Can forms be used offline or exported?

[Tomislav Tobijas]

So I just got an interesting question from my colleagues who usually work onsite.
They're sometimes located in areas without an Internet connection, but they are with a customer.

As we're using forms to collect the data provided by the customer (sometimes immediately while our team is at the customer facility), I guess they would like to be able to collect the data even when they don't have an Internet connection.

One option would be to fill in the data and not submit the form or create an Issue in Jira. The tricky part might be - what if your device 'dies' or you close the tab, and you lost all that data that wasn't submitted.

I wondered if there is any solution for these cases when there is no Internet connection.

The question can also go toward a blank form that could be exported in, let's say, Word doc and then printed to a piece of paper so the crew can fill it out on-site. I'm not a fan of that, but I guess their question here is valid.

It would be cool if the form could be placed/embedded in the Confluence page, and then we could potentially export that page using some third-party apps we have installed on our site.

Any thoughts or suggestions on this?

[Callum Carlile _Automation Consultants_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Tomislav Tobijas 

Interesting thought - Unfortunately I don't think that there's too much which can be done offline, as there's no 'draft' option, and like you say if the tab was closed then the data would be lost.

One idea (though not too pretty!) is you could create a template CSV in Excel with columns for any custom fields your users would normally enter on the form, which the useers could fill out offline. Then once they do have an internet connection, they could import this CSV through the issue navigator, which would fill in all of the custom fields as they have dictated in the CSV.

This would be assuming that they have the correct permissions to be able to do so (Make Bulk Changes global permission). Like I say, not the prettiest solution, but might be something to consider!

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Hi @Callum Carlile _Automation Consultants_

Thanks for the reply and suggestion!

I agree that it's not the prettiest idea but I guess it would work. I was thinking of duplicating the exact same look of the form to Word but that would be too much work - for the person who would need to create this (and maintain it) and for the people who would fill in the form and later would have to copy the data manually from a piece of paper to Forms.

Anyway, thanks again for the suggestion.