A Modern Approach to User Guides
When rolling out new SharePoint forms solutions, providing help to users is essential. The old way of doing things is to write a work instruction PDF which everyone is expected to read and know. Realisitically, people no more want to read a long help manual than they would a User License Agreement. A smarter approach is required. Infowise Ultimate Forms provide many great ways to include baked in instructions directly in forms which help users know exactly what to do when they need to do it. Placing instructions in the form exactly where the updates take place is the best approach. Here are 10 different ways that you can embed instructions into your forms using Infowise Ultimate Forms Form Designer to help your team learn the process and answer every question.
1. Custom Labels
Ultimate Forms allows full customization of each column label. This allows each column to have a verbose description adding additional clarity. As an example, which of these two column labels is better? ZIP or State or Regional Postal Code? The second label provides more flexibility and clarity to handle different situations. In this way a SharePoint column can remain short in the list view, but have a more lengthy and clear label in the form. This allows more precision and doesn't force users to guess what information is required. It's simple. Just add a descriptive label at the top of the column settings as shown.
2. Custom Column Descriptions / Pop Up Windows
The most straight forward instructions are provided by adding a custom description to each column. Ultimate Forms enhances column descriptions with pop up windows and rich text formatting. This provides the best of both worlds. New users can click the small information icon bubbles to see extensive instructions in any part of the form while experienced users aren't forced to see information that they already know. You can even add translations for different languages for multi-lingual forms! You are providing in depth instructions, but only showing those instructions when and where they need it.
3. Fragments
Fragments are simply boxes of information that can be added anywhere in your form. These are useful because of their versatility. Fragments can contain rich text, images and custom styling to look any way you want. Like columns, you can show or hide fragments based on form rules. In this way you can conditionally show help information based on particular user selections such as categories. Using this strategy you can show helpful instructions in context to users right at the time they need it.
4. Diagrams
Process diagrams and screenshots are especially useful. These can be saved as images and displayed anywhere in the form using the image control. As with other form elements, these can be displayed conditionally so that users see this information right at the time they need it. Generally it is good to balance written instructions with images, so adding these visual elements can help a lot. A simple free tool to create process diagrams is the site draw.io.
5. Video Help
In the era of wide spread popularity of YouTube, video instructions are more attractive to many users compared to written instructions. Videos can be embedded into forms using the image / video control in the lower left in Form Designer. Just provide the video URL and the video will be embedded directly in the form.
6. Email Prompts
How good is your email alert content? Email notifications are a call to action. Each email should explain the next step clearly and what the user is expected to do. Additionaly the email content should include the Edit form link which allows the user to jump right to the form to complete the step. Email content is context specific because it is triggered by a specific event from the form. If you send an email for a user to take the next step in a process, make sure to include clear instructions! All of this can be configued with the easy to use Smart Alert tools.
7. Page and Document Links
Sometimes in depth written instructions are required in a document or SharePoint page. In this case, you can provide context specific links from the form to specific areas of the SharePoint page or to a specific page in a PDF document. With a PDF, it is as easy as appending a page number to the URL like this: mydocument.pdf#page=5
With a SharePoint page, you can insert page sections, and grab the url of that section by clicking on it. Be sure to enable Make this section collapsible:
A section link in a SharePoint page looks like this: https://contoso.sharepoint.com/ ... /SitePages/Help.aspx
In this way you can have a comprehensive help document and have context-specific help links. Use the fragment control to provide hyperlinks to this page / PDF hosted content.
8. Validation Rules
Simple validation involves setting columns as required. Ultimate Forms allows you to go much further. When a user enters data that violates a rule, you can display custom messages providing instruction on what is required. This is an important part of the help instructions. It is essential to explain why information is incorrect and exactly what is required. This ensures your users know exactly how to provide the correct information. Custom validation messages are a key part of helping users follow the instructions.
9. Tab and Accordion Help Sections
Ultimate Forms includes a handy tabbed form control. Tabbed form sections can be used to embed help instructions directly in the form as tabbed sections. This allows new users to access help instructions by clicking on the respective tabs while experienced users can focus on the main form. Like pop up help functionality this allows the best of both worlds: Lengthy instructions for those who need it when they need it while still being hidden for those that don't need to see it. Within each tabbed section, you can use the accordion control to collapse content so that user can expand the specific section that they want to read.
10. Multi Language Help
Most organzations now have workers that speak multiple languages. Ultimate Forms Form Designer makes it easy to translate labels and descriptions into any language you need. You supply the translation directly in the form from within the column settings. According to the users locale setting in their browser, the corresponding labels and descriptions for their language will appear. Accomodate for users that speak different languages to eliminate confusion and drive a better user experience!
Clear Communication for the Win
It all boils down to clear communication. Ensuring a smooth process requires good help instructions. But having clear instructions isn't enough on its own. An embedded help strategy using multi media and in context help provides an intuitive user experience where users find the instructions on each step in the location where they are entering the data. Provide help to users in a way that is easy to understand and you will provide a superior solution!
