Getting Started with the New Committee Forms Experience
Please note that the create/edit experience for the new Committee Forms is currently available in Staging. We will continue to keep stakeholders updated on development progress, including assigning forms to templates, completing forms, and reporting.
What are Committee Forms? Committee Forms are used in Interfolio Review, Promotion & Tenure (RPT) to collect structured evaluations, ratings, votes, and narrative feedback from review committees during an active case. They are created centrally by administrators and can be reused across multiple templates and cases. This article introduces the new Committee Forms experience in RPT, including what has changed, important things to know before getting started, and how to create a new committee form.
If you’re interested in turning on the New Committee Forms Create/Edit Experience in your Staging environment, please contact your Interfolio Client Success Manager or Account Manager.
What's new in the committee forms experience?
The new experience introduces several capabilities not available in legacy committee forms, including:
- New question types such as rating scales, expression/calculated fields, dynamic panels (repeating sections), and signature fields
- Conditional logic to show or hide questions based on a respondent's answers
- A multi-page form layout
- Auto-save
Before you start: Important things to know
Before creating or using Committee Forms, it’s important to understand a few key principles that affect how forms behave in RPT.
- Committee Forms are completed only by committee members to whom the form has been assigned. They are not completed by candidates, administrators, or case managers on behalf of a committee member.
- Visibility of Committee Forms depends on where the form is used in the workflow. Forms become available to committee members only when the case reaches the review step where the form is required. Candidates never see Committee Forms or their responses.
- Once created, Committee Forms can be reused across multiple cases and review cycles. For this reason, form titles and descriptions should be written clearly and generically enough to apply beyond a single case.
- Edits to a Committee Form do not overwrite existing submissions. When a form already has recorded responses, RPT preserves historical data. Updates to form headers or questions apply only to active review steps that do not yet have responses and to future cases where the form is used.
Create New Committee Form
- Sign into your Interfolio account, navigate to the Administration section of RPT from the navigation sidebar, and select the Committee Forms tab. From this page you can view and manage the list of all existing committee forms (new and legacy) at the institution.
- Select the checkboxes to manage forms in bulk. From this page you can archive, delete, duplicate, and edit existing forms to which you have access to.
- Select the checkboxes to manage forms in bulk. From this page you can archive, delete, duplicate, and edit existing forms to which you have access to.
- Click Create Form > New Form to create a new committee form using the new committee form experience. Selecting Legacy Form will take you to the legacy committee form experience.
- This opens the ‘Create New Committee Form’ window, where you define the form’s basic details before adding questions. When creating a form, you are required to provide a title and select a unit. The title should clearly describe the purpose of the form and the committee that will complete it. You may also add an optional description. Click Add Form when finalized.
- The unit determines where the form can be used. Forms are available only to templates and cases within the selected unit and its sub‑units. Selecting the appropriate unit helps ensure the form is available to the right review workflows without being over‑exposed across the institution.
- While not required, descriptions are strongly recommended. A clear description helps other administrators understand when the form should be used and what type of feedback it is intended to collect, especially when multiple committee forms exist.
- The new committee form designer will now appear where you can begin adding questions. Use the toolbar on the left-hand side to search through and select from different question types to add to the form.
The Designer is split up into the two editor windows in the center of the page. The left-hand panel gives you a higher-level view of the form, while the right-hand panel gives you a more in depth view of the selected form section and the available settings (e.g. visibility, read-only, required, conditions, formatting, number of responses allowed, etc.).
Notice how the toolbar options on the right-hand side change depending on the form section that is selected.
- You can also add new questions by clicking the Add Question button below an existing question and then selecting the desired question type from the dropdown on the left-hand side of the new question.
It is recommended to change the question ID to something familiar to make it easier to find the question later when using conditional formatting.
- You can navigate between pages of the form using the pages button on the right-hand side.
- You can also add new questions by clicking the Add Question button below an existing question and then selecting the desired question type from the dropdown on the left-hand side of the new question.
- Select the Preview tab at the top of the page to preview how the form will appear to a committee. Use the arrows at the bottom to navigate between the pages of the form.
- Select the Logic tab to view your existing conditional logic questions or Add a New Rule to the form.
- New committee forms automatically save, and can be confirmed from the upper right-hand corner. Once saved, the committee form becomes available for use in templates and cases.
Next Steps
- For more details on form options, check out this article about New Committee Forms Use Cases.
- After a Committee Form has been created, it must be added to a review step before it can be used during an active case. Committee Forms are not visible to committee members until they are attached to a review step and the case reaches that step in the workflow.