Experience with forms open for a long time

Neil Watson

Has anyone had experience with opening a form and capturing information over a long period (8 hrs) before submitting it?

We are looking to capture a shift report, the user will open the form at the start of the shift and capture various items over the 8 hr period. At the end of the shift, submit.

To be honest I am concern that this won't work well but I cannot think of another solution to this issue.

Kelly Moore

Hello @Neil Watson

Another approach is using a Smartsheet report for your data entry mechanism. A Smartsheet report is bidirectional- meaning if someone updates the report it updates the sheet.

At the beginning of the shift someone begins the entry, either in the sheet or form (I would use form and in form settings, I would choose open URL on submission. I would insert report url so that report automatically opens). The shift would use the report. If auto save remains on, you would be unlikely to lose an entire shift’s worth of info. With an 8hr open form I see risks of not being submitted, or prematurely being submitted- creating multiple rows of the same data. Another completely different approach is to design forms that capture small bits of the info in separate rows and marry it all together in helper columns behind the scenes

I’m sure the community has additional suggestions

Kelly

Bassam Khalil

Hi @Neil Watson 

Hope you are fine, you can design a report contains all the data columns you need to collect and filter this report by current user so the user will open this report any time during the shift and update the data without any need to keep it open or using opened form, and for the security issue you can design this report on a mirror sheet and design a workflow to move the updated row to the original database by adding a criteria to be submitted by the user at the end of his shift like ( "Finished" selected from dropdown menu for example ) and when he save the row will be automatically moved to your original database. 

Kelly Moore

Hello @Neil Watson

Another approach is using a Smartsheet report for your data entry mechanism. A Smartsheet report is bidirectional- meaning if someone updates the report it updates the sheet.

At the beginning of the shift someone begins the entry, either in the sheet or form (I would use form and in form settings, I would choose open URL on submission. I would insert report url so that report automatically opens). The shift would use the report. If auto save remains on, you would be unlikely to lose an entire shift’s worth of info. With an 8hr open form I see risks of not being submitted, or prematurely being submitted- creating multiple rows of the same data. Another completely different approach is to design forms that capture small bits of the info in separate rows and marry it all together in helper columns behind the scenes

I’m sure the community has additional suggestions

Kelly

Bassam Khalil

Hi @Neil Watson 

Hope you are fine, you can design a report contains all the data columns you need to collect and filter this report by current user so the user will open this report any time during the shift and update the data without any need to keep it open or using opened form, and for the security issue you can design this report on a mirror sheet and design a workflow to move the updated row to the original database by adding a criteria to be submitted by the user at the end of his shift like ( "Finished" selected from dropdown menu for example ) and when he save the row will be automatically moved to your original database.