Form field types

You can add as many fields as you want to a template, rearrange them, and edit their properties. Pyrus offers user-defined fields, system fields, form annotation fields, and catalogs.

User-Defined Fields

User-defined fields are key form elements. They contain information users will enter in a new form. The field type defines validation and formatting criteria. For example, you can't type letters into Money or Number fields. You might also configure the Number field to always include a fixed number of decimal points.

You can see the full list of form field types in this picture:

When you add a field to a form template, the field properties are displayed on the right. All fields have several properties in common.

form.onChange(['u_1']).setValues(['u_2'],
   state => {
       const [watchingField] = state.changes;
       const newValueForCalculatedField = state.changes[0].value;
       return [newValueForCalculatedField];
   });

Some field types have more options to configure their behavior.

Text

The Text field looks like a simple entry field, and can be used to enter any text.

Drag a field into the form or just click the field once. Select it on the template and a settings window will appear.

Text fields have a number of commonly used options as well as others that are highly specific.

{
    "text": "example",
    "person_id": 1731,
    "person_email": "test@pyrus.com"
}

{
    "values": [
        {
            "value": "abcdefg",
            "id": "__id__"
        }
    ]
}

The Text field values can be used as conditions for workflow configuration management. For detailed information, see Workflow.

Multiple choice

This field lets you select one or more choices.

By default, the multiple choice field shows two options: yes and no. You can rename them or add other options.

Note: You can add up to 200 options.

If a user may select any number of options, mark Multiple in the Select row.

You can attach other fields to a multiple choice option to make the form more flexible and compact. In the example below, the email field only appears if you click on Yes:

To enable this, check the Show fields below based on the answer box in the field’s properties.

You can nest multiple choice fields up to 15 times.

Check Mark

A Check Mark is the way to select elements in the form.

Catalog

This field allows you to select a value from a preconfigured drop-down list.

You can preset values for the Catalog field. For example, you can set Basic as the default value for the support plan field in the service agreement form.

Add a catalog field to the form, then go to the field’s settings and choose the catalog you need in this form. Catalogs are configured outside the Template Editor. More on Catalogs.

Form

Allows you to reference completed forms from a related business process. This makes structuring information and automating its exchange very convenient. For example, in a payment a approval form, you can add a link to the contract based on which the payment is being made; then, switch back and forth between them quickly and easily. Or add a Budget form to an Invoice form, and use a bot to make sure the invoice amount is within the budget. To use this field: add it to the template, choose the form you want to attach from the drop-down menu, and hit Save.

For example, here’s a Contract approval form. If you click in this field when filling it out, you’ll see all requests for this template, and you can select the one you need.

To go from one form to another, tap the button next to the form name.

If you have to fill out multiple forms with the same information, you’ll find it convenient to set the fields of the main form to auto-fill with info from the attached task. For example, if you’ve added a business partner’s bank information to an approval form, those fields will auto-fill with info from the selected request. In the field’s settings, you can select whether you want all fields to auto-fill from the form you’re referencing, or just the empty fields.

Number

The Number field looks like a conventional numerical field.

If the input text is not a number, Pyrus highlights the error and prevents the user from saving the form.

Money

The Money field looks like a conventional numerical field.

If the input text is not a number, Pyrus highlights the error and prevents the user from saving the form.

The default currency symbol in the English user interface language is the US Dollar ($). If you want to use a different symbol, like British pounds, you can change this in the field settings.

The Money field values can be used as conditions for workflow configuration management. For detailed information, see Workflow.

Date

Use this field to add date selection functionality to the field.

Time

This field is used to add time selection functionality to the field.

Phone

Use this field to add a phone number to your form.

Email

Use this field to enter email addresses. Pyrus checks that the field value matches the email address format and displays a warning if it does not.

Contact

This field type selects a participant.

If you need to enter your own name, click on the icon beside the field.

You can also set a default value so that the Contact field is always pre-filled when you open the form. This can be useful in forms that normally indicate the same people as contacts. For instance, vacation request forms are usually filled out by the person going away on vacation. This is why we set Author as the default value in the example below. When the employee opens a vacation request form, his or her name will already be in the Employee name field.

Files

This field type allows you to attach invoices, contracts, screenshots, and other files when filling in the form.

Form

This field lets you link a form to another form. It can be very useful in a service ticket form. When a manager receives a client request, he or she can click on the field and immediately find the relevant contract, the client’s technical support plan, and other important information. You can also use this field to filter the register and to see how many requests your company received pertaining to a specific contract.

Add a Form field to the service ticket template, then go to the field’s settings and select the template you want to link to the form. It could be a service agreement, for example.

Now a manager can click on the Form field when they open a client request, find a list of all the service agreements based on that form, and choose the one signed by this particular client.

To open the linked agreement, click on the icon next to the Form field.

Suppose you need to add some information to a form, but that info already appears in another one. In this case, it’s easy to automatically fill out the fields of the main form using data from the attached task. For example, if you linked a partner’s card to the contract approval form, the corresponding fields would be automatically filled out with that partner’s information. In the field settings, you can choose to autocomplete all fields or only empty fields.

Formatting

Header

The header combines fields into a group. To create a group, add a header from the left side of the editor and drag its fields under it.

Now the fields are grouped together in a single panel under the header.

Table

Tables are field sets for entering values. Add a table from the left side of the editor and drag the fields under it.

Note: A table can contain up to 5,000 rows and 500 columns.

Important: Money fields in a table are converted into calculated fields. Check the Calculated box in the money field’s settings and indicate what should be calculated. In the example below, the quantity of items is multiplied by the price:

Now, if you type in the quantity and the price, Pyrus will automatically calculate the total price of each item. Check the Show Total box in the field’s settings to calculate the overall invoice total.

Comments

The Comments field lets you add extra information to forms, like tips, instructions, images, and videos. This is a great tool for helping employees or clients fill out complicated forms or fields. For example, you can add a video guide to a service ticket form on how to take screenshots, or an image showing where a credit card’s CVV code is located for an online payment form. To do this, add a Comments field to your form and go to that field’s settings. Here you can add text, insert a link to an image, or insert a link to a YouTube or Vimeo video.

You can format the comment to improve the form design. You can now highlight text in your comments, format it as a list, and so on. The formatting control panel is located on the top of text box.

You can also help users by adding a special button. Click on Add button and select one of the following options:

• Print from template. A form can have several print templates, perhaps three or four different contract versions, and the person filling out the form doesn’t necessarily know which template is the right one. This button solves the issue: you specify which template needs to be printed out in the field’s settings. When the person hits the button, the correct template is downloaded.
• Create linked form. This works pretty much like the Print from template option. Specify the relevant linked form in the field’s settings. If the person filling out the form needs to create a linked form, he or she will only need to hit the button to create the correct one.
• Open custom URL. This creates a button that transfers the user to a predetermined webpage, like an FAQ or return policy page. To configure this, add a link to the URL address field. You can place this link in the text section of the Comments field as well, but it will take up less space as a button.

Don’t forget to give the button a meaningful name, like Print or Return Policy, depending on what it does.

System fields

The system fields expand form functionality, and Pyrus controls their values. For example, you can add a field that always represents the name of the person who approved a request on a certain step. It is useful to have these fields visible in the register.

The list of system field types is located on the left panel of the template editor, below the list of user-defined fields.

Open/Finished

Use this field to track the status of requests in the register whether they are archived or not.

Author

Add a field to a template so that the register will show who has filled out the forms.

Created Date

If the form creation date matters, insert this type of field into the template. The date the form was filled in is displayed in the register.

Due Date

Use this field to add due dates related to payment, approval, and request response dates to a form.

Due date fields are similar to the Date type. The difference is that it turns red to designate past due, or turns brown if due today.

Another difference from the Date type is that the deadlines are displayed in the task list. The number it displays is the number of days remaining until deadline, or the number of days overdue a task is.

The Due Date type can have default values and can be specified as relative values. For example, you can specify that the payment deadline is three days after the request is filled out. You can also set a specific time if needed:

Approvals Step

Use this field to see the current workflow step of a request in the register.

This field type can be used for filtering register entries. This is relevant when there are lots of register entries and you want to quickly find all the forms at a certain approval step.