How can I create a more readible form output, like formstack?

toca1

Hello all!

My company is migrating from Formstack to Smartsheet and want the migrated experience to be similar. I have been able to 1-1 create the same form; however, viewing the output is not user friendly. Since Formstack had the ability to create Pages, and the ability to view a submission with collapsed pages if a user ignored or selected specific options. When selecting a submission, you only see filled out information. I want this same functionality in Smartsheet, or the next best thing.

This form is a project request with multiple logic functions that expand based on project type. There are 5 project types and some of these project types have types inside of them (up to 8 sub types with their own logic expanded fields). This means that the sheet has sooooo many empty fields once submitted with around 150 columns. This means that in order for someone to read the request they have to scroll through all the fields and collect all the info.

My current solution has been to streamline the form itself, and extract common input fields from their subsections, and put them in fields not collapsed by logic at the end. I then created a report with all the same information they would've seen in formstack; like, the requesters name, project title, etc. In addition, I created helper columns that Join common relevant information like dimensions. This means that no matter what type of project type they select, I can can collect all the "dimension" cells I created and output them to one cell titled "project dimensions" and output that to the report.

Is this my best option, or is there a better way. I have also tried creating auto-generated pdf's that route relevant info; however, I don't like this solution.

Any help would be appreciated!

ccarriger

Are you using the grid/table view in your reports?

Just an idea...you could leave your form as is, create reports based on the 5 types (or even based on the sub-type level), and put those reports in card view. I'm assuming your users want to see more like the form layout and card view could get you closer to that than the grid view.

toca1

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/397962#Comment_397962

Yes, I am using grid view. I did think of this and had mentioned it to my leadership team, and they disliked the idea of having so many extra reports. However, if this is the only solution, I am all for it. Thanks for the suggestion!

ccarriger

I understand :) Putting all the data on one sheet and filtering it via reports is the best option though. If people aren't comfortable keeping track of all those links, you could create a dashboard or WorkApp and pull all the reports into it. That way your users only have a single link to bookmark.

toca1

Thank you for your help! I do already have this in a WorkApp, but I like your idea of adding all these reports into the dashboard! Hopefully, they like this idea! :)