Using An Offline Template To Complete A Form

Mashoom provides a downloadable Excel template, configured with input fields that match those of a given form. This feature means you can collect the data using Excel, then upload it to Mashoom, without having to re-enter all the data fields manually.

Here are some cases where using an offline template is useful:

• No internet connection
• Very large forms
• Where a template has been distributed with information pre-filled, as part of your business process

You can download an offline template from the form filling interface. Note that when you download the template it will include information of the form being completed. To download a template for reuse later, start a form, download the template, and save it for later. This template is a standard Excel document, so can be distributed and used as normal on any device.

One way to use this system is for an admin team to partially complete the template, then send it via email to an engineer in the field. The engineer receives the email with a template, saves it to their tablet, ready for use when necessary.

Completing The Template

This worksheet mirrors much of your online Mashoom form in cell content, using Excel type formatting with validation, dropdown lists and yes / no inputs where applicable.

When you have completed this Excel worksheet then save it to your tablet. If using this system to collect information about an asset, we suggest saving using the asset's serial number as the file name. Remember to "save as...", so that you end up with one filled in template for each form you're completing.

Uploading this saved file to Mashoom is a straight-forward process where you associate it with Mashoom's form-filling process using the asset's Serial Number to match the Excel file saved on your tablet to a form on Mashoom.

Uploading to Mashoom

When you're back connected to Mashoom with an internet signal, the first thing to do is start a form, so that we can upload the Excel template to it. If you're filling in information about an asset, before this you may need to add the asset, then start a new form.

Your in-company process may be that the form has already been started, as part of preparation for the form filling job. In this case, search for the form and find it, via the asset or form serial number.

Once you open your form, you will see a section at the top of your new form, on the left, headed "Upload Offline template". Click this to select which template to upload from your device, or drag and drop the template into it. If you've named the templates after the asset's serial number, check that the name of the file is correct before clicking "Upload data".

Once the upload is complete, you will see your collected data now populating the fields in the form. Some validation, calculation and lookup processing can't be done in the Excel template, so you may see some things that need to be corrected to checked.

Note, you can upload partial or complete Excel offline templates, so you can upload part of your work into Mashoom then complete the form whilst online. This can be used as part of a process, or just whilst ducking in or out of internet.

You can now check your upload and complete the form on Mashoom.