Summary Fields

Overview

The Summary Field is a field in the Form Builder that allows you to summarize child data.  For example: On the Companies form, summarize count of related contacts from the Contacts form.  Or, on the Submissions form, summarize average related review score from the Reviews form.

Preconfiguration

A Summary Field is one of the specialty fields that exists in the Form Builder.

However, you may note that this field is grayed out. This is an indicator that the preexisting conditions have not yet been met in the workspace.

As stated in the Overview, this field type is designed to summarize child data when there is a linked parent-child relationship via a linked form.  If you are editing a form in which this relationship does not yet exist, you will not be able to utilize the Summary Field.  For example, if you are utilizing a company form and a contact form, you would first add a linked field on the contact form back to the company, so that one company can have many contacts. Then from the company form, you can enable the summary field.  

Setup

Once a linked relationship has been created, you can add the field to your form.  It will look like this.

From the dropdown, you will select a child form. In the example above, this is the contacts form, as we are looking to summarize how many contacts a company (parent form) has.  Note that once you have chosen a linked form here, it cannot be changed. You will have to delete the field and recreate it in order to make a change.

Once you select your child form, the following settings will appear.

You can select from the following summary options:

• Average (of a particular calculated field on that child form)
• Total Count (of # of records of that child form)
• Maximum (of a particular calculated field on that child form)
• Median (of a particular calculated field on that child form)
• Minimum (of a particular calculated field on that child form)
• Sum (of a particular calculated field on that child form)

You then have the option to filter the child form, or gain a summary across all instances of that child form. Selecting ' filter' will bring up this screen:

When you have set up filters (where applicable) you can close the field and Save Form.

Note that each form is allotted a maximum of ten summary fields.

Also, note that there is a limit of five linked summary fields to one another in progression, or cascaded.  In other words, just four successive summary fields can be created (in which a form serves as a parent field for one but is the summary field of another).  If you are trying to add a summary field and receive an error message, you may have too many cascaded summary fields linked to one another.

Advanced Options

Under the field set up, you have the option to access Advanced Options.

When you click "See advanced options," at the bottom, you will see "Formatting Options."

Here, you can customize the format of the number (the mean, total, sum, etc of the fields you indicated in Setup).

You can limit the number of Decimal Points to 0 through 8 decimal points.

You can also opt to set the number to currency if the fields being summarized are also currency fields. Learn more about setting up currency fields here.

When you check off "Set number to currency," you will be given a dropdown with each country's currency. Select the one that matches the children fields being summarized.

Viewing Summary Fields in the Data Tab

When you have saved the form containing your newly set up summary fields, you can view the summarized results in the Data Tab.  In the example below, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th columns are all Summary Field data.

Note: There can sometimes be a delay in displaying the results of the summarized data.  Occasionally, this will mean that the user will need to refresh the grid a minute or two after adding the field.