Form Builder Pro Tips

The Form Builder is a powerful tool, but can bi intimidating at first glance. To help come to grips with it I am going to share some of my top tips for creating custom form templates that work and look great. And if you'd prefer to have them built for you, or need some help to debugging what you have, feel free to book a session and we'll sort you out.

The Basics: Fields

This article will not go too deep into how form fields work. This is adequately covered in the simPRO help guide. In a nutshell:

• The dynamic content of the form (customer name, quote number, prices etc) is populated using fields accessible on the top left of the Form Builder. For example, ${Quote:OrderNo} will be replaced with the actual quote order number.
  

• Content that is to be listed (e.g. cost centres, parts, test readings, etc) must be surrounded by start and end fields. These start and end fields open and close the loop, and will not show on the form. For example, this will list all section names: ${Quote:Section:Start}

  ${Section:Name}

  ${Quote:Section:End}
  

• The simPRO hierarchy must be followed when using loops i.e. Quote > Section > Cost Centre > Part. The example below will list all parts and their quantities for all cost centres for all sections. I have colour-coded the loop start and end fields for clarity:

  

  How to list parts and quantities in simPRO Form Builder.

  
  

• Conditional fields start with "if" and will only show if there is data or the argument is true. The example below will only show content within the loop if it has an order number. If not, it will show nothing at all. ${Quote:OrderNo:StartIf}

  Order No: ${Quote:OrderNo}

  ${Quote:OrderNo:EndIf}
  

Alright, let's get into it.

Make It Personal

You may already know you can embed details of the salesperson, project manager, technician or logged in employee, but this doesn't have to be limited to just the person's name and contact details. It can also include the person's signature and photo.

Great Knights of Columbus, that's a handsome salesperson.

Add a Signature

While most people know how to add a photo to the employee file, not everyone knows that the signature is actually drawn from the Attachments tab of the employee file. Make sure it is set to default and this will show wherever the signature field is used:

Adding Watermarks

Watermarks can be a nice way to add depth to a form and also help verify authorship. Watermarks will appear on all pages in the document or section you are editing.

Prepare Your Image

First, prepare your watermark image. You cannot use a Word doc or PDF. .jpeg will work, but PNG with a transparent background is best, as it will make the smallest file and not cause issues with overlap. Use an image editing tool to make the image very faint. Remember, it is going to be behind all your content, so bold colours won't work. It should be barely visible, otherwise it will distract from the content and just look messy.

Add the Watermark

1. Go to Layout > Watermark > Custom Watermark.

2. Select Image Watermark > From File > OK.

3. Adjust the scale. It will probably be the wrong size, so go back to Layout > Watermark > Custom Watermark and where it says Scale, remove the word Auto, type in a number and click OK. Repeat this step until correctly scaled.

Adding Background Images

Background images are great for making a cover pages which really pop. They can also be used to create watermarks or borders.

The best way to add a background image in Form Builder

1. Double-click in to the header area.

2. Go to Insert > Image > From File and select your file. Or drag and drop a file into the editor.

   

   Make your image file sizes as small as possible before uploading.

   
   

3. Use the sidebar options to change the image wrapping style to "Behind" and then drag and resize your image as needed. The image will now sit behind any text displayed on that page.

   

   Set any background images to appear behind text.

4. This final point will prevent your image from being pushed around by other content you may add. Click on Image Advanced Settings and set its position relative to the page. Now, no matter what other content you add, it will stay exactly where you want it to relative to the page.

   

   Set the image position relative to the page so it doesn't move.

How to get out of the header

It is sometimes difficult to click out of the header when it has a full page image behind it. If you're having trouble returning to the main body of the form, double-click in the grey space to the left or the right of the main page area. This should place your cursor on the page space and out of the header or footer area.

Creating a Cover Page in SimPRO Form Builder

First make a different first page header / footer:

1. Double-click on the header area at the top of the page.

2. Tick "Different First Page" on the right-hand side-bar.

   

   Add a different first page header to make a cover page.

3. Add images as previously described and drag across the whole page.

Use Tables

If you're going to add looped content, such as lists of cost centres, parts, labour, or asset test results, it's often best to structure these in tables.

Tables help preserve the layout of your data. If you don't want the table to be visible, use the table options buttons on the right-hand sidebar to remove the borders while retaining the layout.

Put the loop start field at the top left cell of the row and the end field at the bottom right:

Loops colour-coded for illustration purposes: red for cost centre, green for parts, blue for labour.

Experiment with layout by selecting text and right clicking, then adjusting the text vertical alignment (top, middle or bottom) as well as the usual horizontal alignment (left, centre, or right).

How to Avoid Empty Rows

Any rows without content will not show up in the final form. For example, if there are no parts in the cost centre table above, the parts row will not show at all.

But if you have empty spaces or line breaks, these will be included for every item in the look. So make sure you don't have unwanted extra spaces or empty lines in that row. If you do, when the row has no content the form will show an empty row instead of no row at all.

Put Breaks inside Loops

While it may sound like instructions for a DJ, I'm talking about the layout and spacing between loops.

If you want to create a line break, section break, or page break between each item on a list, insert the page break within the loop, either before or after the content. Putting the break outside the loops will result in empty lines or pages, but when the break is within the loop it will display a break between each item; if there is no item, there is no break, therefore no empty page.

For example, this is how to add a break after each cost centre:

${Quote:Section:Start}

${Section:CostCenter:Start}

${CostCenter:Name}

${CostCenter:Description}

< line break, section break, or page break >

${Section:CostCenter:End}

${Quote:Section:End}

You could also add the break before the cost centre name.

Pro tip: Ctrl+Enter will create a page break.

How to Avoid Formatting Issues

Form builder has a large range of text formatting options, including font, styling, alignment, spacing and so on. In most cases, the formatting you apply to the template will be applied to the information displayed on the final form.

For example, let's say you want to display the part number in bold, but the part name in regular text. All you need to do is apply the formatting to those fields and the content will be displayed accordingly. E.g.:

Form Template:

${Part:No} - ${Part:Name}

Actual Form:

404602-EA - B-PRESS WATER STR CONNECTOR 25MM

This will always work because part number and description fields are not rich text fields. The data does not contain any formatting, it's just a string of letters or numbers. But some fields in simPRO are rich text fields, and they have their own formatting contained within them. Some examples of rich text fields in simPRO include:

• Job, quote and cost centre descriptions

• Prebuild descriptions

• Work completed notes

• Customer notes

• Asset test notes

• Scripts

Whenever you see a simPRO field with the ability to make text bold, italic etc, it is a rich text field. When you display these in Form Builder forms, any formatting from simPRO has to be translated into the final form, and problems can occur.

The usual cause is text which has been pasted from another text editing software into simPRO. There can be hidden formatting elements copied over which only rear their head when trying to display the quote.

For example, let's say you have a quote script of standard inclusions and exclusions in a Word document that you want to use in simPRO. If you just copy and paste that into a script, some hidden formatting may be carried over. Then when you try and generate a quote using a Form Builder template, your text looks weird and you're not sure why.

The best way to avoid this is to paste without formatting (shortcut: Ctrl+V or Cmd+V). Then apply formatting in simPRO. This will pass it cleanly to the Form Builder, where additional choices such as font style and size will be correctly applied.

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Have fun! I'm interested to hear how you go and if you have any other tricks that you use to make your forms look great.