Doing it yourself works great for hobby projects – not when professional expertise and right resources are required. Issues come up fast and furious and there is no way you can solve them the way our seasoned development team can. The best part is our team provides comprehensive service at no additional charge to your monthly subscription. DIY field form builders rarely hold up in the real-world.
DIY Form Builders Beware
Using field form builders that let you build it yourself using drag and drop and no/low code methods seem appealing. But that’s just it. They seem like low cost, quick solutions, but in the field, a DIY field form builder most likely won’t survive stress testing like a field form built by a full-time team with tailored software development can. Just to give you an idea on what comes up when you are managing field work automation, here is what our app team did within just last 4 weeks:
- Photo Sync Issues: A client took 1,600 full-size photos offline on an iPhone 11 Pro Max. The device’s memory was full, preventing photo sync. Our team quickly developed a rescue app to extract the photos, saving the client two full working days of manual downloading and data linking.
- Satellite Image Annotations: Another client needed to upload over 500 location-specific satellite images for further annotation by the field crew. This feature was integrated into the app within five days.
- Offline Data Printing: A project required offline printing of data at a high-security site. We implemented a feature for printing/exporting data over Bluetooth in just two days.
- File Format Flexibility: Upon request, we added the capability to email Word files directly from the app, in addition to PDFs, within a week.
- Custom Sample Naming: We introduced a feature allowing for four different types of sample naming conventions, tailored to the project’s specific needs.
- Seamless Form Switching: To enhance efficiency, we enabled users to switch forms without exiting the current form, facilitating quick data entries into different logs.
The Advantage of Professional Field Form Builders
These examples illustrate the complexity and varied nature of challenges in field work automation. I am not kidding. This list is just for our Mobile App team. Our support team created 20+ new forms and our Web Development team added a bunch of other user-requested features to the platform in just 4 weeks.
Saving Time and Money in Field Operations
The best part in all of this is that none of our clients had to pay extra for any of this. Adding features that our clients want is part of our end-to-end service. Building forms is not difficult. VB-6 had a form builder in 1998. It’s all that goes into the support and upkeep of these forms that define whether or not you have a successful program.
Unless you have the budget and a team that can do all of the above, it would be wise to not get into DIY form builders.
I would be more than happy to share more with you if you are considering automating your field projects. We have been at it for over 6 years and still keep finding so many new things to build.
By: Saurabh Gogate
Date: June 10, 2020