Extensive Custom Forms

[CarrieDowning]

Stay with me... I'm part of a creative services team and we have 1 custom form for our requestors to fill out. This form has options of a print request, promo request, digital/paid media request, language translation as well as other options of types of work needed. Requestors are able to select multiple choices, perhaps print and digital together. With each choice the specific set of questions or section populates on the form for requestors to answer related to that specific request type. When multiple ones are chosen, you could have 2, 3 or more separate sections on the form that have been filled out. My designers are finding that it is very hard to sift through each section, reading the answers to the questions, checking the boxes they've selected for types of assets (flyer, brochure, ad, billboard....), sizes and instruction boxes and at the end knowing exactly what they need to do - how many print items, how many digital items? Sometimes we can end up with upwards of 30+ assets/final deliverables on a project. They've asked if there is a way to aggregate all the info into one concise total - not sure that's possible. Or, could it be that our request form is just too specific. We feel like we need everything that is on there to help guide the requestors... they don't always know what to ask for, so we just give it to them. But, the end result with everything in one spot seems to be too much or overwhelming for the designer. They spend a lot of time sifting through, re-reading, asking questions and trying to decipher the endless sea of information to only end up not really knowing what they need to design/provide. They even asked if there is a way to download the form. I wasn't sure if there were ways to input calculated fields to pull from each section and more or less sum up what is needed into one spot. Anyone else have this issue? What are your solutions to help graphic designers feel more confident in what they need to do. Thanks.

[Sven-iX · Accepted solution]

Hi @CarrieDowning  

What you describe seems like an appropriate intake form and process. 

I see two options: 

• If you have Fusion, break out these sections into each respective request. You would then be able to create e.g. a request with Title Flyer, and attach the custom form fields that are needed to execute on it. 
• The other option is to create reports where you add only specific custom fields, eg Digital, print etc.

If you can, I would recommend the Fusion option. Reason is that the intake for is akin to the campaign request - and currently the people who execute have to piece things together themselves (ie, we're losing efficiency here) 

I prototyped something that makes the intake form more modular but this will require Fusion and Web development. DM me if interested.

[CarrieDowning]

Thank you. We don't currently have Fusion but we're looking into it.

[RobertRo19]

To streamline your form and help designers manage the information more effectively, consider adding a summary section that aggregates key details like asset counts and types. Use conditional logic to only display relevant sections based on the request type, and explore exporting the form responses to a spreadsheet for easier organization. This will help reduce overwhelm and ensure designers can quickly grasp what’s needed. 

[CarrieDowning]

Thank you - something to try. 

[Richard__Carlson]

We are struggling with many of the same issues - I definitely feel your pain.

We had different requests being filtered through different queues but the recent directive has been to combine them all into one singular request form and oh my gosh is it confusing to manage on the back end in the form builder alone.  In our company I have to speak with a different person on each team to coordinate their specific deliverables.  I feel like I'm being asked to write a masterpiece novel but people hand me random pages one at a time.

I feel like perhaps in your case it would be helpful to establish a better process by which the requesters provide the team with most / all of the required info to get started.  This might not always be an easy process and people generally by nature resist change.  If you establish a slightly better process and emphasize it over time you can get people to change, but it might be a lot of hand holding and repeating yourself for the near future.

Hopefully when the artist gets their work they can spend the majority of their time doing artist stuff and not clerical stuff.

[Sven-iX]

I feel like part of the challenge is that the request / custom form paradigm doesn't allow a parent request (eg the campaign) to get filled out at the same time as the child requests (the campaign tactics).

A huge custom form is a pain to maintain, and you'll have to set up duplicate fields (tactic type 1, tactic type 2) etc. 

If you wanted a tactic to have its own form, you could create a project off the campaign request and then have a queue with the tactics, but that means users have to do more work (and a license is needed)

A client asked us to provide a custom solution where campaign details AND all tactics can be submitted in one fell swoop. Think of it as a request queue/form that itself has a queue, so a 2-tier request form. 

The client has Fusion, and the resulting form submission is then handled by creating a project for the campaign, and the tactic requests inside it. It's a mini web app to present the UI based on custom forms, and Fusion as the engine to create the needed WF objects. 

[Richard__Carlson]

You are so correct!

I am being asked to build a "single deliverable process" and "multiple-deliverable process" in tandem but what we are calling multi-deliverables is actually what Workfront defines as a campaign

[CarrieDowning]

We used to have all single asset forms then combined them into one due the pressure of people wanting to request multi asset types on one form. Now that seems like too much. Looking into options - Fusion perhaps.