A reorganized form experience
Forms will now be organized into three clearer sections:
- Published: the currently published version of the form
- Draft: unpublished changes you are actively working on
- History: previous published versions
This change is intended to make it easier to understand the lifecycle of a form and safely work on updates before publishing.
New forms will use new Web Forms by default
When a new form is created, Central will now use new ODK Web Forms by default. New Web Forms is designed to be faster, more consistent with ODK Collect, and easier for us to improve over time.
This is an important step toward eventually replacing the current web forms experience (Enketo).
If needed, you will still be able to switch back to the current web forms experience from the Draft page or from Form Settings as some workflows still rely on functionality that is not yet fully supported in New Web Forms, including:
- offline web form support,
- some XLSForm features (see details),
- and certain Enketo-specific behaviors (e.g.
grid,pages, query parameter defaults).
Because of this, we strongly recommend testing forms thoroughly before sharing them.
Feedback
We’d appreciate feedback on the naming and organization of the new tabs; recently, we renamed the Edit Form tab to make the action more explicit. While that improved clarity around editing drafts, it also left us without a clear place for information about the currently published form.
We’re now considering simplifying the tab name to just Form, Content, or Questions. What are your thoughts?
As always, any feedback is extremely helpful, especially if you encounter forms or workflows that do not yet work well in new ODK Web Forms. You can try Web Forms today on the preview site or by opting in from form settings in Central.