Our platform offers the ability to generate and download printable versions of ideation or survey forms, making it easy to share and distribute physical copies of your forms. When you've collected responses on paper, you can also scan and upload these forms into our system for easy organization and analysis.
In this support article we will explain how to generate printable forms, how to scan and upload these forms when they are filled in and how you can review and adjust the responses to correct any potential mistakes or remove responses entirely.
Access to this feature depends on your plan.
Generating Printable Forms
Step 1 - create a phase/project
To be able to generate a printable form you first need to create a survey or ideation phase.
To create an in-platform survey or ideation phase, you can start by creating a project.
Under the “What do you want to do?” section - you can choose the engagement methods you would like to use for a phase in the project, and here you will choose; "Create an in-platform survey" or "Collect input and feedback in public".
Once you have created a phase in your project with an in-platform survey or ideation as method you can create your survey or ideation/input form in the survey or form builders after clicking on 'Edit survey' or 'Edit Input form'.
You can read all about creating and editing an in-platform survey in this support article.
Step 2 - Download a PDF version
After creating a survey, you have the option to download it in as a PDF version to be able to print it and let people fill it in offline. This can be done in either the survey builder or in the "Survey form" tab in the back-end of your project. Click on the "Download as PDF" option. This will generate a PDF version of your survey that you can save or print for your records.
When downloading the PDF template you can choose to customise the front page and last page of the PDF.
Make sure to not alter the downloaded PDF OR the online version of the survey in any form after downloading: it might lead to errors in the upload as the online survey and PDF version need to be identical in format.
Adding demographic registration questions inside PDF template
By toggling on "Show demographic fields in survey?" in the phase settings, you enabled users to answer the registration questions inside the survey instead of before participating. This allows you to decrease the barrier to participation and collect demographic data from user that don't have an account if you keep the access rights to "none" = open to all.
These extra questions which you can select in the "access rights" tab will appear on the last page of the PDF template.
❗️Limitation to the PDF template download:
The layers on all mapping questions or any ESRI base maps will not be download in the PDF version
Uploading Forms
When you are done collecting offline responses you can start with uploading them onto the platform. By leveraging OCR technology we allow you to scan and upload paper responses that are hand written at scale.
You can also fill in our excel template to upload inputs back into the platform.
Uploading scanned forms with FormSync:
In the back-office of your project, you can click on the three dots next to the survey and select "Add offline inputs".
A new page will open: the Input Importer. The importer will be empty because you need to import your responses first. To do this click on "Import" in the top right corner. Please, note you can only upload inputs or survey responses in one language at the time.
Click on "Click to select a file" to upload the PDF file of scanned forms or a completed Excel file. If you have multiple languages on your platform, select the right language.
To avoid errors during upload we recommend you:
Use a professional scanner or scanning app, not your phone camera app.
You ensure all pages in the scan are the same size
Do not upload over a 100 pages
Do not include the responses in the scan upload where the respondent has deviated from the question format: e.g. a respondent who has added a hand written response next to a multiple choice question
❗️Limitations to import the PDF template
Be aware that while all survey questions types can be downloaded as PDF not all survey question types can be imported back using our scanning technology. The following question types are not yet supported for import:
All mapping input questions (Drop Pin, Draw Route, Draw Area, ESRI file upload)
File upload questions
Matrix questions
Ranking questions
If your PDF survey template includes these questions, when you upload the template back these question types will be uploaded back as "no answer"
Uploading inputs using the excel template
You can also download an excel template of your survey to fill in yourself and easily upload back into the platform. This can be downloaded in the "survey form" tab, and clicking on "Download an excel template".
❗️Please note: The excel template download only includes a selected number of questions as not all questions are supported for upload. It does not include:
Ranking questions
Matrix questions
File upload
all mapping questions (Drop Pin, Draw Route, Draw Area, ESRI file upload)
Approve imported inputs
After importing a file you'll see the responses on the left of the screen. When you select one of the inputs the content will be shown in the middle of the screen. You can scan the answers and change the email and check or uncheck 'User consent'. If everything is correct click on "Approve". The input will disappear from the Input importer and you can move on to the next response.
When importing a PDF file with scanned forms, the scanned form will be visible on the right so you can check if the OCR technology recognized the writing correctly.
With these simple steps, you can easily generate and upload printable versions of your forms, making it easier to share and analyze your ideas and responses.
Ideas imported and approved will have an ‘imported’ tag
Need more help or support? Contact our Support Team via the chat bubble. 💬