Table of Contents
Overview of Form Customization
Designing your own forms is the heart of Scoutradioz! In 2024, several teams used existing forms as-is but over 100 teams customized their own match-scouting data collection forms.
It is akin to a lightweight development process; you create a JSON description of the form (based on the allowed options in the form design guide).
Form designs for the current year & past years have been shared by Team 102 and other teams and can be found in the forms archive.
Recommended Approach
1) Set your org to an event in the year for which you want to edit the form - e.g., a 2025 event for the 2025 form, or a 2024 event for the 2024 form, etc.
2) Take a look at the form design guide
There are three main kinds of elements…
- A. Simple HTML labels (two sizes of headers) & separators;
- B. Basic data collection controls - checkboxes, counters, multiselects, etc.; and,
- C. “Derived” data elements (e.g. “Total Notes Scored” [summing all auto/teleop speaker & amp notes] or something like “Speed Factor” [fancy logarithms and such])
- Note, only Match scouting forms have Derived elements; Pit scouting forms just have basic data collection and labels/separators.
A & B (labels, separators, and controls) are essentially page design, while C enables teams to combine measures into analytics.
You can start with just trying out forms with only labels, separators, and controls; and then circle back to adding in derived metrics.
3) Drop some of the sample JSON linked from forms archive, i.e. https://www.scoutradioz.com/manage/config/editform?form_type=matchscouting (the button is found on the https://www.scoutradioz.com/manage page labelled “Set up Match Scouting form”)
You can click “Test form (Opens in a dialog window)” to see what it might look like [or find out if there are errors!], without it actually updating the DB.
4) Think about what data you want your scouts to collect and try to keep it as lean as possible. Regardless of what scouting system you're using, the more data points you ask from your scouts the more overload they're going to experience!
5) When you have a good draft version going, save it to your org and then folks can log in to the 433 instance and use the “Preview the forms” button at the bottom of the Home page to see how the forms look on specific devices. Sometimes very small screens, e.g. old iPhones, have trouble if a control has too much text or whatnot.
6) Circling back to “derived metrics”: One of our alumni has some work in progress where specifying how to build the calculation for a derived metric looks a lot more like standard code than the current system. But until that comes out, I would look at the sample JSONs and see how other sets of “derived metrics” were done.
Often they're as simple as summing up a few other metrics; some are complex and multilayered, particularly when calculating “ContributedPoints”; and others are computationally funky, e.g. 102's “SpeedFactor” calculations.
Community Shared Forms
Each year when the new game is revealed, Team 102 will get a form design out as early as possible and share that with the community, to help other teams with a starting point for their own ideas or edits. A few other teams will also likely be sharing their own form designs as well.
These will be announced on the Scoutradioz Discord and shared in the forms archive.