Frequently Asked Questions - TeleForm Design Tips

It's easy with form designing to get into bad habits. There are a few things worth checking to make sure that your forms produce accurate data from your first draft. Here are the common tips to achieve this.

Put Form ID blocks top and bottom of each page

TeleForm's default position for Form ID blocks is top left of every portrait page. An unfortunate problem with this position is that it is usually where staples, folds and rips usually occur. For optimum recognition, it is best that these blocks are kept as clean as possible for scanning.

The best solution therefore is, space permitting, to instruct TeleForm to place the Form ID blocks at both top-left and bottom-right corners of the page. If one is damaged, the other one may still be readable, thus vastly reducing any form identification problems.

Avoid using lettering, numbering and shading within choice field bubbles

When placing choice fields as bubbles or boxes on a form, putting lettering, numbering or shading within the fields can affect recognition. It is always best to leave them completely empty, so that any marks within the boxes or bubbles will be made only by the person filling in the form.

So avoid doing this:

Keep choice fields like this:

Don't use the Courier font for prefill fields

A highly useful feature of TeleForm is the ability to merge data from a database onto a form print. "Automerging" is similar to standard Mail Merges and allows you to preprint bulk quantities of your forms ready for distribution to specific destinations.

However, TeleForm's default font for prefill text is Courier which is unfortunately not the best font for recognition when reading the forms back in again.

It is recommended to change each of the fonts for merge/prefill fields to something much more readable, such as a non-serif font like Arial, or a very machine-readable font such as OCR-A (although this has a very limited character set).

Take great care in adjusting choice field recognition thresholds

Choice field recognition in TeleForm works by calculating how much ink is marked within a choice bubble or box. This is expressed as a percentage. The default settings or "thresholds" for these percentages are as follows:

• If the percentage filled is above 40% then TeleForm considers the choice bubble/box to be definitely filled.
• If the percentage filled is between 25% and 40% then TeleForm will ask the user for confirmation that the choice bubble/box is filled (by passing it to the Verifier)
• if the precentage filled is lower than 25% then TeleForm will consider the choice bubble/box to definitely be empty.

The two default values of 40% and 25% are called Mark Fill High and Mark Fill Low respectively. It is possible to adjust these values for each field, for each form or across the whole system. Lowering both values will make the system more sensitive to even the smallest of marks. Bringing the thresholds closer together will make TeleForm more decisive itself whether a bubble/box is ticked or not.

However, any changes you make to these Mark Fill High and Mark Fill Low values must be extensively tested!

Use database lookups and dictionaries where possible

TeleForm can check your form data is correct before exporting it.

Dictionaries and database lookups can be used for print fields, to validate that the data read is good.

• Check that words have been spelt/recognised correctly. The county of Surrey may have been misread by TeleForm as "SVRREY". A dictionary of counties could be linked with the field, and TeleForm could be instructed to make automated corrections, changing the word in this case to "SURREY"
• Check that data read on a form is valid by comparing the data with that in a database. A list of candidates, or patients; a table of medications; order codes, etc. All are possible examples for using a database lookup.

In all scenarios of using dictionaries and database lookups, TeleForm can be instructed to ask for confirmation from a user or alert the user if the data is invalid. Automated lookups and dictionary corrections can vastly reduce the amount of data for your staff to check and correct manually.

Export additional TeleForm field data

Every form created within TeleForm contains a whole array of "virtual fields" which are placed within each new form, yet none of them have any physical appearence on the form design. They are used for tracking purposes and although many of them remain blank through the entire scanning and data export stages, some of them are highly useful and are available for you to set up for export into your databases.

The most useful ones are:

• Time_Stamp: This hold the date and time that the form
• Suspense_File: The image filename as stored within the TeleForm folders. If scanned in batch mode, this contains the full path including the batch directory. If in non-batch mode, just the image filename is provided (all non-batch images are stored in the \Sus\ directory within TeleForm.
• BatchNo: The batch number is useful for your own tracking purposes. After scanning, you can place the paper batches in folders, labelled with the batch number. Storing the batch number in your databsae, it becomes easy to locate the paper copies again if required. This field is evidently blank in non-batch mode.
• BatchPgNo: The batch page number is useful as it records which page number the data refers to in the batch.
• Verify_Wks: On multi-user systems, this field contains the name of the workstation that last verified the data.

Use page link fields on multiple-page forms

Consider a 2-page form design. Consider 3 prints of this form being sent to 3 people: Bob, Jane and Frank. They complete the form by hand, and send it back.

Now consider that prior to scanning, the pages from the 3 candidates are accidentally mixed up. Let's suppose that the following order of scanning takes place:

1. Bob's page 1
2. Jane's page 1
3. Jane's page 2
4. Bob's page 2
5. Frank's page 1
6. Frank's page 2

When TeleForm receives pages in this order, it will naturally process Bob's p1. It will then wait for the next available page 2 to link it with. However, instead of this, it receives Jane's form. Unfortunately, if "page link" fields are not used on this form design, Jane's p2 will be linked with Bob's p1 (as TeleForm remembered it was previously waiting for a page 2). The consequences of this are that Bob and Jane's form data will be intermixed.

To prevent this from happening, a page-link field can be added to the form design where a field is printed on each and every page which effectively links each pair of pages and prevents one candidate's page linking with another candidate's page. A page link on this form might simply be their firstname ("Bob" printed on both his pages, "Jane" printed on both her pages, etc.). However, it is more common to use numerical page links, where TeleForm is instructed to print form sets with incremental numbers. To find out more about page links, and incremental numbering on prints, please contact support@epc.co.uk.

Test, test, test, test, test, test, test, ....

It's all too tempting when pressured to put a form together that the form design is signed off for mass printing when "it looks good". The aesthetics of a form design is only half the story. By testing the form rigorously (printing, filling, scanning, exporting data) you'll pick up on design faults and problems that will drastically influence how the form behaves. Ensure that form behaves correctly before getting the aesthetics signed off.

Above all, don't be afraid of creating many many drafts and test versions of your form - you will NOT get your form design absolutely correct first time! Once you're happy the data is being read and exported correctly, and once you are happy with the way it looks, you can then clean up you system by deleting off old drafts and test versions.