The Huume system provides lots of flexibility when it comes to creating your Housing Register application form. This does mean that there are a number of different ways to configure your forms.
This article is designed to help you understand the different options available and to make sure you set your application form up in the most user-friendly and efficient manner possible.
The online application form is made up of a number of smaller sub-forms to make the application process simpler. The forms are:
Used to capture key information about the primary applicant.
Once submitted creates a Person record in the back office.
Used to capture basic information about each additional member of the household.
Once submitted creates a Person record in the back office for each household member. Also creates a relationship record for each person with the primary applicant.
Used to capture the households address history.
Creates address records against each person that is linked with an address.
Used to capture the applicant's housing register information.
Creates a Case in the back office linked to the primary applicant. The Case contains the Housing Register application and a Bedroom assessment.
When setting up your application form fields can be created against either a Person or the Housing Register application. Quite often one of the hardest decisions is to know where is best to add the questions. As a general rule:
Housing register – when a question relates to the household as a whole, or only needs to be answered by the primary applicant
Person – when you want to capture answers for multiple people in the household
People sub forms can be embedded within the My housing register form to allow Person specific questions to be asked.
For example, you may want to capture medical information for each person in the household. To do this you would create these as Person questions, and then add them to a Person sub form on the My housing register form.
My structuring the form to make use of this functionality it improves the useability of the form and provides the applicant with a better experience.
It’s important to make sure you ask questions in a consistent manner, not only from the type of language used but also the type of fields you use.
Information captured in dropdown and checkbox fields is easier to enter and produce reports on, than text entry fields. This makes the field type very important as you need to make sure you choose the right type for what data you want to capture.
By having a consistent look and feel to the form throughout it makes it easier for applicants to understand the information they need to provide.
The text displayed ahead of each sub form as well the text displayed on the final submission page is all configurable. If you need to make applicants aware of certain information or requirements then this is a good place to add that information.
Guidance can also be added to forms through the use of Text content. This can be formatted in a number of different ways and have conditional logic associated with it so it is only displayed in certain circumstances. This can very effective in highlighting information to applicants based on their circumstances.
It’s important to ensure all fields that appear on the public portal forms also appear on the back-office forms. If they don’t then officers won’t be able to see the data and accept changes.
As well as adding any questions that appear in People sub forms on the public portal, to the back-office Housing Register Admin form, it is also important that these questions are added to the back-office Person Admin form as well.