3 Calculations to Add to Your Forms Today
Add Calculations to your digital forms
One of the many benefits of digital data capture is the opportunity to leverage features that make your work-life easier. For GoFormz users, this often means implementing Calculations to simplify data entry, improve accuracy and automate field actions.
Calculations (also referred to as Formulas) perform actions to data entered into a specific Form field. For example, a Calculation can be used to instruct a field to display information (like a User's name or email) or Sum two entered amounts. These actions help ensure the total accuracy of field data and formatting, while simultaneously simplifying data capture and processing.
Ready to add Calculations to your Form fields? The following three Calculations are a great place to start:
Instantly Calculate Totals
Whether you’re forecasting the cost of project materials or determining a mortgage payment, adding Calculations to your field’s Default Value field property can help ensure the accuracy of your totals.
If your mathematics involve two separate fields, the Calculation entered into your ‘total’ field’s Default Value will be simple. For example, if you were trying to make your ‘total’ field equal [Field 1] multiplied by [Field 2], you would enter the following Calculation into your ‘total’ field’s, Default Value field property:
=[Field 1]*[Field 2]
Please Note: The fields in the brackets refer to the exact field names involved. See the use case below for an example.
Use Case: Imagine you are in charge of forecasting the cost of supplies for a project. If you were looking to find the total cost of five plywood boards, which cost $15 each, you would add
=[Materials]*[Quantity] to your ‘total’ field’s Default Value field property. These brackets refer to the fields named 'materials' and 'quantity'.
Similar variations:
Addition of fields: =[Field 1]+[Field 2]
Adding multiple fields: =[Field 1]+[Field 2]+[Field 3]
Subtraction of fields: =[Field 1]-[Field 2]
Division of fields: =[Field 1]/[Field 2]
Apply Discounts
Use Calculations to effortlessly apply discounts to customer totals. Simply add the following Calculation to your field’s Default Value field property, and change the name of the fields as necessary.
=[Total Owed]-[Discount]
The [Discount] refers to the amount entered into the discount field of your form.
Control Form Behavior for Groups
Alter the look and behavior of Form fields with the ‘IsInGroup’ Calculation. By adding ‘IsInGroup’ into the Background, Required or Visible field properties, you can control how fields will behave based on a User’s Group membership. For example, you could instruct a field to become Required if a User is a member of a ‘Supervisor’ Group. For these Calculations, you will need to enter the Group ID number into the Calculation. Click here to find more information on how to find your Group ID number.
To make a field Required, enter the following Calculation into the Required field property: =IF(IsInGroup("GROUP ID NUMBER HERE")="true","true","false")
To make a field’s Background Color change, enter the following Calculation into the Background Color field property: =IF(IsInGroup("GROUP ID NUMBER HERE")="true","FF0000","FFFF99")
To alter a field’s visibility, enter the following Calculation into the Visible field property: =IF(IsInGroup("GROUP ID NUMBER HERE")="true","true","false")
