Card types and forms

Card types and forms make sure the same kind of work is always captured the same way. Every bug asks for its severity and browser, and every lead for its budget and source.

How they fit together

• A card type is a kind of card, such as Bug, Lead or Invoice.
• Each card type uses one form: the fields its cards ask for, which can be arranged into titled form groups such as "Billing details". A form can serve several card types.
• Each card type also has its own process: the steps its cards move through.

Find them on a module's Forms tab, or on Forms in the workspace sidebar for every module at once.

Add a card type

Choose + Add Card Type at the end of the Forms board. As everywhere in orchit, you have three ways:

• Ready-made: a standard type that comes with its own form and process. They're copies, so you can change them.
• Describe it to Orchit AI: it drafts the form for you to review.
• Manually: name it, and start from an empty form or a ready-made one, and from a copy of the workspace's process or another.

Add fields and groups

Add a field from a card type's column or menu. Pick a ready-made field, describe what you need to capture, or create it yourself: give it a title and a type, such as text, number, date, select, person, file or checkbox. Mark a field as required, shown on the card, or usable as a filter.

Form groups work the same way. A ready-made group brings its fields with it.

Who gets a new group or field

When you add a group or a field from a single card, orchit asks who it's for:

• All cards of this type: it joins the card type's form, so every card of that type gets it.
• Only this card: just the card you have open.

Open a form

Click a form on the Forms board (or choose Open card type on its column) to open its panel.

• Details lists the form's fields and each group, with a + on every section to add a field into it. At the foot, Add group adds a section and Edit widens the panel into the full editor, where you tick ready-made fields and groups beside a preview of the whole form. The browser's Back button closes the panel you opened last and shows the one underneath.
• Linked shows the card types that use the form, the process each one's cards follow, and the sheets holding their cards.
• History lists every change to the form, its groups and its fields.

A field you've changed from its ready-made original is marked, and you can reset it. Removing a field works the same from every screen: orchit tells you what will go, and lets you undo it.

Several forms, one active

A card type can hold several forms, and one of them is active: the form its cards show. The others are marked Inactive and show on no card until one is made active. A form belongs to one card type at most. A form of no card type is Not linked: grouped by Module it stays in the module it was made in (or in the Not linked column when it was made in none), and grouped by Card type it waits in the Not linked column. + New Form at the end of the board makes one, to link now or later; the + on a card type's column makes one for that type, inactive.

• Make active: from an inactive form's menu, or Make active in its Linked tab. orchit says first which fields stop showing on the type's cards (their values stay, and show again if the old form is made active again). The form it replaces stays with the card type, inactive. A Not linked form's menu offers Use for a card type, which links it and makes it active.
• Unlink: from an inactive form's menu, or the unlink icon in its Linked tab. The active form can't be unlinked: make another form of its card type active first.
• Duplicate a form from its menu: the copy joins the same card type, inactive, so it can be changed before it is made active.
• Delete a form from its menu, only while it is linked to no card type: unlink it first.

Group the board

The cards on the Forms board are forms, linked or not. A module's Forms tab is grouped by Card type: one column per card type holding its form (a form shared by two card types is in both columns), and a Not linked column for the forms no card type uses. The sidebar Forms page also offers Module: one column per module with all its forms, linked or not.

Every column has a + that makes a form into that column: in that module, for that card type (inactive until you make it active), or, in Not linked, for no card type yet. A card type's inactive forms sit in its column after the active one.

Need another way to sort fields, say by the team that owns them? Choose Add new in the Group menu, name the grouping, add its options, and drag fields between the columns; the + on an option makes a new field filed there. It changes nothing about the fields themselves. Everything else (card type, group, field type, required, source, who created it) is a filter.