Quick Data Entry Tips: Better Form Design

Your form design for your database sheet affects the amount of time you spend filling them; don't forget that designing your form in the most efficient way is key for quick data entry.

Below are a couple tips to keep in mind when you're designing, or re-designing your forms:

Using the Correct Field Types

Using the correct field type in your form design cuts down data entry time significantly. While it's definitely possible to use Free Text for every field, using different field types that can automatically generate field values, or format what's being entered automatically is a game changer.

If you're interacting in a way that you find yourself entering dates and copy-pasting data often, you're probably doing it wrong. Check out the field types available in Ragic here, and make sure you're using the correct field types.

Autogenerating your Field Values

Automatically generating field values help immensely while data entry, especially when you need to have a unique ID number for each new record, or need a timestamp along with a prefix for different cases.

Setting Default Values

Setting default values work in several different ways for different field types.

If you are using a "Select User" field to assign a task for yourself, to avoid having users clicking to select their own username each time, you can just default it to the person who is creating the task. Similarly if you find that a status of a task needs to be "New" from a drop-down menu in a "Selection" field, you can just default new task records to have a "New" status.

Learn more about setting default values here.

Applying Formats

A great way of quick data entry, while also ensuring that your data stays consistent is to set the formatting of your fields.

Again, each field type will have a certain way of applying formats, for example, a date field will give you many options to display dates in the way you'd like to view them. A phone number can be formatted to (XXX)-XXX-XX-XX if you need them to be.

An organized and consistent database is a great way to be able to find the data you're looking for in the long run, so make sure that you're fully taking advantage of formatting options.

Author's note: This is part 4 of my blog series, Quick Data Entry Tips. Click here for part 3, Populating values with Formulas.