Form Options

   MaestroThe UI design product.  |   Form Builder |   21.11 This feature was updated in 21.11.

Maestro gives you flexibility to configure component's properties differently for each form in your template using the Form Options functionality.

Note

Compare this to brand's Item Properties where you can set component's properties differently for each brand.

When it comes to using Form Options, the best practice is that a Template Designer creates form options with some default values in a template and group them logically under various categories, so a Form Builder can easily find them. The Form Builder updates form options' values to implement required form functionality. You can think about a form option as a shortcut to a particular property of a component. The property name of a component doesn't change while you create the form option, so you can always find out what that component is.

Let's illustrate it with an example. Imagine you need to remove the navigator from forms that only contain one or two pages. Since the navigator is configured in the template by the Template Designer, you are not able to customize its appearance or properties, but you are able to hide it from the form.

When the Template Designer locks down a form by setting extension points at the template level, it is likely that these extension points will still give the Form Builder access to basic form option configuration, such as hiding the navigator or save button, so the Form Builder can select these options in the Form Options window.

Another benefits of using Form Options is that it allows a single form option to set the properties on multiple template's components at the same time. For example, the Template Designer can use the Logo form option to configure the company logo, which appears in many places in a form and all modal pages, in one place, instead of creating multiple options and asking the Form Builder to set all of them to the same image. Using the form option allows to link all these places to a single option, so changing it once updates all of the image properties through the form that display the company logo.

Here are a few more notes on working with Form Options:

  • If you create a form option in the template, the form will have the ability to override the template, which can lead to inconsistencies between forms
  • If you remove a form option, this may or may not remove the property override from the form. Ideally you would want it to remove the override from the form, but the JSON may remain in the form and this required some manual updates.
  • You can not and should not add form options to components that exist within extension points - the form developer will already have a local copy of these components and will be able to make all the changes they need.

The Form Options interface allows you to:

Next, learn how to add a form option.