Creating Fields and setting Field Type

In this video, we will look at how we create fields in Tap Forms 5 on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

Now, if you recall, a form is comprised of different fields. So let’s go to our Grocery List here; a field could be the aisle that the item is in, as well as the name. You could even have a field for which grocery store you want to find that item in.

So how do we create these different fields? Well, the first thing we need to do is select our form. I’m going to create a few fields for Grocery List here; I select it, and then what we do is go to our toolbar and click on Form. We’re going to be editing our form, specifically creating fields. So I select this, and then we go over to Fields. From here, you’re going to see a list of all of the fields. When you create a form, it is going to create one field. It is called New Field. You’re going to see over in my view here; it’s called New Field.

The first thing we want to do is we want to rename this. So let’s call this one Item. So I go back over to New Field, I select it, and then we go to Field Title here, and we just type in the name.

Now with each field, we can specify what type of field it is. It could be a date; it could be a number; in this case, it is text. Let’s go and create a new field and change it to a number field. We’re going to create an aisle field. To do that, we click on the plus. You’re going to see we have our new field. All I have to do is type in here, Aisle, and now what I want to do is change it to a number. This way, what I’m able to do is sort by number. So now I select this, and you’re going to see we have several different types. Let’s go to Number here. We need to confirm that we want to change the field type. And now this is a number. So now I can just put in here one, and now milk is in aisle one.

Let’s go and add another one. We’re going to go with Grocery Store. So I click on the plus, I type in here Grocery Store, and we’re going to leave this one as text.

We’re going to add one more. We want to add a location for the grocery store, right? So we go over to the plus, and we say Location. Now this one is going to be a field type of Location. I select it; I change the field type, I confirm that I am changing it, and now we have Location.

Let’s take a closer look at these different field types. I’m not going to cover all of them, but let’s take a look at a few of the basic ones. I’m going to go back over to Type. Let’s just say we’re going to change this. What we have here is text, number, date, and time. Pretty simple. If you’re going to enter a date, you want to put date. If you’re going to enter a time, you’d put time. You can even go as far as date and time. We also have drawing, contacts, email; if we select email, when we put an email address in there, when we click on it, it’s going to open up our mail client. I can also link it to a different form. This is a relationship. We’ll talk about that in another lesson. I can add a note, a phone number, I can add an image. I can even add a rating. We also can add a signature, a table; we can add a section heading, which isn’t a field; all it does is just separate our different fields out.

And then, I can add a date created and date modified and which device was modified. Now the Date Created and Date Modified, as well as maybe even the Modified by Device, are fields that you may want to add to every form. Why? Well, this way, what you’re able to do is easily see when a particular record was created or when it was modified, or even what device was modified on. So let’s go ahead and quickly add these. It’s very easy to do. All I need to do is just click on the plus here. I go down to Date Created, it changes it to Date Created, and I’m done. Now, whenever I create a new record, it’s going to put the date and time in there.

Let’s go and put a modification date in there. I click on the plus, I select Date Modified, and now we have a date modified. Anytime I change a record, it’s going to show me when it was changed.

And then we’re going to add one more. We’re going to go down to Modified By Device. And now we can see which device was modified. So when we sync this, which I’ll talk about later in another lesson, when a record has changed, you’re going to see what device changed it.

When we have several fields here, we can easily reorder these. So I want to have Grocery Store here above Aisle. All I do is just take this and drag it up and place an in-between Item and Aisle. Let’s move this back down. I just take it and drag it down. And now we have our Item, Aisle and Grocery Store. And if we look over to the left, we have our Item, Aisle, and Grocery Store. If I were to change these, it would also change the order here.

Once we create a field, we can easily change the field type. So if I wanted to change the field type for Grocery Store, I can do that as well. I just click on this and change the field type.

So that’s all there is to creating fields in a Tap Forms 5 form. Our fields are individual items that we keep track of within a list. And this case here, our Grocery List, we want to keep track of where that item is. Which grocery store? Where the grocery store location is? What aisle it’s in? As well as what the actual item is. To create your different fields and select a field type, all you do is just select the form, and then you go over to Form in the toolbar. From there, you select on Fields in the right sidebar, and you’re going to see a list of all of the different fields in that form. If you’ve just created that form, it’s going to have one field; you just click on the plus to create a new field. You can change the field type and name it. You can also drag the fields around to change the order them.

So that’s how we create fields in our Forms in Tap Forms 5 on the Mac.