Understanding Forms

Forms aren’t something unknown to your field team’s daily routine, since they are used to filling several paper forms by hand. With Involves Stage, the field team can fill out survey forms more easily once in a few steps the data entered on the mobile app is sent and registered by the system. Therefore, your Backoffice team can access and track your whole field team operation in real time.

Forms are a group of questions that when answered by the field team result in a database from which reports can be generated. All information you want to extract from your field operation should be on the forms.

Therefore, the answers on the forms should be defined by your Backoffice team on Involves Stage Web. You can customize each survey in accordance with your company’s context and expectations. Surveys are a crucial aspect for your operation since they require deep understanding of your business and the actions executed by your field team.

On forms you can also set different fields to be filled in various formats, define the order that they should be filled out and the relation between them, and set validation rules, among other options. The most common formats for ways to fill them out are:

• Alphanumeric
• Whole Number
• Decimal Number
• Date
• Checkbox
• Numbered
• Multiple Choice
• Text
• Time
• Image
• Planogram
• Barcode
• Photo

You can create a variety of forms, but the most usual ones are:

• Actions of the competition
• Before and After Photos
• Survey Price
• Out-of-stocks
• In-transit costs
• Product Information
• Share of Shelf
• POP Merchandise

Involves Stage survey forms are related to two concepts: Tasks and Reports. When creating a form it’s vital to define whether it will relate to the Tasks Scheduling process - where your employee will answer a survey exclusively scheduled for him/her - or if it will be related to the Report Menu - so the information can be proactively volunteered by your field employees.

REPORT

Report creates an outlet for proactivity and lets your field team send in necessary information about the point of sale. The field team usually reports issues or relevant information about the visited Points of Sale to your Backoffice team. Notice that this action is performed by your field team and it can be found in the Report menu on the Involves Stage App.

For instance, when noticing an action of the competition, your employee can report details about it via app and photograph the action, on top of that. Other activities can also be reported, like damaged products or shelves, out-of-stock products, product shelf life, etc.

TASKS

Tasks are routine activities set by the Backoffice team. They can be daily, weekly or monthly. When scheduling a task, the system will automatically send it to the app on your employees' mobiles. This action is performed by your company to your field team.

When scheduling a task, your company must plan which forms should be answered in certain points of sale. Your employees then receive those tasks and will have a deadline to answer them according to the priorities set by the operation.

For instance, tasks are used to survey products’ price every week, to send information about the number of boxes opened daily, or to send photos of the shelf display, among others.

You can't schedule tasks on the Forms menu, but you can do that on the Tasks Scheduling menu.

QUESTIONS TEMPLATE

The forms in Involves Stage have a resource called "Questions Template". This function keeps all  questions already registered in the system. Using it, you can share questions with the same format and reference of a previously used product structure. However, editing a question previously entered will alter every form using that question.

NEXT STEPS

As soon you understand the concept of forms on Involves Stage, you’ll be ready to create and set up the forms for your operation as well as schedule tasks for you team. Learn more on the following posts:

• Creating a Form
• Creating a Questionnaire
• Answers’ Validation
• Field Dependency
• Tasks Scheduling