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To solve this situation, Quik! has designed User Defined Fields that are essentially Premium Fields on the fly. These fields are named specifically by the Quik! Forms Team and use a unique formatting that are specific to the form library they are in and are intended to maintain a similar formatting to our Standard Field Names. Our Forms Team will maintain these fields from version to version on the same form to ensure that no mapping validations for the customer will ever break on that specific form.
Breaking down a User Defined Field:
Lets use the example of For example, using the user defined field name of “User.D123.1ownPlacesTraveled”
All User defined fields will always start with “User.”
The second part of the field name “D123” represents the DealerID in our system. Every dealer/form library company that gives us form is called a “dealer” in our system and is assigned a Dealer IDDealerID. This way we know that this field always belongs specifically in the Dealer that is assigned to that DealerID.
In some cases, we’ll use “F45542” where the “F” represents “Form” and 45542 is the FormID in our system. Similar as above, it lets our team know this field should always only be on FormID 45542 in our system.
The last part of the User Defined Field name will be targeted around what the question specific purpose of that specific the field is for. Using the example of , “1ownPlacesTraveled” would be used if the question on the form was iss asking for the first owner to list out all places traveled.
Potential issue with User Defined Fields:
User defined fields must serve a singular purpose. Customers often ask for a field to do more than it’s initial purpose which creates complexity in both the build process and maintenance of the form.
User defined fields cannot replace existing fields that are defined by the Quik! Field Definition.
Forms cannot be majority built with user defined fields. Some customers may ask us to build user defined fields on every non-defined field in the form in order to create 100% field mapping on that form. While technically possible, adding this many user defined fields to the form creates a custom field mapping that is very difficult to maintain and sets the wrong precedent for future forms being added to the library. It is better to add definitions to the Quik! Field Definition as part of an existing definition or as a custom definition for a particular industry or customer.
User defined fields are defined by the Quik! team only. The naming convention that Quik! chooses for a user defined field serves many purposes for the Quik! Forms Build Team, including efficiency and speed in building and maintaining forms. As a result, Quik! cannot promise to adhere to specific customer field name requests.
As you can imagine, if a forms library requires hundreds or even thousands of fields to be mapped using User Defined Fields, it can become quite challenging for our Forms Team to maintain as they aren’t accustomed to every one of those fields as they would for a standard field such as 1own.FullName. This is especially the case when new forms are added several months or even years later to a library and may be worked on by a different Forms Team member.
Our Forms Team in these cases will pull a report showing existing User Defined Fields that have already been used in the library and try to match up fields on the new forms to existing forms in the system. Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee 100% accuracy with this type of situation.
The standard procedure in these situations will rely on back and forth conversations with the customer and Quik! to update the new forms to match the existing ones. The higher percentage of fields you’re looking to map, the longer this process will take
Since User Defined Fields are not part of our field definition, these fields do not appear in our forms tools and therefore it is very difficult and inefficient for the Quik! Forms Team to share user-defined fields across forms.
Be aware that requests for user defined fields can result in additional costs for customizing forms and delays in both building and updating forms.