Duplicating areas
In this guide, we'll be discussing how to duplicate different areas like headlines, chapters, whole checklists or even whole inspections. To understand this guide, you need to be familiar with repeatable sections. If you are not fully confident in your knowledge in this area, read the previous guide.
We'll be using the workbook that we created in the previous tutorial, so make sure you've completed that or
💾 download the workbook from here.
Repeat or duplicate
If a section (headline, chapter, checklist) is marked as repeatable in iCL Designer, iCL Filler allows you to create as many of them as you want to capture repetitive data. For example, this could be a list of recipients where name and email address are requested. Or even several floors that are checked separately, as in the previous guide.
There are cases when you don't just want to add a new blank section, but use an existing one as a blueprint - copying existing field values - so that you do not have to enter every single field again. This can save users a lot of time. In iCL this is called duplicating or cloning and can be enabled for repeatable sections.
Headlines, chapters and checklists can only be duplicated when they are repeatable.
If a headline is not repeatable, but its parent chapter is, then the fields marked as can duplicate within that headline can still be duplicated when the chapter is duplicated.
At the same time, iCL Designer allows you to specify for each individual field whether its data can be copied when the user clones/duplicates a section. That allows you to fine-granularly define what a user can copy, and what (s)he has to explicitly fill in again.
You can even make a whole inspection duplicatable. This way, you can design a simple workbook, that allows for efficient re-inspections: Every time a building is inspected - given that building has been inspected before - the user can simply clone the previous inspection. By defining which fields can be cloned and which can't in iCL Designer, you can ensure that fields, which are relevant for the re-inspection must be filled in again, while all others, like data and pictures of existing defects, can simply be copied.
Let's try it out.
Setting 'Can duplicate' in iCL Designer
Headlines and chapters
Repeatable and duplicable headlines and chapters come in handy for different rooms or floors within a building.
We already learned how to set a headline repeatable and duplicatable in the previous tutorial. Setting chapters repeatable/duplicable works in exactly the same way.
Select the chapter node, click 'Is Repeatable'. After that, the 'Can duplicate' option will appear, click that as well.
Checklists
Duplicating the whole checklist can be a good option if you check several similar houses within the same inspection. For example, imagine a terraced house which consists of 4 houses. You can inspect the whole building in one inspection while checking all 4 houses separately.
A checklist is repeatable by default. It is set using the minimum and maximum occurrences.
If you do not want a checklist to be repeatable, set both the minimum and maximum count to 1.
To make a checklist duplicatable, select the checklist node and click 'Can duplicate'.
Inspections
You can also duplicate complete inspections.
This can be extremely useful when you do recurring inspections. For example, if you check each building once every year. In that case, you can clone an inspection to copy all general data like the building's address, but you do not want to copy the actual check since the goal of the re-inspection is to fill the question 'Is the floor safe?' again. Therefore, we have to make this 'Yes/No' field not duplicable.
If you duplicate an existing inspection with some older version (2), and a newer version of that workbook (e.g. 4) is available, then iCL Filler will use the new version 4 for the new inspection.
Thereby, only the rules of the new version apply: If a field was not duplicable in version 2, but is now duplicable in version 4, then the field value will be copied.
Adding a few more fields
As already mentioned, when an area is duplicated in iCL Filler, all the questions along with the given answers are copied. However, you can specify by each field whether the value of that specific field can be duplicated or not.
By default, almost every field has the 'Can duplicate' option checked. If you add a new text field, number field, checkbox field, etc., the 'Can duplicate' option is true by default. However, this is not the case by some fields, eg. image fields are not duplicable by default. This however doesn't mean that they cannot be specified otherwise. Select 'Can duplicate' in iCL Designer by any image field to make its value duplicable just like any other field's value.
In order to add two additional fields, let's add a new chapter first called 'Conclusion'. It is not a repeatable (therefore also not duplicable chapter). Add a headline with the same title, also not repeatable. In there, we can add the two additional fields.
First, create a date field (type 'Datepicker'). Since it is meant to save the date of the inspection, it is also not duplicatable.
The last field we add is a signature field. Set its responsibility to 'Checklist'. It means the signature will be cleared when anything changes in the current checklist.
Signature fields cannot be duplicated.
We are ready. Save the workbook, upload the new version to iCL Portal and let's see how it looks like in iCL Filler.
You can download the icl file from here.
Duplicating in iCL Filler
Duplicating headlines and chapters
We already learned how to duplicate a headline in the previous guide. Duplicating a chapter works very similarly.
- Windows
- Android
- iOS
Duplicating checklists
Let's navigate to the last chapter called 'Conclusion' and fill the 2 new fields we added.
Then navigate back to the Checklists overview and click the 3 dots next to the checklist. A context menu will open where you can select 'Duplicate'.
Notice that all questions of the first checklist were answered before duplicating, therefore the progression indicator shows a green checkmark. However, the duplicate is only on 57%. Do you know why that is?
The first checklist was already fully completed but the second checklist is only on 57%. There are a few reasons for that: first, signature fields are never cloned. The other reasons are those fields/areas which we specified to not be duplicable: all 'Is the floor safe?' questions and the date field in the 'Conclusion' chapter were not copied.
If you fill now the missing fields in the second checklist, you can complete this inspection.
Duplicating inspections
In iCL Filler, you can also duplicate ongoing or completed inspections. For instance, when you want to inspect the same building again after a while.
To do so, click the 3 dots next to the name of the inspection and select 'Duplicate'.
The progress indicator shows that the date and signature fields were cleared in this case as well.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we learned how to create repeatable and duplicatable areas such as headlines, chapters, checklists, and inspections in iCL Designer. We also explored how to duplicate them in iCL Filler.