Knowella
TemplatesGuide

What the platform can and cannot do

Every design decision in this library was made against these confirmed mechanics. They are worth knowing before changing anything.

Field types available

  • Text, Numeric, Single Choice, Multi Choice, Checkbox
  • Date and Time, File Upload, Signature, Slider
  • Pick List, Location, Users
  • Postural Analysis, Info

Layout

1
Four columns maximumA row holds at most four fields. Most rows here use three, because three reads well on a tablet held in one hand.

Linking

2
Field to field, at template levelA link is declared between a field on this template and a field on another. It is not a record picker chosen at fill time.
3
Text, Single Choice and Numeric can linkOther types cannot.
4
Relationships materialise at submissionThe link is defined on the template. The actual relationship between two records comes into existence when both are submitted.
5
Many to many, across workspacesOne incident can carry several CAPAs, and a CAPA can serve several incidents. Links cross workspace boundaries freely.

Reading the colours

Design mode carries a legend and a coloured left edge on every field, so the relationship a field creates is visible without reading the help text.

ColourMeaningWhat it does
TealThe record's own IDAuto sequenced on save. Other templates point at this value.
PinkCase thread and parentCase ID, Parent Type and Parent ID. Ties records into one chain.
BluePick list from a registryPulls values from another template's submissions. Display only, no relationship.
GreenLinked to another templateA real field to field link. This is what materialises a relationship on submission.
Purple dashedFollow up fieldHidden until its parent is answered a particular way.
Amber chipScoredThe field carries points that contribute to the submission score.

A field can be two things at once. A linked follow up shows a green edge with a dashed outline, so both the relationship and the visibility rule read at a glance.

Pick List versus link

A Pick List pulls values from another template's field submissions so somebody can choose from a real list rather than typing. It is display only and creates no relationship. That is why almost every registry lookup in this library appears twice: a Pick List for the name, and a linked Text field for the ID.

Pick Lists come in single and multi select. Multi select is used wherever a field holds a set of registry entries rather than one: areas covered by an inspection, sites in scope of a review, substances a procedure covers, standards an audit spans. Twenty nine fields that previously held a hard coded copy of a registry now read the registry itself, so adding an area or a substance updates them all rather than leaving them quietly out of date.

If a list of areas, sites, substances or documents is written as fixed options rather than a Pick List, it is wrong. The structural QA now fails on it.

Conditional logic

6
Follow up fields attach to a parentA field appears when its parent field is answered a particular way.
7
Three levels of nestingDeeper than three and the form becomes unreadable on a phone.
8
Hidden fields are not scoredA follow up that never appears is excluded from the denominator, not counted as zero.

This matters most on inspection and audit templates. A pass on every row shows a short form, and only the rows that failed open up to ask for detail, a photo and whether it was fixed on the spot. The person filling it in sees one line per item until something is wrong.

Repeating sections

9
Scoring works per rowEach row of a repeating section is scored on its own.
10
Conditional logic works inside rowsA follow up inside a repeating section resolves against its own row, so a failed check on row three reveals the follow ups on row three only. 382 follow up fields across 119 templates rely on this.

Import

Templates people read rather than fill in

Most templates in this library are completed by somebody doing a job. A few are the opposite: an administrator enters each entry once, and everybody else opens them to read. The Safety Data Sheet library is the clearest case. Those carry the Reference archetype, a badge on the template header, and a Reader view in place of Preview.

They are still ordinary templates with ordinary submissions. Each substance is one submission of the Safety Data Sheet template, and the set of submissions is the library. What differs is who creates them and why: there is no scoring, no action to raise and nothing to close out, because reading a sheet is not an event.

If a template has no scoring, no CAPA gate and no signature from the person doing the work, ask whether it should be Reference rather than a form nobody will ever submit.

The sixteen section sheet

SAF-176 follows the section order fixed by GHS and adopted by WHMIS 2015 and OSHA 1910.1200 Appendix D. The order and headings are not ours to change. Sections 12 to 15 appear even where the content is not required in a given jurisdiction, because inspectors check for exactly this structure.

A seventeenth section is ours. It records where the substance is used on our site, which risk assessment covers it, whether a workplace label exists, and whether the sheet can actually be found at the point of use. That is the part a filed PDF cannot give you.

People, sites and roles

A person can hold a different role at each site they work at, so the Worker Register carries a repeating Site assignments section rather than one primary site. Each row holds the site, the job title at that site, the department, shift, supervisor, emergency role and whether the assignment is safety sensitive there. One row is marked primary, which is what appears wherever a single site is shown.

This matters more than it sounds. Somebody can be a fire warden at one site and not at another, safety sensitive on one assignment and not on the next, and report to a different supervisor at each. Holding a single role per person forces all of that into a note nobody reads.

Templates did not need changing for this. Every record already captures Site and Worker separately, so the pair resolves at submission level. Only the register needed to stop assuming one answer.

Import

11
Foundation installs onceIt is a workspace level install, not a dependency of an individual template.
12
Dependency depth capped at oneA template can pull in its direct dependencies and no further, which is why registries are shallow by design.
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