Using the Forms Library

Throughout the tutorials so far, we’ve been concentrating on using the general purpose recording forms. These are quite basic in terms of the attributes that you can record with each record, for example you can’t provide detailed life stage information in the Stage field since the field’s values are general purpose. As well as more specialist recording forms, iRecord also allows groups, schemes and societies to add forms for their own purposes, with attributes and options appropriate to them. These are available on the Record > My Forms menu item. Some examples include:

Enter ladybird records

This form was designed by the UK Ladybird Survey and includes colour form and life stage attributes:

The ladybird recording form on iRecord

National Trust Dorset site recording forms

Forms were designed by surveyors of 2 National Trust sites in Dorset, Burton Bradstock and Golden Cap Estate:

The National Trust Dorset site recording forms

Intertidal Recording Form

This form was designed to capture intertidal records specifically:

The intertidal recording form

Because of the way that iRecord was developed, adding new custom forms such as these is a fairly simple process, so the library of available forms is likely to continue growing.

Let’s take a look at how the forms library works. Visit the menu item Recording > My Forms. The forms library allows you to pick and choose which forms you would like to “favourite”, meaning which forms you would like easy access to. You can access any of the other forms at any time, they just aren’t made quite as convenient to access. When you first visit this page, you won’t have any forms favourited, so it will show you all the available forms:

Browsing the forms on the My Forms page.

This is the Find other forms mode, indicated by the button on the top right being pressed in. In this mode you can click on the title of any form to use the form, or you can click the Add to favourites button associated with one of the forms to add it to your list of favourites. Let’s add the ladybird recording form to our list of favourites by clicking it’s button. The form is highlighted and the button changes to a Remove from favourites button showing that it is on your list.

Now, reload the page. Because you have at least one form in your list of favourites, the page will now with the Find other forms button not pressed in, so you are able to list just the forms you’ve favourited. Even more importantly, if you hover over the Record > My Forms menu item you will see that the form(s) you have favourited are now listed as sub-items ready for you to access at any time.

The My Forms menu item, having favourited a form

When using the Find other forms mode, you might think that it looks like a chaotic disordered jumble of forms. In fact, they are sorted so the ones which overlap your species group interests and recording locality are listed first and ones which are less relevant to you are listed lower down. There is also a search facility to help you find forms.

Project Versions

Table Of Contents

Previous topic

Tutorial - My Sites

Next topic

Summary Reports

This Page