Paper forms.
Digitised.
Field service teams run on compliance forms — inspection checklists, job sign-offs, safety reports. For most trade businesses these were still paper-based, manually filed and impossible to track in real time.
Simpro eForms was built to change that. I was responsible for designing both sides of the product — the desktop admin portal where office managers design and manage forms, and the tablet app where field technicians complete and submit them on the job.
One workflow.
Two applications.
Most form digitisation tools treat the problem from one angle. Simpro eForms needed to solve it from both ends simultaneously — with a powerful form builder for admins and a streamlined completion experience for field techs who are often working under time pressure, outdoors, with gloves on.
eForms Designer Portal
The desktop web application used by office administrators and compliance managers. Build custom forms using a drag-and-drop designer, manage form libraries, set required fields and integrate with Simpro Premium to auto-populate job and quote data.
eForms Field App
The tablet application used by field technicians on the job. Complete and submit assigned forms in real time, capture unlimited photos, collect signatures and drawings, and sync back to the portal even when connectivity is limited.
Understanding both
sides of the workflow.
Designing two applications for two completely different user types meant the discovery phase had to cover twice the ground. Workshops with office managers surfaced the complexity of form creation and version control. Sessions with field technicians revealed how hostile the outdoors can be to touch interfaces — long forms, bright sunlight, time pressure and dirty hands.
Card sorting exercises with both admin and field tech participants established how each group mentally models forms, fields and submission workflows — revealing they had almost no overlap in terminology.
A MoSCoW workshop aligned product and engineering on launch scope — separating the core drag-and-drop form builder and field submission flow from v1.1 features like conditional logic and multi-page forms.
Build any form.
No code required.
The eForms Designer was the most technically complex piece of the project. Admins needed to build and customise compliance forms using a drag-and-drop canvas — adding field types, setting validation rules, attaching PDF references and configuring Simpro Premium data integrations.
The challenge was making a genuinely powerful tool feel approachable to non-technical users — office managers and compliance coordinators, not developers.
The drag-and-drop form designer — field types in the left panel, canvas in the centre, properties and validation rules on the right. PDF attachments could be embedded directly into forms as reference material for field techs completing them on site.
Built on the
Forge foundation.
eForms shared the Forge design system already established across the broader Simpro mobile suite — with an extended component set for form-specific UI patterns: field types, validation states, signature capture, photo grid layouts and the form designer canvas.
Extending an existing system rather than building from scratch meant the two products felt cohesive to users who moved between eForms and the main Simpro Mobile app daily.
Both sides of the product.
The completed design across both applications — the desktop admin portal and the tablet field app — covering the full form lifecycle from creation through to submission.
eForms Designer Portal — Desktop
eForms Field App — Tablet
