Create and Manage Forms (Information Collection)

At Padoq, there is a useful tool called forms. Forms are great to keep track of things that are important to users and admins. And they are great to collect information from users.

Forms are a part of the Super Admin area in a Padoq app. So the user will have access to this area only if they are an admin to a group.

Forms are made up of templates, items (also called inventory) and menus. Find out how each of these components interact to generate forms.

See for yourself

• You can download the iOS or Android app on your phone to follow this journey along. And you can also log in or sign up to the web app here
• On the web version of the app, head to Manage and then Super Admin at the top. Select a group you're an admin for. This will take you to the Super Admin space, where you'll see tabs called Templates, Items and Settings
• You can also follow along by checking out the images or code snippets in this guide
• And you will find the relevant endpoints linked and explained in this guide, but the full API is documented in Swagger UI

Prerequisites

• For forms to display in the UI, the padoq needs its official parameter setting to true. This can only be done by an admin at Padoq (i.e. padoqs are not official by default)

Journey explained

There are three steps to setting up a form: creating templates, creating items and creating a menu for the form. Check out what happens in each step. At the end of the journey, you'll find a diagram of the process so you can have a visual overview of all the steps involved.

Templates

1. Open template tab
   1. The getPostTemplates endpoint is called with one compulsory parameter: padoqName. This retrieves any templates that already exist in the specified group
2. Enable in app
   1. This is needed for forms to be displayed. For the user, it looks like a toggle, and all it does is call the updatePadoq endpoint and update the qrCodesEnabled property to true
3. Create template
   1. 2 endpoints are called at this point:
      1. createPostTemplateReference creates the reference that will be used later in the process to link items to templates
      2. createPostTemplate takes all the information the user entered, plus the reference from the previous endpoint, and creates a template. The response might look something like this:

      3. {
           "title": "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum",
           "text": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.",
           "public": false,
           "canLike": true,
           "canDislike": true,
           "canComment": true,
           "recipients": [
             "john"
           ],
           "links": [
             {
               "uri": "string",
               "title": "string",
               "displayText": "string",
               "imageUri": "string",
               "mediaType": "image/jpeg"
             }
           ],
           "structuredContent": {},
           "mentions": [
             "sparklemanager",
             "patterknit"
           ],
           "tags": [
             "tag1",
             "tag2"
           ],
           "references": [
             {
               "memberTemplateId": "1f9cb547-ae0e-4471-8654-b04a63f8a9b8",
               "guestTemplateId": "8e08506a-6d7c-4a50-a89b-05c6b18e6a46",
               "inventoryId": "603d4269-f011-4e3d-99b5-66efa162198c",
               "matchPrefix": "string",
               "matchPattern": "string"
             }
           ]}

Items

1. Create category
   1. When creating an item, it has to be linked to a category. If the category already exists, no endpoints are called. But if the category is new, the createInventoryCategory endpoint is called. It takes two parameters:
      1. name is the name of the padoq where the category needs to be created
      2. category is the string name of the category, as typed by the user in the UI
2. Create item
   1. When the user fills in the rest of the fields in the UI, an item is finally created by calling the createInventory endpoint. An item might look like this:

   2. {
        "code": "ITM000-0001",
        "category": "Bins",
        "description": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur",
        "numberAvailable": 0,
        "from": "now",
        "to": "2021-01-22T16:24:14.886Z",
        "amount": 0,
        "currencyCode": "GBP",
        "location": {
          "name": "Europe/Manchester",
          "coordinates": [
            53.466667,
            -2.233333    ]
        },
        "contactName": "Juliet Smith",
        "contactEmail": "juliet.smith@example.com",
        "attributes": {},
        "slaId": "string"}

   3. Here's how a few saved items might look like in the UI

      

Form menus

1. Get categories
   1. Each item has a category assigned to it, and each menu item is linked to a category. So the first endpoint called is getInventoryCategories to make them available for the user to pick one
2. Upload menu icon
   1. There are two types of menu: problems menu and signups menu. The only difference between them is that one of them requires an icon. So if the user is creating a problem menu item, the uploadPadoqMenuIcon endpoint is called
      1. Here's how the fields look like:

      

3. Create menu item
   1. When the user has entered the relevant details and clicks 'Save', the createPadoqMenuItem endpoint is called. A menu item might look like this:

   2. {
        "order": 1,
        "description": "A description of this menu item. ",
        "referenceUri": "https://meida.padoq.com/template/66570917-c4d5-430d-ad2b-99bdd1eaf795",
        "icon": {
          "type": "image/tif",
          "size": 197020,
          "crc": -1035224824  },
        "minPrivilege": 1,
        "specialFunction": false,
        "requiredRoles": [
          "member"  ],
        "category": "Bathroom Appliances"}

4. Updating a menu item
   1. Once a menu item is created, the user might need to edit it. For this, the updatePadoqMenuItem endpoint is called. It takes two compulsory parameters: name (name of the padoq where the menu was created) and ID (of the specific menu item that the user is editing)
   2. Then, the structure of the menu item gets updated to the edited body in the request
5. Deleting a menu item
   1. The user might want to delete a menu item altogether. In the UI, this option is an X icon on the right hand side of each menu item line. The endpoint called to perform this action is deletePadoqMenuItem, which takes the same 2 compulsory parameters: name and ID
   2. With that information, the body of the menu item is simply removed from the padoq

Overview of process