TriLog — Forms

console.log for the mind low friction input dense visualization Personal Data Logging with Analytics

06Forms

A tracker takes one value per entry. Most things you want to log really are one value, which is why trackers are quick.

But some events have several parts that belong together. A pain episode has a location, an intensity, a quality, and whatever you did about it. A bowel event — if you’re tracking gut health, you already know — has a type on the Bristol scale, an amount, straining, urgency, how complete it felt.

Log those as five separate trackers and you’ve got five keys to remember, five entries to make, and nothing that says they were one event. A form is the fix: a set of fields on one screen, saved as a single entry.

Forms show up as dashed chips at the front of the Trackers tab in the Add dialog (and in Quick Track). Tap the chip to open the form:

TriLog Trackers tab — Pain form chip among tracker buttons — FIG.01 **/ FORMS — ON THE TRACKERS TAB**

Under the hood, a form is a bundle of trackers. Each field is its own tracker, and the entry is saved as one note — one t line per field:

WHAT YOU FILL IN

EventBowel movement

Bristol4 · Smooth soft sausage

AmountMedium

StrainingNone

EmptyingComplete

UrgencySome warning

Notesafter coffee

THE NOTE IT SAVES

8:10 AMt bowel_movement_event 1

t bowel_movement_bristol 4

t bowel_movement_amount 3

t bowel_movement_straining 1

t bowel_movement_emptying 1

t bowel_movement_urgency 2

after coffee

FIG.02 / FORMS — ONE ENTRY, ONE NOTE

Nobody types that. You tap through a form. But because that’s what gets saved, a lot comes for free:

▤

Every field is already a tracker Filter the Notes view to Bristol type and chart it over two weeks, with nothing extra to set up. Each field can be filtered, charted, and analyzed on its own.

≡

The entry is still a note Searchable, exportable, editable, and readable as plain text, just like everything else in your log.

✎

The interface adapts to the form Each field gets the control its type needs — option buttons for a select, a slider for a rating, a number pad, a text box — with required fields checked before saving.

Build forms in App Menu→Extras→Forms. A form has a name, a color, an icon, and a list of fields. Each field is Select, Rating, Number, or Text, and can be marked required. Turn on Free-text Notes to add a notes box to every entry.

The builder is deliberately flat: fields in order, top to bottom. No branching, no conditional logic. A form should take seconds to fill in and a couple of minutes to build.

TriLog form builder — editing the Bowel Event form: name, color, icon, and its fields — FIG.03 **/ FORMS — THE BUILDER**

You don’t have to start from scratch. The library comes with templates you can use as-is or adjust before saving — and they’re not all about health:

Templates in App Menu→Extras→Forms.

BMhealth

Bowel Event Event, Bristol type (with a description of each type right in the options), amount, straining, emptying, urgency, notes.

Phealth

Pain Location, intensity, quality, descriptor, intervention, notes.

Rreview

Restaurant Review Place, overall / food / service / value ratings, dish, go back?

Dsocial

Date Person, overall / connection / fun ratings, setting, see again?

FIG.04 / FORMS — TEMPLATES

To log, tap a form’s dashed chip — or open it from the forms library. Here’s a Bowel Movement entry partly filled in:

TriLog form entry — Bowel Event with fields partly filled in — FIG.05 **/ FORMS — LOGGING AN ENTRY**

In your notes, a form entry reads as a summary card instead of six lines of shorthand. On the Notes chart, the Trio view, and the Day view, the whole entry is a single marker with the form’s icon.

TriLog form summary card — the form name, label: value rows for each field, and the free-text note — FIG.06 **/ FORMS — THE SUMMARY CARD**

Forms follow the same lens rule as trackers. Remove a field and it drops out of charts and filters, but your old entries don’t change. Add the same field back, and its history returns.

→ BACK TO THE GUIDE — NEXT: NOTES VIEW

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TriLog for iOS — on the App Store

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