When you and your colleagues fill out forms, you generate a lot of data. GoFormz reports help you aggregate and view this data in meaningful ways that can help drive business decisions.
In this introductory article, we discuss GoFormz reporting and its capabilities.
What is a report?
GoFormz reports consist of data from multiple forms presented in a tabular format. Each row in the report represents a form, and each column represents a form field or form metadata. You can report on a single form template, or on multiple form templates (up to 2 templates at the Advanced Edition, more than 2 templates at the Enterprise Edition). The example below shows a simple GoFormz report. This report is based on the Sample Work Order template that comes with your GoFormz account, and shows the form Name along with several form fields — Customer, Date, Technician, Total Cost, and Total Hours.
GoFormz reports are dynamic. As more and more forms are completed, the data from those forms gets added to the report if it meets the filter criteria you set for the report.
Report Scope
Three factors determine the data that goes into a report:
Template: A report will only contain data from forms that are based on the form template(s) you select. Reporting across more that 2 templates is only available with the Enterprise Edition.
Filters: These are conditions that determine which forms from the chosen template(s) will or will not be included.
Columns: Each column maps to a specific field in each of your chosen templates. So the set of columns in your report determines which form fields are included.
Report Columns: Template Fields and Metadata
GoFormz reports can have a maximum of 200 columns. Any fields in your form that can be represented as text (e.g. numbers and dates) can be included in a report column. Fields that cannot be represented as text (e.g. images and maps) cannot be included in a report. To be more precise:
You CAN report on these field types: Text Box, Number, Auto Number, Database, Drop Down, Checkbox, Checkbox Group, Date Time, Date, Time, and Barcode.
You CANNOT report on these field types: Image, Location, Signature, and Sketch.
You CAN report on fields that are inside a table, as long as they are not Image, Location, Signature or Sketch fields. See below for more on reports that include table fields.
In addition to the fields defined in your form templates, GoFormz also tracks some metadata that is common across all templates — things like form name, form completion date, etc.
Manage report export settings in the Account Management menu. Under Export Settings in Account Management, you can manage your Export Delimiter, Timezone, and Date Format.
Export Delimiter dictates how the columns should be recognized during a CSV export. A comma is the default setting.
Admin users can set the Timezone for all date-based metadata on CSV reports from GoFormz Reporting and in Bulk Form Exports in Forms.
By default your Timezone is set to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
The Date Format setting controls the display formatting for all date-based metadata on CSV reports from GoFormz Reporting and in Bulk Form Exports in Forms.
By default your Date Format is set to ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD).
Metadata fields available for reporting purposes also include:
Form Name: The name of this form.
Form Id: This form's unique hexadecimal ID; these IDs are generated by GoFormz automatically. To find a form's ID, open it in the Web Form Editor and look at the URL.
Created Date: The date and time when this form was created.
Completed Date: The date and time when this form was completed. This field will be empty if the form has not been completed yet. If the form was completed more than once, this will be the timestamp of the most recent completion.
Last Updated Date: The date and time of the most recent update to this form.
Status: The form's status — Draft or Completed.
Template Name: The name of the form template from which this form was created.
Template Id: The unique hexadecimal ID of the template from which this form was created; these IDs are generated by GoFormz automatically. To find a template's ID, open it in the Template Editor and look at the URL.
Owner Name: The name of the user to whom this form is assigned.
Owner Id: The unique hexadecimal ID of the user to whom this form is assigned; these IDs are generated by GoFormz automatically.
Created By Name: The name of the user who created this form.
Created By Id: The unique hexadecimal ID of the user who created this form.
Last Updated By Name: The name of the user who last updated this form.
Last Updated By Id: The unique hexadecimal ID of the user who last updated this form.
Reporting on Table Fields
Table fields merit special mention because they are handled differently in GoFormz reports. A report containing table fields may have multiple rows per form, because it will have a row for each filled row in the table. The non-table fields in each report row will be identical, while the table rows will be different.
For instance, suppose the form template that you are reporting on contains a Table called Labor & Services with columns for the Labor/Service Type, the Hours worked and the hourly Rate. If you include any of these table fields in the report, your report will have a separate row for each type of labor/service. In the example below, the form with ID dd69b1b6-78b4-4ede-9a79-3e6600a61d09 has three types of labor — Concrete, Gardening and Installation — so the report has a row for each one. Note that the non-table fields — Customer, Sales Rep, Date, etc. — are identical in each report row, since they are coming from the same form. Other forms, like the one with ID 2b3e70be-ec6a-44bd-9ca3-3955f0168677, have just one row in the report because they have only one type of labor.
Report Access
You must have the Advanced or Enterprise Edition in order to be able to access the GoFormz Reporting Tool. While most reporting functionality is available in the Advanced Edition, the following features are Enterprise only:
Multi-template reporting: The Advanced Edition allows a maximum of 2 templates in a single report. The Enterprise Edition lets you report across more than 2 templates.
Sorting on template fields: The Advanced Edition lets you sort reports on metadata columns only. The Enterprise Edition lets you sort on all columns (i.e. both metadata AND template fields).
Filtering on template fields: The Advanced Edition lets you filter reports on metadata fields only. The Enterprise Edition lets you filter reports on both metadata AND template fields.
Key Functionality
Want to learn more about reporting in GoFormz? Here are some highlights:
Manage your reports via the Reports Tab
Create your reports with the step-by-step Report Builder, then edit them in the Report Designer
View your reports and export them to CSV with the Report Viewer
Schedule reports to run periodically and automatically get sent to your email or saved to your cloud storage account