Question form management overview
The ability to create any type of question form is a very powerful feature within Civica Cx Housing. A question form can be compiled to retrieve information on literally any topic, whether that be a repair satisfaction survey, a marketing campaign focusing on diversity and social inclusion, or the creation of enquiry and application forms to manage the housing stock and service allocation procedures. Their complexity can vary greatly, depending on local requirements, ranging from a very basic set of self-contained questions presented on a single page, right through to numerous pages, sections and inter-dependent question sets seeking to gather a wealth of respondent data. In addition to user-defined questions, system fields pertaining to contacts and assets - indeed any standard data field - are also freely available for inclusion. When constructing a question form, attention is given to appearance, flow and content. Each question form begins with a blank template, onto which pages and sections within each page can be inserted. Whilst it is prudent to get the structure right from the start, these components can be reordered easily using familiar 'drag and drop' functionality. Questions can then be added to the form in a variety of ways: (1) the creation of an ad hoc question directly within the form, (2) the inclusion of individual questions obtained from a user-defined question library, or (3) the selection of a library group of related questions. Rules can be defined to control the precise behaviour and flow of a form, to govern when questions should appear, based on responses to previous questions, as well as the mandatory status of questions and how that mandatory status is affected by earlier responses.
It is recognised that the creation of a professional form to meet the needs of the housing organisation takes time and effort; hence a form template in Civica Cx Housing can be created in logical stages. At any point in the creation process the form can be previewed, with the behaviour and appearance mirroring that of the live form, as presented to the recipient. As different forms may be required to fulfil quite similar requirements, it is also possible to clone a template, automatically transferring all its attributes over to the new form. Any number of amendments can then be applied to achieve the desired output, with all other elements preserved - a far more efficient method than creating a brand new form from scratch. Once the end user is satisfied with the outcome, forms can be published ready to record actual customer responses. Where different forms employ the same library questions or system fields, the responses entered in one form will be instantly replicated in any others for the same contact, thus avoiding duplication of effort.
Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of question form management, including: