Most trades carry something on paper that Mucka does not have a screen for. A risk assessment before you start. A handover sheet the landlord signs. A snagging list on a new build. Custom forms are where you write those once, so your engineers get them on the job instead of in the van door pocket.
You'll need the Custom Forms skill switched on. Add it from the Skills page and it opens the builder straight away, because a form builder with no forms in it has nothing to show you.
Writing one
Go to Forms and press Build a form. Give it a name your engineers will recognise, because that is what they pick off the job.
Then add your questions, one at a time. You get nine kinds:
- Writing — a box to write in, one line or a paragraph.
- Number — a plain number.
- Reading — a number with the unit fixed to it, so 21 can never be read back as 21 bar when you meant 21 millibar.
- Pick one — a list to choose from, with room to type something else.
- Yes or no — a straight yes or no, and N/A if you want it.
- Checks — a list of things to pass or fail, with a note and photos on anything that fails.
- Date — a date off the calendar.
- Photos — pictures taken on the job and kept with the answer.
- List of rows — the same few boxes over and over, one row per thing. Rooms, appliances, whatever you are counting.
These are the same parts our gas certificates are built from, which is why a reading knows its own unit and a check list knows to ask for a photo when something fails. Most form builders only give you a text box and a tick box.
Mark a question required and Mucka will not let anyone issue the form without answering it. Nothing stops them saving a half-done one and walking away, because an engineer standing in somebody's kitchen has other things happening.
What else goes on it
A form is what you built and nothing else. Under the questions there are four switches for the bits Mucka already knows, all off to start with:
- Job details — the job number, type and dates.
- Customer — who the work is for.
- Site address — where the work was carried out.
- What's on the job — parts, hours, who attended and the notes already on the job. Your engineer can add a part he fitted from that screen, which is handy on a form he fills in at the end of the visit.
Leave them all off and your engineer gets your questions and nothing else. The job number is on the document either way, up in the corner under the form number, so a form you print and hand over can always be traced back to the work.
Who signs it
Under the questions there are two switches, and they decide what happens when your engineer has finished.
The customer signs hands them the phone at the door, exactly the way a job sheet does. It is on to start with. Turn it off for anything your customer never sees, a site risk assessment or a stock check, and your engineer is never asked for a signature nobody wanted.
The engineer signs puts his own signature at the foot of the form, under a line saying the answers on it are his. Off to start with. Switch it on for the paperwork you want somebody's name against: a permit to work, a handover, anything you might be asked about a year later.
Switch either one on and a second question appears under it: has to sign before it can be issued. Leave it off and the form goes out signed or not, which is how forms have always worked. Turn it on and Mucka will not let anybody issue that form without the signature. The customer's still has a way through, because an empty flat is the commonest reason a form cannot be signed: your engineer records that nobody was there, and the form says so in writing. The engineer's has no way through, because he is the one filling it in.
You can have both signatures, either, or neither. Both print on the PDF with the name and the time beneath them, and the preview beside you shows you what your engineer will get.
Changing the switches works like changing the questions: forms already filled in keep the shape they were filled in with. Making a signature compulsory takes effect on the next one anybody issues.
When it is ready, press Publish. Until you do, it does not appear on any job.
Setting a reminder when it is issued
Under the signatures there is one more switch: set a service reminder. Turn it on and issuing the form puts the next visit straight into your reminders ledger, so an annual service checklist stops being a piece of paperwork that finishes and says nothing about next year.
You choose three things:
- What the reminder says — your form's name to start with, and you can write whatever you like. It is what you will be reading in the ledger in a year's time.
- When it is due — a set time after it is issued, or whatever your engineer put in one of your own date questions. The second one is worth using when he is the one who knows: a system he wants seen sooner than the calendar says.
- Whether it comes round again — once, or every year, or something in between.
If your engineer leaves that date question blank and you have not set a fallback, nothing is written. A reminder invented because a question was skipped is worse than no reminder.
Nothing is sent to anybody off the back of it. A reminder is a note to yourself; you still approve the message 30 days out, the same as every other reminder you have.
You need the Service Reminders skill for this. The switch is there either way, and if it is off Mucka offers to switch it on for you in one tap.
A form is not a certificate. If the work is a Gas Safety Record, an EICR or anything else statutory, use the certificate for it — that is what sets a statutory renewal, and a form never will.
What your engineer sees
On the job there is a Form tile beside Photo, Note and Job sheet. He picks your form, gets one question per screen with big buttons, and can jump between questions on the bar along the top. If you have only published one form, the tile opens it straight away.
He can leave it half done and come back. Nothing is lost.
If you asked for signatures, they come last: the customer's, then his own. He can sign his again if he has changed an answer since.
When he presses issue, the form gets its own number, FM-0001 and up, and turns into a PDF with your logo on it, filed on the job with the quotes and the invoices. From that moment it says what it said: changing the job afterwards does not change the document.
Changing a form later
Edit it whenever you like. Nothing already issued changes. Every form that has been filled in keeps its own copy of the questions as they were on the day, so renaming a question, reordering the form, or taking one out only affects the forms your engineers fill in from then on.
If you need to correct a form that has already gone out, open it and press Make a correction. That starts a fresh one with a new number, and the original stays valid until you issue the replacement. It is the same way certificates work, and it means an abandoned correction never invalidates paperwork somebody is already holding.
What you cannot build
Gas Safety Records, warning notices, oil and F-Gas certificates and the rest stay ours to maintain, and there is no way to build something that looks like one. That is on purpose. A CP12 is a legal document, and if anybody could assemble one out of parts then nobody could trust the ones that are real.
If there is a certificate you need and we do not have it, tell us and we will build it properly.
Who can do what
Build and publish forms is an owner and manager job by default. Fill in forms goes to your engineers as well. Subcontractors get neither until you say so in Settings, Roles.