2021 news
8 December 2021
Why your form needs check answers and confirmation pages
MoJ Forms includes a variety of page templates to help you quickly build a fully working GOV.UK-style form. How you build that form is largely up to you but one part of the form design is fixed. If you want the form to submit any information it collects from users, it must have a check answers page and a confirmation page. These pages contain the code that sends an email to your chosen inbox and without them the user data goes nowhere.
We realised that might not have been clear to all users. To fix this, we recently added a small alert to the publishing page which will highlight if your form is missing a check answers page or confirmation page. Next year, as part of the branching release, we will also incorporate the check answers and confirmation pages into the new form template and add alerts to the flow view.
We hope these changes will make it much clearer to all users why your form might need these pages and what to do if they are missing.
8 December 2021
Password issue for DOM1 Edge users
People who use the Edge browser on DOM1 machines are currently unable to open forms that have been password protected. This will probably only be an issue for editors and stakeholders when testing forms before going live. The problem is due to the way we authenticate users, which MoJ IT blocks in Edge only. Other browsers are unaffected.
There are a couple of easy workarounds:
- use another browser, such as Firefox or Chrome, if available
- failing that, remove password protection from the form
To fix this, we need to change the way we authenticate users. For now, that’s not a priority, but we’ll be looking into it at a future date.
20 September 2021
Our plan to help teams transform paper forms
We have a new blog post out reporting on our discovery into the potential for a supported service to help the MoJ tackle its range of legacy paper forms. We found a broad desire among form owners to develop digital versions of their forms, but in many cases they lack expertise and capacity to do so. The discovery proposed and tested 3 different levels of support that could be extended to form owners to help them with the transformation using MoJ Forms.
You can read more on the D&T blog: Creating a digital approach to paper forms.
6 August 2021
Why we ask for page names
We have made some minor changes to the way you add a new page to a form.
Previously, when you added a new page to your form, we asked for a URL. Some users found this question confusing so we took another look.
Each page of a form has its own unique URL - test.form.service.justice.gov.uk/page-1, test.form.service.justice.gov.uk/page-2 and so on. It’s just this last part of the URL (sometimes called the slug) we need from the user, which we realised wasn’t clear.
To help explain this more clearly, we have rephrased the question and added some hint text. We are also adding some additional error messages to give users an extra nudge where needed.
Longer term, we think we can take this even further and remove the need for users to name their pages altogether. That requires a little more development so has been added to our backlog.
6 July 2021
How to format content
MoJ Forms uses something called markdown to let you add formatting to content. Markdown is a way of adding formatting to plain text using basic symbols and patterns.
With markdown, you can add headings, links, lists, tables and more. For example, to create a bulleted list, you start each item with an asterisk (*).
You can use markdown in any content area, which you will find on content pages, as well as the start page, confirmation page and several other templates.
Check out the support section for more information on formatting content with markdown including a selection of common markdown features to use in your forms.
6 July 2021
Fixed: deleting components on a multiple question page
You can now delete components from a multiple question page.
To delete a component:
- click in the component title field to show the component menu (3 dots in a circle)
- click to open the component menu
- select delete and confirm the action
11 June 2021
How to collect files from users
MoJ Forms now enables you to ask users to attach files to their forms, such as proof of ID, receipts and bills.
The file upload component supports a variety of file formats, including images, MS Office and OpenDocument, up to 7MB in size. (See the user guide for the full list of supported files.)
You can find file upload under the single question page menu. For now, users can attach only one file per page. To collect additional files, you will need to add extra file upload pages.
11 June 2021
Fixed: optional field labels no longer show in preview
Our page templates contain several optional areas for content. These are indicated by square brackets and labelled as optional, such as [optional section heading]. If you leave these fields with their default text, they won’t show on your final form, but until recently they did show in preview mode. That bug has now been fixed.
If you find any optional fields still showing in preview, you may need to ‘reset’ them. To do this:
- open the affected page to edit
- click into the optional field and delete the default text
- click anywhere else on the page - the default text should reappear
- save your changes and preview your form to check that the optional fields are no longer showing
21 May 2021
How to make a question optional
It is now possible to make a question optional so that a user can move on without answering it. This can be done with both single question pages and individual questions on multi-question pages.
To make a question optional, first click in the question title as if you are going to edit it. This highlights the component settings menu (3 dots in a circle). Clicking on the menu will open it. It looks like this:
For now, there is only one setting, called ‘Required’. All questions are required by default, which is indicated by a tick. Click on this setting to switch required to ‘no’ and make your question optional.