📚 Part of the series Application Building Phase 1: Core components

You can create a special form that appears on documents that lets you enter custom data about a material.

This data is also known as material metadata.

To set this up, you’ll:

1. Create material-scoped fields

2. Create a material-scoped form with those (and other) fields

3. Associate the form with one or more materials

This process is useful when processing and performing data entry on incoming documents.

Step 1: Creating material-scoped fields

Before you create a material-scoped form, you must create material-scoped fields to store the data to be collected on that form.

The form can also collect data from fields with other scopes.

To create material-scoped fields:

1. Go to Database → Fields.

2. Select New Field.

3. Configure the following settings:

   • Scope Category: Related

   • Scope: Material

   • ID: Enter a unique, computer friendly (all lowercase, no spaces, underscores only) ID

   • Name: Enter a human-friendly name

   • Folder: Select an existing folder, or select Other to create a new one.

   • Category: Select a category, or select Other to create a new one.

4. Select Save.

Repeat for as many field types as you want to collect on the form.

📖 Further reading: Field settings

Step 2: Creating a material-scoped form

Now that we have fields that can capture material-scoped data, we can put those fields to use on a material-scoped form.

Import a material-scoped form with Suitcase

Use Suitcase to import our ready-made example material-scoped form:

e40235d5-0fcb-4dc5-90b4-b66d05473c30:slate-examples

Create a form from scratch

To create your own material-scoped form:

1. Go to Forms.

2. Create a new form as you would any other form.

3. Edit the Form and click Edit Properties. An Edit Properties popup appears.

4. Change Scope to Material. The remaining properties automatically update to reflect a material-scoped form.

5. Modify the additional settings as desired.

   

Person-scoped and application-scoped fields can be mapped on a material metadata form. You can only affect application-scoped fields if the material is associated with an application.

Step 3: Associating the form with a material

Now that you have a material-scoped form, we must associate the material with the form:

1. Go to Database → Materials.

2. Select a material.

3. From the Material Metadata list, select the form you created or imported with Suitcase.

   

4. Select Save.

📖 Further reading: See Materials settings for descriptions of all settings.

Collecting material metadata

With the above steps completed, you can access the form you’ve associated with a material or materials when you access that material in Batch Acquire, or directly on the person record.

Material metadata can be collected on the person record, through the Batch Acquire tool, or from the Reader.

Using Batch Acquire

With Batch Acquire, Slate displays a material metadata form when the corresponding material is selected.

📖 Further reading: Batch Acquire

On the person record

When viewing the material from the Materials tab of a record, the material metadata can be found on the Metadata tab.

Selecting Edit from this view opens the material metadata form in the batch acquire interface for editing as desired.

From the Reader

You can set a workflow bin’s settings to access material-scoped forms so that you can view material metadata in the Reader.

📖 Further reading: Workflow Bin Settings → Processing

➡️ Up next: Importing applications and test scores

We’ve completed nearly every basic data structure with which we will process applications.

Now we dip our toe briefly into the waters of data import to configure Slate to process the external applications and test scores of your choice.

📚 Next article in this series: Importing applications and test scores