Contents

Overview

Forms are the key tool in the IT Audit Machine for capturing and validating an organization’s compliance data. Many organizations and agencies have used spreadsheets and free-standing documents to capture the necessary compliance information. These lacked a good way to aggregate and report on data and are difficult to keep organized. IT Audit Machine replaces those legacy methodologies with highly-configurable forms that allow for the necessary information to be easily captured, reviewed and reported on. The IT Audit Machine’s Form Manager is where those forms are kept within the system and it has the functionality and flexibility needed to craft powerful forms for gathering and interacting with the data your organization needs.

In this section of the guide we will start by taking a high-level view of the Form Manager and the various form management capabilities directly accessible from there. In subsequent pages we’ll go into further detail on how to create forms with the Form Builder, some of the Advanced Form Management features, and finally how to interact with the data entries which have been captured via the Entry Manager.

Form Manager View

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When you first navigate to the Form Manager by selecting the left-most icon in the main menu bar, you will be presented with a high-level view of their available folders and forms. Folders are represented in dark blue on the left of the screen and allow for forms to be organized together in whatever manner makes sense for your organization. Typically forms are organized by the standard they support, however a folder is simply a container for forms and can be organized in different ways to support your organization's needs. These folders use an accordion style interface meaning they can be expanded and contracted by clicking on the dark-blue bar which represents the folder.

On the right, by default, it displays any available forms which have not yet been assigned to a folder. The right side is also used to display the results when searching for a form. Whether a form is in a folder or by itself, it also acts as an accordion interface. Clicking on the bar which represents a form will display or hide the various icons which are used to access the powerful array of management and editing options available for a form. Unlike folders, forms may be different colors depending on their status in the system.

See the images below to view how the folders and forms expand when interacted with.

 

Clicking on a folder name will expand that folder to view the available forms within it as well as the icons to edit and delete the folder.

 

Clicking on a Form, whether in a folder or one of the unorganized files on the right, will display the options for managing or editing the Form.

As discussed, from this initial view you can find and work with a specific form, create a new form, or organize the forms into Folders. Many of the options for working with a form can also be selected directly from the Form Manager page, though some are only available when you are editing or building a form. Let us now explore most of the capabilities which are accessed directly from the main Form Manager page, namely finding a specific form, standard form management options, and working with folders.

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Finding a specific form

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As you work with the IT Audit Machine, it is likely your organization will start to accumulate a number of forms. ITAM makes it easy to find and organize your forms so that you can quickly find the forms you need when you need them.

Searching/Filtering the Forms List

At the top left corner of the Form Manager, a search box is provided for users to easily search and filter the list of forms.

The search box becomes active when you select or click it with the mouse. When activated, the search box will expand and display three search option tabs for searching the available forms, namely "form tag", "form elements" & "form title".

A search is performed when you select a search option, enter a search term, and click the Go button. The results are displayed instantly on the right side of the page and the search terms are highlighted.

Search Options

Sorting Forms

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The forms list may also be sorted based on a set of predefined conditions. Simply click the “Sort By” drop-down control located at the top right corner of the Form Manager and select the Sort Option you prefer. Each Sort Option appears twice, once for Ascending order and once for Descending order.

 

Sort Options

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Standard Form Management

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The ITAM Form Manager features several tools which allow for working with and managing a form as a whole. This section will cover many of those. For specifics on creating or editing the questions on a form, see the Form Builder.

Create/Edit a Form

Creating a new form is initiated via the Create New Form! button which is found at the top right of the Form Manager.

Editing an existing form is initiated via the Edit icon located under an expanded form in the Form Manager.

Clicking the Yes, Proceed button will bring you to the Form Builder for editing. If you go ahead and edit the form and save your changes it will delete the associated User Data.

Whether you are Creating a new form or Editing an existing form it will bring up the Form Builder tool which gives you access to the rich toolset available for building and editing forms in the ITAM Admin Portal. For more information on the tools and functionality available in the Form Builder see the Form Builder section of this Guide.

Tagging Forms

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If you manage a large number of forms across one or more organizations, you will find the "Tag" feature of the ITAM Forms Manager very useful. Tagging forms allows you to dynamically create categories and/or groups of forms based on the tag values assigned to the forms. Combined with the powerful form search capability, it allows you to quickly find all forms that you have tagged with a particular value, creating a loose association of forms that are easy to find when you need them.

To create a form "Tag" simply click the tag icon located at the right side of the form list entry.

This will launch the Enter a Tag Name popup form.

A Tag may be deleted by clicking on the blue X icon displayed on the tag name on the form.

Enable/Disable Form

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While you are developing your forms, it is standard practice to leave them disabled to avoid having a user accidentally try to interact with a form in progress.. Once you have completed your development and are ready to accept new entries you can activate the form by clicking the Enable button.

It may occasionally be necessary to temporarily close or disable a form and not accept any new entries from the form. Fortunately this can be easily accomplished using the Disable icon.

• First, select the form that is to be disabled.

• Then, click the Disable button at the lower far right of the form entry.

A popup window will display allowing you to modify the status message for the disabled form. When a user attempts to use the disabled form the form's status message will be displayed instead of the form fields. It is a good practice to customize the message for each form to give your users a clear understanding of why the form is not available.

Click the green "Yes, Disable this form" button to confirm.

The most common use for this feature is for forms such as event registrations, job applications, and other forms that are time-sensitive.

Changing a Form’s Theme

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When you create a new form, a theme will be assigned to your form. A theme is a set of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) attributes to control the look and feel of your form (colors, backgrounds, fonts, logo, etc.). By default, the “Lazarus Alliance Bold” theme is assigned to your form. You can change the theme by clicking the “Theme” link and selecting a new theme from the drop-down list.

There are built-in themes available or you can create your own theme by choosing the Create New Theme option. For more information about creating your own theme, see the Theme Manager section of this Guide.

Duplicating a Form

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Duplicating a form will create an exact copy of the form, including all of the settings (notifications, payment, theme). However, it doesn’t copy the entries that were in the original form. The new copy will have no entries. If you need to create many forms with similar fields, it’s best to create a master form that contains all of the common fields. Every time you need to create a similar form, you can duplicate your master form and then modify it further. This way, you won’t need to add all of the fields each time from scratch.

Deleting a Form

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Occasionally, there may be a need to delete a form. This can be done using the Delete icon available under a form.

Canceling a Form

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Depending on how your organization is set up in ITAM, you may or may not have other entities subscribed to your forms. Once an entity is subscribed to a form, there may come a time when it is necessary to cancel their subscription. This is done through the Cancellation Manager which is accessed via the Cancel Membership icon under the form. If an entity was previously subscribed to a form requiring payment, this subscription will persist until you Cancel Membership.

Clicking on the Cancel Icon displays the Cancellation Manager which allows an Administrative User to select the organization/entity they wish to remove from the form and cancel their membership.

 

Setting Payment options for a Form

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If your organization has clients which access your forms and requires payment from those clients for use of a form, the Payment Settings interface will allow you to define those options. This interface is accessed via the Payment Settings Icon below the form.

The Payment Settings screen lets you configure the Merchant Settings, your Payment Options, and the Price.

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Advanced Form Management

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The IT Audit Machine also comes with some additional advanced options that can allow entities to automate, fine-tune and empower their forms, taking them to the next level.

For more information about these advanced capabilities see the Advanced Form Management section of this guide.

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Managing Form Entries

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The final form management icon on the Form Manager page is the View button available above the form when the icons for a form are displayed. This capability lets you manage the User data which has been entered on a form. See the User Entry Management section of this Guide for more details.

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Folder Management

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In addition to the various options for working with forms, the IT Audit Machine also has tools to work with folders. Folder are used to organize your forms and they are simply containers which help you quickly find the forms you need. This organization becomes more important, the more forms you interact with in ITAM.

Folder Creation

Folders are created by moving a form into a new folder. To do this, select the Folder icon displayed above the form you want to move into the new folder.

This will pop up the Move Form dialog which has options to move to an existing folder or create a new one. Enter the name of the folder you wish to create in the text box provided and click the Create & Move button.

 

As noted above, you can also use the Folder icon on a form to move a form between existing folders.

Rename Folder

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Folders are renamed using the Rename icon which appears above a folder’s name when expanded.

Simply edit the name displayed in the Rename Folder dialog and click on the Yes. Rename this folder button.

Delete Folder

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Folders are deleted using the Delete icon which appears above a folder’s name when expanded.

Clicking on this icon will display the Delete Confirmation dialog

To complete the folder deletion, click on the green Yes. Delete this folder button.

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In this section we explored the Form Manager and many of the capabilities which are available for working with forms and folders directly from the interface.

In the next section, we will discuss some Advanced Form Management options that can be used to simply management, provide notifications or add some logic to your forms.

[Previous Topic → Overview] | [Next Topic → Advanced Form Management]

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