: The status of the smartform template. Options include editing, translation, released, and archived.
• Org Levels: The organizational unit or level associated with the template.

Depending on the business case, a smartform may be used thousands of times per year. Every data element that a technician has to enter is an effort. A good and lean data structure facilitates high acceptance by technicians of the electronic FSM smartforms.

Keep the following considerations in mind when you are creating a smartform:

• Clean up content before creating the smartform - It is always a good idea to ask the technicians how they get the data and how much effort it takes to capture the data - as efforts generate costs. It helps a lot during roll-out when the technicians realize that their reporting effort is reduced.
• Consider other business objects related to the smartform - for example, do not ask the technician to identify the equipment if the equipment is already linked to the activity. Similarly, there is no need to record the date/time in a separate field, or to manually record the name of the technician. This data is automatically captured in the background.
• Consider the mobile device: Paper-based data capture processes have a lot of space compared to a mobile phone screen. When capturing data digitally, 1/3 to 1/2 of the space is covered by the keyboard - therefore, it is essential that the device form factor is considered during the smartform design process.
• Tables: With more than 3 columns in a table, scrolling is required on mobile phones. If this is a standard use case, technicians will need to work with tablets instead of mobile phones.

Additionally, take note of some best practices for smartform design:

• Technicians: They are a great resource when a large number of smartforms need to be designed. They know the correct sequence of data capturing and which data points add the most value. It helps during roll-out when the technicians realize that they are part of the process.
• Drop-downs: As a design rule, drop-downs should not be longer then 7 elements. This is because average humans recognize 7 elements at a glance. If there are more options there is a risk that technicians will just use the first relatively suitable option. This will directly impact the quality of data you are able to collect.
• Company design rules: Define upfront a set of design rules for smartforms. For example, a required first chapter where metadata about the smartform is captured, where decisions are consolidated (test accepted/rejected), and where signatures are captured.
• Attachment Size: Attachments file size should be limited to 1 megabyte. You can configure the system to allow larger attachments, but you must consider the impacts on data volumes for synchronization and storage to/on the mobile devices of your technicians. Consider compressing PDFs and pictures while still keeping a reasonable resolution.
• Reporting requirements: Depending on your specific use case, you may have hundreds of smartform elements in a template. By setting the flag, internal/external for each field, you can decide which elements from the smartform will be displayed later in the customer's PDF report.

Keep in mind that the structure of the template portfolio is also synchronized to the technician's mobile app. There, they can see most of the template header data. This has a number of implications:

• Categories: Design categories for the mobile user as this is the only structure seen on the mobile device when selecting from the template portfolio.
• Version/Revision: It is good practice to have only one version and revision active so that mobile users do not have to choose which is the correct one to use.
• Labels: Mobile users cannot see, search for, or sort for labels on their mobile devices. This data object is only available for smartform designers and administrators designing business rules.
• Favorites: Set by the mobile user on each mobile device. Individual favorites are not stored on the cloud - they will get lost when deleting the company or changing the device.

Smartform Designer is used to create smartform templates. When a smartform template is created, the dispatcher can add the template to the activity as a smartform instance, so that the smartform can be used by the technician. The smartform can help ensure that the proper steps are followed and correct data is gathered while the repair is conducted on-site.

The smartform designer helps us create a variety of templates using drag-and-drop elements available in the right pane of the designer.

Before we begin with using the smartform designer, we take a short look at the settings, which can be found under Settings and Configuration → Smartforms and Feedback. These settings include:

• Show Element IDs: By selecting this configuration, the application will display the element ID (example: unique_chapter_1).
• Enable Advanced Tools: When enabled, the Smartforms and Feedback app will display a Export raw XMLs option in the action menu.
• Always increment clipboard element IDs with default naming: The numerical ID of an element is increased when creating a new element of the same type
• • For example, if there is a number element on the clipboard with the ID "numberinput3", then the ID on the smartform will be automatically changed to "numberinput4" when it is dragged to the template.
  • Additionally, this helps when you have a specific element stored in the clipboard that you want to use in different smartform templates and want to make sure the ID remains unique.

The Templates validation report is also on this page. This function performs a technical check on the templates and lists all the errors it detects.

In the smartform designer, the template status and the template version are shown in the top-right corner. In order to edit a template, you have to set it into 'editing' status. Do this by clicking on the status and selecting an entry from the drop-down menu. When you change the status from to 'editing', a new version is automatically generated. You can't change this version manually. Translation is only possible for templates in editing status.

Later, after you're done editing the template, you have to set it back to 'released' status. At that point, the system asks what to do with the previous versions. At this point, it is advised to at least deactivate these previous versions to avoid confusion later. A deactivated template cannot be selected by the dispatcher or the mobile user, but can be put back to 'editing' or 'released' status if necessary.

The smartform editor itself consists of the chapter outline view, the chapter detail view, the element list, and the clipboard. To create a new chapter or subchapter, drag and drop a chapter element from the element list to the chapter outline view. To fill a (sub)chapter with elements, drag and drop other elements from the element list into the chapter detail view. In the chapter detail view, you can change the element properties by hovering over an element and pressing the Pencil symbol. Pressing the Copy symbol adds the selected element to the clipboard, including any properties that you've set. From the clipboard, you can reuse the added elements in different chapters and even in different templates.

In the following sections, a number of element types is discussed in detail, along with a selection of their properties. We encourage you to experiment with the full set of elements in an FSM training environment.

Chapters and subchapters are the main structural elements of a smartform and are used to group its contents. Chapters and subchapters have an editable name and a fixed number, which is then also displayed on the mobile device. On a mobile device, you navigate to the next chapter by tapping on the chapter numbers or by choosing Next next at the bottom of the screen.

Text input fields are used to enter text manually or with the integrated scanner. Alternatively, text can be predefined - for example, to provide some information to the technician. Depending on the element type, various general or advanced settings can be configured, for example, whether an input is required and whether to allow the attachment of pictures to the element in the smartform instance. The setting Internal in the advanced settings can be used to determine whether this entry should be included on smartform reports.

The label element is used as a title in a smartform. Besides different style settings and an option to set the label as internal, there is no special functionality. The 'internal' setting can be utilized during report generation so that internal and external content can be separated.

The table element can hold a number of other elements in its rows and columns. You can define whether the table should have a certain fixed amount of rows, or whether the user can add new rows as necessary. The footer row or values in columns can be calculated using other values in the table.

When working with tables, always consider the mobile device of the end user. If you have more then 3 columns, this may not displayed very well on a mobile phone and requires scrolling which is cumbersome for the user.

Drop-down elements are used when a user should select a value from a predetermined list of options. The best practice for such dropdowns is to keep the number of options low: the rule of 7 states that a user can recognize 7 different options on a glance. If a drop-down has more options, the risk is high that the user does not see or choose the appropriate option.

Attachments can be used to integrate pictures or PDF files into smartform templates, which are then displayed on the mobile device. The attachment should be as small as possible to minimize data traffic.

An attachment picker is used to generate an input field for the mobile user to add either a picture or a video to a smartform instance. The picture can be directly generated by the camera of the mobile device. Company settings, maintained by an administrator, can set upper limits to the allowed resolution and file sizes for attachments in general and images in particular.

Calculations elements can be used to perform basic calculations, based on number elements or other calculation elements in the same smartform chapter. In a smartform instance, the calculation result will be shown as soon as all input values are defined.

There is a syntax checker integrated within the smartform designer. Ensure you follow exactly the same syntax as in the examples, including any empty spaces.

The safety label element is used to raise the awareness of mobile users for hazards related to their work. The element follows the ISO standard for hazard warning elements and consists of a signal word and two graphical elements visualizing the hazard and mitigation measures. The signal word of this label will also be highlighted on activities where a smartform with such a label is attached.

The available signal words and symbols correspond with the relevant ISO standards. The message should ideally be short and crisp, adding additional information to make the technician aware of hazards and mitigation measures.

In a smartform, you can define the visibility of certain elements as being conditional. A conditional element appears depending on another previous value that the user entered/selected in the smartform. To define an element as a conditional element, you use a "visibility condition". This is a logical expression that refers to another value entered/selected in a previous template element. These are set in the Advanced Settings tab of the smartform element.

In the Smartforms and Feedback app, it is possible to have your elements and labels translated. You can add or remove translations directly in the template designer using the language drop-down in the template header. When adding translations you can select them from a list of languages. To remove a translation, simply click the bin icon next to the language. Alternatively, it is possible to export smartform in XML format, edit the file, and re-import it. When creating a smartform instance, the user can then select from the available languages.

We differentiate between Template and Instance. While a Template represents the structure of the form and the empty elements composing it, the instance is a specific occurrence of the template, which can contain element values.

Dispatchers can create smartform instances in the web UI and technicians can create instances on their mobile apps. Alternatively, smartform instances can be generated automatically by a business rule. The process for each case is the same:

1. The template must be selected (including the version, if multiple versions are active). In case there are translations, the language has to be chosen as well.
2. You must select the object type to which you want to link the instance. This is usually an activity.
3. A specific record of the previously defined object type must be selected.
4. Set the instance as mandatory or not. If set to mandatory, the technician on the mobile app is forced to complete the smartform before the activity can be checked out.

As mobile user, you can add a smartform to an activity with the "+" menu.

As a mobile user, you can also set favorites for smartforms - this helps to get fast access to frequently used forms.

After saving, the smartform is ready for entering data. Take note that the impact of the ticked check box in this example: chapter 2 becomes visible, based on a visibility condition.

A smartform instance can also be created, viewed, and filled using the web apps, for example by back-office users or by field technicians who do not have access to the mobile app. This can be done for example in the Planning and Dispatching web UI, in the activity detail screen, as shown here. First you select a template from the list. In the next step you link it to an object (for example to Activity). After selecting you need to link it to a record from the linked object. In the last step, you can choose if that smartform should be mandatory or not.

Finally, a shareable linkshareable link can be generated and distributed to others, even to non FSM users. These can then fill out the smartform online.