About Fieldmark Notebooks#
Understanding the parts of a Notebook#
A Fieldmark notebook is comprised of Forms which can be divided into Sections. Every Notebook must have at least one Field or Component, on one Section, on one Form.
Notebook Status#
Published notebooks (that are shared with other uses and ready for synchronisation) are green in colour. Draft notebooks that appear on your local device only are orange.
Attention
Unpublished, draft notebooks are saved to your local device only. They will be deleted (along with all unsynchronised records) and you will lose all your work if you are required to ‘Wipe and Reset the App’ (see Troubleshooting).
The Fieldmark Notebook Designer#
Fieldmark offers a graphic user interface (GUI) for users to create and edit Notebooks. The Notebook Design allows for the creation of simple notebooks with some advanced features including the allocation of identifiers, simple validation and more. Custom features (eg the definition of hierarchical vocabularies) require hand-editing in .json. See Advanced Notebook Creation for more information.
The following instructions provide steps for creating a simple notebook. While Notebooks can be created and edited on devices, the browser is recommended for Notebook design work.
1) Create New Draft Notebook#
To create a new Notebook, tap or click on the sidebar on the left and choose New Notebook:
Note
if you can’t see the New Notebook option, check your credentials with the Workspace Administrator.
2) Enter Notebook Metadata#
Enter Notebook metadata to describe the Project (which will become the name of the Notebook), the name or names of the Project Leads (who will be created with the Notebook creation) and the Institution(s) at which they are based.
These basic project metadata fields are required.
Project Metadata Components#
You have the option of setting custom project-level metadata for your Notebook:
These fields will be available for use in any Form created in the Notebook.
User Roles#
All projects have Admin, Moderator and Team roles by default.
You can define new roles here:
You will be able to assign Users to these roles later in the User tab.
Attachments#
Project level documents, maps or images can be attached here:
3) Create your first Form and Section#
Click the blue + button to create your first Form:
To change the name of the Form, click the pencil icon, enter the desired name in the grey box and click the blue tick button or hit Enter.
Click ‘SECTION DEFINITION’ and then the blue + button to create your first Section:
To change the name of the Section, click the pencil icon, enter the desired name in the grey box and click the blue tick button or hit Enter.
Enter a description for this Section of the form in the Description box of the INFO tab. This description will appear at the top of the view in the App.
4) Add your first Field#
See Field and Record Types for an introduction to the available fields in Fieldmark.
To add an Input or Select field: click on the desired component listed below the ‘’+ ADD’ button:
The field will then be ready for customisation:
Configure your first Field#
Type over the Label with the desired name for your first field and enter some Helper Text:
Tap on the checklist button to set the type of text field (default, string, number or email): 
or determine choose to make the Field required, persistent or visible to related records:
To determine who can see and edit the Field, tap the People icon and select the relevant user role:
To add attribute level metadata tap the Annotation icon and click to include Annotation and Certainty flags and edit the labels as needed:
To configure a select field, add your list in the Options box, separated by commas with no spaces:
5) Add your first Form Component#
Components allow you to break up a Form with explanatory text to aide the recording process. Components aren’t included on export. To add a component to your Form Section, click ‘Title’ and enter a Label, Helper Text and select the Style:
If you wish to include custom html, cut and paste it in the html_tag box. If you wish to have custom html only, leave the label empty.
6) Organise your Fields and Components#
To reorder Fields and Components on your Form Section, click on the grey arrows to move UP or DOWN.
7) Preview your Notebook#
To see a preview of your current Notebook design, go to the PREVIEW tab:
Here you can interact with the form but not enter data.
8) Configure Notebook Behaviour#
You can set default Notebook-wide settings on the BEHAVIOUR tab to:
Automatically save changes a user makes as they occur
Allow offline use
Store content offline
9) Save your Notebook#
To save changes to your Notebook to your local device, go to the SUBMIT tab and click the SAVE NOTEBOOK button. Once successful you will see the white ‘CHECK NOTEBOOK’ button:
Click ‘CHECK NOTEBOOK’ to enter your first test records.
Note: The Notebook Designer saves to your local device only. If working in a web browser, it saves to the browser’s cache file and which can be easily wiped during browser updates. We recommend backing up your notebook frequently.
Backing up your Saved Notebook#
To backup your Save Notebook, go to the SETTINGS tab and scroll down to ‘Metadata DB Contents’ and click ‘COPY TO CLIPBOARD’:
Open a new file in a text editor (eg Atom) and click Ctrl+V to paste the test. Save your file.
Continue Editing your Notebook#
Once saved, you can return to the Notebook Designer screen by clicking the ‘EDIT NOTEBOOK DESIGN’ button on the SETTINGS tab in your Notebook:
Repeat Steps 2 to 9 until your Notebook is complete.
Note
The Notebook Designer currently does not allow for Forms or Form Sections to be reordered. It is recommended that they be added with care.
The order can be manually edited. See Advanced Notebook Creation for more information.
Publishing your Notebook#
Note
This feature is presently in development.