Building forms and inspections

Forms are how structured information comes back from the field: inspections, walkarounds, completion reports, registers. Building them needs the Manage forms permission. Everything starts from Forms › New form.

Three ways to start

New form offers:

• Start from scratch: "Build the form field by field."
• Use a template: "Start from a ready-made form or inspection." This opens the Templates tab: forms from your workspace's compliance packs (site induction, toolbox talk, vehicle walkaround and more) and forms your team saved as templates. See Manage forms and templates.
• Create with AI: "Describe it, or upload a PDF/photo, and let AI draft the fields."

In Create with AI, describe the form, Attach a PDF or image of your existing paper form, or both. PDF, JPEG, PNG, WebP and GIF files up to 6 MB are accepted. Under Attach to (optional — the AI decides), tick the kinds of record it is for, or leave them for the AI. Tick Make it a scored inspection if it should pass or fail. Choose Generate. The draft never saves by itself: it opens in the builder for you to check and change.

Team plans and above can draft as many forms as they like. A Free workspace gets 3 AI form drafts in total, and drafting never uses the monthly AI allowance. The Free plan still shows a lock badge on Create with AI, but the three drafts work.

The builder

The builder shows the form on one side and a live mobile preview on the other, laid out the way the worker will see it. Add field offers layout blocks (Content block, Formula, Group / line items) and these answer types:

Text, Number, Numbers slider, Yes / no, Acknowledgement, Dropdown, Multiple choice, Checkboxes, Image selection, Date, Time, Date & time, Rating, Pass / fail, Email, Phone, Photo / image, Video, Audio, Signature, People, Record link, File upload and Location.

A Content block shows the worker instructions or an image rather than asking anything. Its title is optional, as long as it has some text or an image.

Drag a field by its handle to reorder it. Each field has buttons to edit it, Duplicate field and delete it. The bar at the bottom holds Settings, Cancel, Save as template and Save. If Maliru refuses a save, the reason appears beside Save. Cancelling a form that has never been saved asks "Discard this form?", with Keep editing or Discard.

Setting up a field

Depending on the type, a field can have:

• Required, a Unit (optional), min and max values, and the option list.
• Capture source for photos and video: Camera & gallery, Camera only (the picture must be taken on site) or Gallery only. A photo field always takes several photos. File and video fields have Allow multiple uploads.
• Select by for a Location field: Current location or Manual input, where the worker types an address.
• Several can be chosen on a People field, or Multiple selection on choice fields.
• Location stamp capture: "Record the responder's location when they answer".
• Fill in from the job, for forms that attach to jobs. See Filling form fields from the job.
• Show this field only if…: conditions on earlier answers, joined with and or or.
• Formulas, for example {end_mileage} - {start_mileage}, worked out from earlier Number, Rating or Formula fields.

To change a field's type without losing its place, open it and select the type name at the top (Change the field type). The field keeps its key, position, conditions and any settings that still apply. Submitted answers keep their original type.

Groups and line items

A Group / line items field repeats a row of fields, with Min rows and Max rows. Under Fields in each row, Add field opens "Add a field to each row". Drag the columns into order by their handles. A row can hold text, number, choice, date and time, rating, email, phone, signature, People, Record link and formula fields. It can't hold photos, video, files, locations, image selection or pass / fail. A People column plus a Signature column makes an attendance register. See Build and fill an attendance register.

People fields

A People field names workspace colleagues. Keep it to one person or switch on Several can be chosen. Workers use Choose or Add to search by name. Each person picked is linked to the submission, and review screens and PDFs show their names. A form with a People field can't be sent to guests in a share pack.

Form settings

Settings in the builder bar opens Form settings:

• Purpose: Standard form, Asset request or Asset audit. A request or audit form feeds the registers behind the Assets & equipment buttons and always attaches to the worker filling it in.
• Attaches to: one or more of Job, Site, Vehicle, Client, Worker, Asset and Authorisation. The first is the main one. See Forms that attach to more than one record. You can change it later: existing submissions stay on the records they were filled against, and schedules pinned to a record of a kind you removed are paused for you to re-point. The change is audited.
• Category and Description.
• When submitted:
  • Record only: "Data collection. Filled in and stored — no review, no pass/fail."
  • Needs review: "Each submission waits for someone to approve or reject it."
  • Scored inspection: "Pass/fail items are scored to a result against a threshold." Set the Pass threshold (%). Options: Raise a defect for failed items ("A failing item logs a defect on the attached record.") and Require review sign-off.
• Administrative capture only, Allow submitters to correct their entries, Allow users to export entries and Confidential responses. See Confidential forms and reviewer fields.
• Stamp camera photos, off by default: photos taken in the phone apps carry the date, time, place and your logo burnt in. See Stamped photos from Maliru's camera.
• AI review: Workspace default, On for this form or Off for this form, and What should the AI look for? See Reviewing submissions and AI review.
• Active, on a saved form. Switch it off to retire a form without deleting its history.

Scoring only what applies

In a scored inspection, tick Scored item on each field that counts, and give it a Weight. Choice fields list their Passing answers and Not applicable answers. On a Pass / fail field these are fixed: Pass passes, and N/A is "Excluded from the score and never raises an issue."

Hidden conditional questions don't count towards the score. On a vehicle or equipment check, an answer mapped as unsafe still triggers the safety gate, even if the overall score would pass.

Versions

Saving a changed form creates a new version, shown as v2, v3 and so on in the Forms list. Existing submissions and drafts stay tied to the version they were answered on, so editing a form never rewrites past inspections.

Tip: the Totals button on a form with number, rating or formula fields shows sums and averages across every submission. It's useful for mileage, quantities and scores.

To send an eligible form to people outside the workspace, put it in a pack under Forms › Shared. See Sharing forms and documents outside your workspace.