Create a new field in CDMS

Fields are the actual questions and data entry points within your case report forms (CRFs). Once you have created your visits and forms, you can start adding fields to collect your study data.

Select a visit and form

Navigate to the Study Design page.

When you are in the Forms page, you can choose the Visit and Form for which you would like to edit the Study form by selecting them from the dropdown menus, as shown below.

Create a new field

Once you have selected a form to add a field to, you can choose a field type in the field panel, shown on the right side of the form builder.

The full list of field types is provided below:

Dynamic:

• Calculation: used to access variables from your study to calculate values, e.g. a BMI from weight and length.
• Link
• QR Code
• Summary: create summaries of collected data in your eCRF.

Structural:

• Grid: field type to group closely related data in a tight interface (table).
• Image: The image field serves as a graphical alternative to the Remark field. You can upload an image here that will be displayed inline in the form. SVG image format is not supported.
• Remark: this is not a real field, but rather a line of text you can add to your forms to provide the user with more information and structure the form.
• Upload File: allows the user to upload a file that belongs to the participant or a survey (i.e. an image, pdf, etc.). The maximum file size is 5MB.

Specialized:

• Add Survey Button: created a button which allows you to quickly add a certain survey in the data entry.
• Randomization: displays the assigned randomization group of a participant in the form (for example, 'placebo' or 'treatment').
• Repeated Measure: with this field you can quickly add repeated measures in the data entry. When creating a repeated measure field, you can select to display measurements for all linked visits or repeating data forms for a specific repeated measure.
• Repeating Data Button: created a button which allows you to quickly add a certain repeating data in the data entry.

Set the field properties

When adding a new field, or editing an existing one, you will see the field properties screen.

An example below shows the Edit options for a number field which contains the following basic properties:

• Position: determines where the field appears on the form

• Label: defines the label that the field has.

  • The label is the actual question (e.g. "What is the patient's gender?" or "Gender").

  • There is a limit of 1024 characters in this field.

  • Some basic Markdown tags can be used for text formatting.

  • For more information, hover the mouse on the 'U' next to Label.

  • Additionally available, but not indicated, is the ability to underline text: ***patient*** or ___patient___ is displayed as patient in the label text.

• Variable name: the variable name is required and helps to identify a field, which can be useful when data is exported or in calculation fields.

  • A variable name must be unique across the entire study

  • Can only consist of alphanumerical characters and the following symbols: $ # _ @.

  • The first character must be a letter (for example, "baseline_gender").

  • The variable name can consist maximum of 64 characters.

• Field type: Here you can change the field type, should you have clicked the wrong button.

• Required:

  • Is this field required? If you set it to "Yes", this field will be taken into account when calculating the form completeness.

• Enforce decimals: 

  • When set to 'Yes', this option allows to enforce decimals on numeric fields

  • Will render a field validation in data entry showing ‘Incorrect format, decimals are required’ if the inputted value does not contain decimals.

• Upper and lower limits: applicable only to number fields. What are the minimum and maximum values for this field (in that order)?
• Field width: This determines the width of the rendered input field.
  • Allowed range is 5-20, increasing the range, will increase the width of the field.
• Measurement unit: This is displayed after the field and shows the user which units are expected, e.g. "cm" or "mmol/L".
• Help/info text: This text can be toggled by the user to display additional information about the field.
  • Use this for lengthy explanations, not the field label.
  • You can add formatting to the help text using the Markdown tags.
  • Help information on Markdown is available by clicking on the (help) link below the Help/info text.
  • Spacing can be created by creating a double SPACE and then pressing ENTER.
  • Help/info text preview: To render a preview of the styled text you can click the i icon.

For editing advanced field properties (data validation, dependency, data standardization) review the dedicated articles in the Knowledge Base.

Different types of fields have different available basic properties.

Only the properties for the selected field type are shown, which means that you will not always see all these field properties.

Save the field

When you have set all the properties, save the field and return to form builder or save the field and continue adding more fields.

After clicking Save, the field immediately shows up in the Form Builder. 

Edit, copy, move or delete the field

Right next to each created field there are 4 icons which you can use to modify the field or its location:

• Edit field: You can use this to edit the field properties at any time.
  Please note that when editing a field and changing the field type for fields in which data has been collected is limited to only allow compatible field type changes, in order to prevent data loss.
• Copy field: Copy the field with all its properties to the same or another visit/form.
  This is convenient if for example you are creating a series of Yes/No questions.
• Move field: Move the field to a new location within the same or in another visit/form.
• Delete field: This will permanently delete your field.

It is possible to quickly edit field labels or field variable names by double clicking on either the label or variable:

Format field label

It is possible to apply formatting to the label and help/info fields associated with a field/question by using asterisks (*) or underscores (_). Only one type of formatting can be active:

• A single asterisk/underscore will give italic text e.g. *test*/_test_
• A double asterisk/underscore will give bolded text e.g. **test**/__test__
• A triple asterisk/underscore will underline the text e.g. ***test***/___test__
• To add a link, use [link title](www.examplelink.com)