Collaboration, Requests and Signing
Create and edit a form from a regular PDF
How to set up a form for respondents based on a regular flat PDF.
Turn a PDF into a Form and collect answers
With the DekkoCORE feature Forms you can take any PDF and turns it into a form which others can complete and send back to you. All answers come back signed, one submission per person, while you keep your original PDF unchanged. Respondents cannot see anyone else's answers.
Before you start
To use DekkoCORE Forms you need a PDF file to be uploaded in DekkoCORE. To create a form, you need Full Permissions on the PDF file. You have this if you uploaded the PDF yourself, which grants Full Permissions automatically, or if someone has shared Full Permissions with you.
You must share the form with users in the Hub to get responses (minimum Download only permission).
When you choose the PDF and click Create Form, a new folder named after the PDF gets build and places the form inside it. The original PDF stays exactly where it was and is never modified.
1. Create the form
- Select the PDF in the file list.
- Open the ...More menu in the toolbar and choose Create form.
- Wait for the conversion to finish.
2. Label and editing fields
- The form will now open up in the DekkoCORE form builder view and tell you what it has found. For a regular PDF most commonly a DekkoCORE pop up will show: No fillable fields were found in this PDF. Drag the fields you need onto the page.
- To add fields you can drag what you need from the options in the left. Ten field types are available which include text, boxes, paragraph, number, date, checkbox, choice, dropdown, signature, and label.
- its label (the question)
- a placeholder which is what the respondent reads before filling out each field
- set the field as required
- for dropdown and choice fields, set the response options
- this is also where you can remove the field from your form if needed
When you have chosen a field type, you can select the field and fill in the following in the right side of the PDF:
- When adding fields DekkoCORE will generically name each field label with the field type you chose. The labels will be used for the first row within the responses table and CSV export of answers. It’s recommended to update the labels with relevant questions or statements suitable for the situation.
When the fields and wording is right, choose Save & close.
3. Check it the way a respondent will see it
Open the form and use the Preview & fill tab. That is the same filler your recipients get, so it is the fastest way to catch a question that reads oddly or a required field you did not mean to mark.
4. Share it
A form appears just like any other files in DekkoCORE. You can share, move, rename, and delete it just like other files.
User that needs to respond to the form require a minimum of download only permission.
Limits worth knowing before you build
People without a DekkoSecure account cannot fill in a form. Guest links are not available: with no account there is no key, so a submission could carry a picture of a signature but nothing proving who sent it.
Answers are not written back into the original PDF. The original field names are kept so this stays possible later.
There are no server-side reports or charts. Answers are encrypted in the browser and the server never sees them, so any totals are worked out in your browser - at the cost of one download per submission.
Moving a submission can drop it out of the Responses view. Responses looks in three places: your own vault, the form's folder as it is now, and the folder the form was built in. A submission moved anywhere else disappears from that view, though it is still in the vault.