Designing a Form with a Subform

Designing a Form with a Subform allows you to add more flexibility to your Form. Subforms are Forms within a Form, therefore creating a Subform is similar to creating a Form.

If you want to collect data on a repetitive basis, you can add a Subform field and define the frequency using a Date, Month or Week field. You can make that field a Key field for the Subform so as to alert users for duplicate entries for that specific time period for example.

By marking a date-related field as a Key field, you can also add a Lock to the Subform.

The maximum number of Subforms within a Subform is 5. The maximum number of Subforms within a Form is 30.

How to design a Form with a Subform

Follow these steps to create a Form with a Subform:

  1. Navigate to your Database. If you do not yet have a Database, see add a Database.
  2. Click "Add Form" to open the Form Design page.
  1. Name to your Form and click "Add a field" to view the palette of available Field types.
  1. Click "Add field" and click on "Subform" to add a Subform to the Form.
  1. Fill in the properties of the Subform field by providing the following information:
  • Label: the name for the Subform
  • Description: optionally provide a description
  • Code: optionally provide a code
  • Record label
  1. This is important because when you view a Form that has a subform with subrecords, you can identify each subrecord based on one of the following values:
  • Record label, if defined on the subform;
  • Concatenation of key field values, if key fields are defined on the subform;
  • First text field defined on the subform;
  • Record id, if no text fields are defined.
  1. In the Settings check the boxes you want to apply for the Subform field.
  1. Click on "Done" to add the Subform.

Success, the Subform is added.

Adding Fields to a Subform

Click on it to open the Properties tab and click on "Open Subform" to start adding fields to the Subform.

Make sure that the fields added to a Required Subform can be filled in during data entry. For example, a Subform that consists only of Fields with Relevance rules or the 'Hide from entry' property checked might prevent a user from saving a record altogether.

  • You can design the Subform in the same way you would design a Form. Click on "Add a field" to start adding fields define the fields properties to make the Subform even more flexible.
  • Click on "Save" on the Form Design page to save the changes.

If you want to collect data on a repetitive basis, you can add a Subform field and define the frequency using a Date, Week , Fortnight, or Month field as a Key in the Subform. You can make that field a Key field for the Subform so as to alert users of duplicate entries for that specific time period or to be able to add a Lock to the Subform.

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