Testing a form

Test on a form opens the deployed version in your browser. It runs on the same form engine and the same definition as Joripo Collect and web forms, and reads the same attachments a phone downloads, so if a form works in the tester it works on the phone.

Moving through the form

The form shows one screen at a time, as a phone does: one question, or a group drawn as one screen (field-list).

• Next checks the screen first: a required question left blank or a broken constraint stops you, with the form's own message. Previous keeps your answers.
• Go to lists every question with its state (answered, needs attention, not asked) and jumps to one; the bar above the question shows how far through the form you are.
• Questions (the ☰ button) keeps that list open as a sidebar while you fill the form, marking where you are and updating as skip logic changes.
• Language switches between the form's languages.
• The keyboard works too: Enter goes on, the left and right arrows move back and forward, and number keys choose (1 the first choice; two digits typed quickly reach the tenth and on).

Options

• Validate form checks every answer given so far.
• Skip to next moves on without checking the current screen.
• Clear responses empties the form; Start over begins again from the first screen.
• Remove current repeat instance deletes the repeat instance you are in.
• Reload with updated form loads the latest deployed version and keeps the answers given so far: useful while you fix a form.

Seeing the logic

Logic (in the toolbar) shows, under each question, the rules the form gives it and what they decide right now: whether its relevance is true or false, whether it is required, whether its constraint passes and with what message, and its choice filter. A hidden question keeps a dashed line saying which condition hides it. Above the screen is what was skipped on the way there; below it, each calculation whose value just changed, from what to what. It reads the engine that runs the form, so what it says is what the form does. Respondents never see it.

Inspector opens a side panel with three tabs: Logic (this screen's rules, every calculation and its value, every hidden question and why), Field (the field you are on, its rules, its value and the fields that refer to it) and Values (every field's current value, with a filter).

Saving a test

Progress › Save (or Save as) keeps a test session on the server under a name; Resume opens it again where you left it, and Manage lists and deletes saved sessions. Saved sessions are visible to the workspace.

Finishing a test

At the end, choose what happens to the answers: discard them, or (for an owner or manager) submit them as real data, stored and checked like any other submission and marked as coming from the tester. Then choose what happens to the saved progress, and Finish test. The finished page shows the submission a device would send.

Good to know

• Preloads work in the tester. A preload file over 25 MB is sampled to its first 50,000 rows, and the tester says so; phones always get the whole file.
• Field plug-ins run in the tester as on the phone.
• Photos, recordings and files can be attached in the browser where the question allows it.
• The tester records a text audit like a web form; it does not record audio audits.