How to Create a Custom App - Part 3

It's time for part 3! We're going to be covering the following topics:

1. Card Configuration
   • What is a Card?
   • Where Are Cards Used? 
   • Customize your Card
2. Choice Lists
   • Create a Choice List
   • Create Choices One at a Time
   • Create Choices in Bulk
   • Create a Child Choice List
   • Delete, Deactivate, or Edit a Choice

Open the menu and go to Settings > Apps and then select the app you've been working on. Then select the 'App Actions' tab. 

Card Configuration

Cards are a great way to get relevant information in a single place, and we know that what is important might be different for each business, which is why you can change the information that appears on the Cards.

Edition Qualifier: This feature is available in all FreeAgent Editions.

User Permissions: Only administrators can update the Card configuration.

In this tutorial, we will cover the following topics:

1. What is a Card?
2. Where Are Cards Used?
3. Customize your Card

What is a Card?

Cards are essentially small summaries for a record in any of your Apps. A card can be customized to show you the most relevant information you need at a glance.  Let's explore where they will appear and how to set them up to suit your specific needs.

Where Are Cards Used? 

Your card configuration will show in every view where Cards can be found. The Rolodex & Board Views are perfect examples, you will also notice the Cards in the Related List on the right side of the screen and in the mobile app.

Cards are smart, as they will adjust their size to include only the information available for each one of your Records. And the best part of it all is that they look exactly the same across all your views in the system.  

Customize your Card

When you need to see different pieces of information per App, your best option is to customize a Card.  

To edit the configuration, you can switch the currently shown fields for any of the available ones when you click on them. There are many different options for you here: Add a Cover image and show it as a Thumbnail or in Landscape. Select the most important fields for you in the Card Body and decide if you want to show additional information in the Card Footer.

As you add, edit or delete fields for your Card, the card preview will update in real time to show your current configuration.  Dynamic fields such as "# of Interactions" can give you the information in a very nuanced way based on your needs per App.

You can even add a Primary Action to your Cards. This will allow your team members to perform that action with a single click on the Card. For example; if I select 'delete' as my Primary Action an icon will appear on the card allowing the user to delete with a single click.  Once you are done selecting your fields and configuring the Card, click the 'Save' button.

Choice Lists

Choice Lists are a great way to simplify the customization of your FreeAgent CRM account.  Once you have a Choice List, you can use it to create different fields across all your Apps. For example, you can create a Choice List with all the 50 States (USA) and then use that list to create a State Choice List field in your Contacts and another one in your Organizations. 

Go to Settings > Advanced > Choice Lists. 

Create a Choice List

To create a Choice List, click the 'Add Choice List' button.

1. Name

On the Creation window, the first thing you need to do is give your Choice List a Name. 

2. Order Type

Then you need to select the Order Type from the two options available: Alphabetical or Order. The Order you select here will have an effect on the 'Sorting' functionality for your Choice List in the List View. You will have the option to change their order at any time, using our drag & drop feature, by clicking the 'Reorder' button. 

• Alphabetical: For this Order Type, the system will automatically order your Choices from 'A to Z'. The will be applied to the column sort, the first click on the column's name will sort from 'A to Z', while the second click will Sort from 'Z to A'. 
• Order: For this Order Type, each of the elements in your list will have an order number defined by the time they were created. If you used the Bulk option, they will have the order in which you added or copied & pasted your values. 

3. Allow Ad-Hoc Creation

Next, define if you want to 'Allow Ad-hoc Creation' or not. If selected, it will allow anyone on your team to create additional Choices for your List on the form. If you don't select it, only the available Choices will be displayed. 

Note: Please note that the 'Allow Ad-hoc Creation' option is only available when the 'Order Type' is set to Alphabetical.

4. Parent Choice List

You only need to make a selection here if the choice list you're creating is meant to be a child list attached to a parent. See Create Child Choice List on how to do this.

5. App

Select the application you would like to use your choice list within. 

Note: Please note that the 'Allow Ad-hoc Creation' option is only available when the 'Order Type' is set to Alphabetical.

Now let's create our choices. There are two different creation methods:

1. Creating Choices One at a Time
2. Creating Choices in Bulk

Create Choices One at a Time

You can use this option if you are creating a small list or if you wish to add more Choices to an existing List. Just click the 'Add New' button. In the creation window, all you have to do is type the name of your choice and click the 'Save' button when you are done. 

Create Choices in Bulk

This is the recommended option to create a Choice List for the first time, as it will allow you to create multiple Choices at once. Click on the 'Add Bulk' button to get started.  

Here you can either type your Choices or copy&paste them from any source, like an Excel spreadsheet. Once you are ready, click the 'Save' button. All your choices will be created instantly. 

Choice List Details

To see the choices on your List without the need to edit them, click the down arrow right next to the name. It will expand your Choice List and show you all the existing Choices. 

Create a Child Choice List

To create a Choice List for your Dependant Choice List field, you will need to give your new Choice List a name and select the order type (Order or Alphabetical). If you would like to allow team members to add more Choices to the list then set the 'Allow Ad-hoc Creation' field to 'Yes'.

Then under Parent Choice List, select the one you want to add sub-choices to. For example, enabling the selection of subindustries based on industry selection within the same form.

Now all that is left for you to do is create the sub-choices for each of your main selections. Click the 'Add New' button. In the creation window, you will have to type the name of your sub-choice, add a value if you have an integration that is set to use a specific ID or name, add an icon and select a color if desired, and finally, select from the drop-down the parent-choice for which you are adding the sub-choice. This will be automatically populated from the Choices of the Choice list you selected when creating your new choice List.  Click the 'Save' button when you are done and repeat the process for all your sub-choices.

Delete, Deactivate, or Edit a Choice

To delete, deactivate, or edit an individual choice, navigate to the parent Choice List and select the Choice.  Under the 'Choices' select the options menu and make a selection. 

Note: Choices created from plugins are not eligible for Deletion

Document Templates

Publish the details of your records in any App with a delightful, customer-facing PDF document. You can also choose the style and format that best suits you and your company by designing your template in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Publishing PDFs is a great tool for generating Quotes or Proposals via FreeAgent!

Create your Template

First, we recommend that you either use Microsoft Word or Google Docs to create your desired document with all the styles and elements that you would like to have. It could be a quote, an invoice, or even a project proposal. Once you have something like the samples shown in the image below, it is time to prepare the template. 

To create the template, you will be replacing the elements in your document with 'tags' (<<>>) that will point to an existing field within FreeAgent CRM. Let's go through the second sample image step by step.

Identify replaceable elements

Start by identifying those elements in your document that can and need to be replaced by the actual values from your record. In the first sample image, we have identified a few values which should be replaced with values within the FreeAgent record.

The top section includes your company's information as part of the header and doesn't change from quote to quote, so you can enter your company's consistent information (name, address, etc.). However, the Quote ID is a field in FreeAgent that changes from quote to quote so the system must replace it on the creation of a new quote. Use the following tag: <<id>> since the FreeAgent Field is called 'ID'. We do the same for all the other replaceable elements and we get:

The <<id>>, <<company>> and <<address>> tags that are seen here are all available as fields within the 'Quotes' App. Please note that the name of the App, as well as the available fields, will change according to your own FreeAgent CRM configuration.

When the field name is composed of two or more words, your tag will need to be capitalized as follows: twoOrMoreWords -> the first word of the field name is lowercase, while the rest of the words are capitalized, and there shouldn't be any spaces between words.

As for dates, they are available in the App as well, they just look slightly different from the other tags, as we are applying a specific format to them.

<<{dateFormat(yourDateFieldName,'MMM dd, yyyy')}>> will print the date in the following format
Apr 06, 2020

There are some special formats that you can apply to your fields according to their type. 

Let's review the second half of the template. Now we will add the information for the lines in our App. This section should be set up as a table to identify each of the elements in a row. All the elements inside the table, except the column name, will be replaced by values from the lines in the App. Therefore in the PDF template, the values have to become tags.

We just need one row for the items inside the table. We also need two additional rows to mark the beginning and the end of the lines within the table. The result would look something like this:

The column names are not replaced by tags. Then we have a row with <<rr_yourAppLine>> which tells the system that the information that goes after comes from a line and not the App itself. If your line name includes two or more words, remove the space between the words and capitalize the first letter of all of the words except the first one, which needs to be lowercase. <<er_yourAppLine>> marks the end of the line elements in your template.

To display quantities, amounts (currency), and other fields with the number type, please review the special formats section.

Once the template is ready save, export, or convert it to .docx as it is the only accepted format to import your template into FreeAgent CRM.

Note: There are some field types that are currently not supported in the PDF Template such as the Choice List Multi Select field. 

Special Formats

You can specify a different format in the bold section, to print your preferred date time.

Pro-Tip for Images

Suppose you are looking to add a logo to your PDF template or any other image. In that case, we recommend that you follow the instructions described in the tutorial below to achieve the best results possible. 

How to Achieve a Perfect Logo in your PDF Files

Upload Template to App

Open the menu and go to 'Admin Settings' to display the available options, then click App Setup.  From here navigate to your desired app.  Click on the new 'Document Templates' menu within the App menu.  In the top right-hand corner click on 'Add New Document Template.'

From here choose a template name and add your file.  Once ready click Save to add your new template.  You can add multiple templates to each App and edit them at any time.

Note: The only allowed type for the template is '.docx' 

How to Create a Custom App - Part 4