Forms

Forms are a building block of all CHT apps. They are used when creating or editing contacts, and when completing a care guide or survey within the app. Forms are also used to interpret SMS interactions with the CHT.

When a completed form is submitted, it is treated as a Report in the app. All reports can be viewed in the Reports tab by those with the proper access within the hierarchy.

There are four different types of forms:

• Contact Forms: used to create and edit contacts. Defined as CHT-enhanced XForms.
• App Forms: serve as actions within the app, such as a task or an action. Defined as CHT-enhanced XForms.
• Collect Forms: used to render forms in Medic Collect. Defined as ODK XForms and need a corresponding JSON form to receive data in CHT.
• JSON Forms: used for data coming from external channels such as SMS, or via interoperability with other tools. Defined according to a JavaScript Object Notation schema.

Forms that can be completed in the app are built using a CHT-enhanced version of ODK XForms notation – a XML definition of the structure and format for a set of questions. Since writing raw XML can be tedious, the XLSForm standard is commonly used to define forms. The cht-conf command line tool can be used to convert to the XForm format and include the form in a CHT application. The instructions on this site assume some knowledge of XLSForm.

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