Testing a form
Test (on a form in Design) opens the deployed form in your browser, running on the same engine and the same definition as Joripo Collect and web forms. If it 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: a question, or a group shown 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), so you can jump to one; the bar above the question shows how far through the form you are. If the form has more than one language, Language switches between them.
Questions (the ☰ button at the left of the toolbar) keeps the same list open as a sidebar while you fill the form, so you can follow the flow: the question you are on is marked, answers and skip logic update as you go, and a click on a row goes there. On a wide window it sits beside the form; on a narrow one it lies over the page. It stays open or closed as you last left it.
The keyboard works too: Enter goes on (as Next does), the left and right arrow keys move back and forward, and number keys choose: 1 the first choice, 2 the second, and two digits typed quickly reach the tenth choice and on.
A date question shows a calendar (a month or month-year question the year's months, a year question a page of years, on a date or a date and time, with no clock) and a time question hour and minute with arrows and AM/PM; the no-calendar appearance keeps the browser's own picker.
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 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.
Saving a test
Progress › Save (or Save as) keeps a test session on the server under a name; Resume opens it again later, from where you were, and Manage lists and deletes saved sessions.
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 (shown) or false (hidden), whether it is required, whether its constraint passes or fails with its message, and the choice filter. A question hidden on the screen keeps a dashed line saying which condition hides it. Above the screen, what was skipped on the way there; below it, each calculation whose value just changed (from → to). It reads the same engine that runs the form, so what it says is what the form does. Respondents never see it.
The inspector
Inspector opens a side panel with three tabs:
- Logic: this screen's rules, every calculation and its current value (one that just changed is highlighted), and every question or group hidden right now with the condition that hides it.
- Field: the field you are on (type, rules, value, the fields that refer to it) and what was skipped since the previous screen.
- Values: the current value of every field; type to filter.
Finishing a test
At the end, choose what happens to the answers (discard them, or, for an owner or manager, submit them as real form data: stored and checked like any other submission, marked as coming from the tester) and to saved progress, then Finish test. The finished page shows the instance a device would submit.
Good to know
- Preload files work in the tester. A very large preload .csv (over 25 MB) is sampled to its first 50,000 rows so the page stays responsive; phones always get the whole file, and the tester says when it is sampling.
- Field plug-ins (
custom-...appearances with an attached.fieldplugin.zip) run in the tester as on the phone. - Photos, recordings and files can be attached in the browser where the question allows it.