# Forms (FRM)
Navatom Forms builds ship checklists and forms, sends them to the right ranks on a schedule, and routes each filled form for approval on board and ashore.

URL: https://navatom.com/products/forms
Category: [Documentation](https://navatom.com/products/category/documentation)
Runs on: Office, Ship

## Overview
Navatom Forms is the maritime digital forms platform — covering everything from drag-and-drop web form creation to Word, Excel, and PDF template distribution, with dual-lifecycle management, configurable multi-level approval workflows, and fleet-wide form submission tracking. It replaces paper checklists, emailed spreadsheets, and disconnected form tools with a single controlled system that works identically on ship and ashore.
Built around four form types (web, Word, Excel and PDF), 17 field types, and a visual drag-and-drop form builder, the module lets your HSEQ team design custom forms without code or external tools. A built-in document editor handles Word, Excel and PDF forms directly in the browser.
A six-stage definition lifecycle ensures only approved, controlled form templates reach the fleet, while four configurable approval flows — Full (Ship + Office), Ship-only, Office-only, and No Approval — adapt to every operational scenario.
Filled forms follow a seven-stage lifecycle from draft to office approval, with approvers set once per form, recurring scheduling, and calendar integration. Deep PMS and Risk Assessment integration lets you attach forms directly to maintenance tasks and risk evaluations, and any issue raised from a filled form points back to it.
With ship groups that bring each new vessel its forms, and office forms filled ashore, Navatom Forms scales from a single vessel checklist to a global fleet form management program.

## Key figures
- 4 Form Types
- 17 Field Types
- 4 Approval Flow Variants
- 7 Request Stages

## Features
- **Drag-and-Drop Web Form Builder**: Design custom forms visually with a drag-and-drop builder. Arrange fields in a flexible row-and-cell grid: drag fields between rows and reorder cells within rows to create exactly the form structure you need. Unsaved changes are kept in your browser session until you save. The builder offers 17 field types with a live preview. Set each field's label, text, placeholder, suffix, answer options or table columns, and mark it required, without touching code. The builder draws only the rows on screen, so it stays responsive even for forms with hundreds of fields.
  - Drag-and-drop rows and fields
  - Row-and-cell grid layout system
  - Live field preview
  - Required fields marked
  - Responsive with hundreds of fields
- **Four Configurable Approval Flows**: Every form follows one of four approval flows: ship and office, ship only, office only, or no approval. The flow comes from who approves: the approving ranks on board, and whether the office approves. Each form sets its own, so a monthly fire-drill checklist and a cargo report can each get the approval they need. On board, one of the approving ranks or all of them must approve. At the office, approval is not required, or comes from one of or all of a user group's members. Set once on the form, it applies to every ship the form goes to, giving you granular control over who reviews every form submission.
  - Ship and office dual review
  - Ship-only or office-only options
  - No approval for routine forms
  - One of or all approvers, on board and ashore
  - Set once per form, for every ship
- **Recurring Schedule & Calendar Integration**: Schedule a form once, or every 1 to 30 days, weeks, months or years. An optional window sets how long before the due date the form can be filled, ensuring crew complete forms within the required timeframe. Scheduled forms automatically appear on the ship's calendar. The responsible crew and the master get a notice when a form is due soon and again when it is overdue, and overdue forms show on the dashboard. Calendar integration ensures form deadlines appear alongside maintenance tasks, audits, and other vessel operations in the unified planning view.
  - Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly frequencies
  - Single one-time event support
  - Due-soon and overdue notices
  - Automatic calendar event creation
  - Unified planning view integration
- **Ship & Office Form Filling**: Crew members fill forms on the vessel, while office staff review, approve, and manage form submissions from shore. The system handles the complete handoff between ship and office — submissions flow from vessel to shore for review, and approvals or rejections flow back to the crew. Both ship and office users see the same form with the same fields, but their roles in the workflow differ. Ship crews create drafts and submit for approval. Office reviewers see pending submissions across the fleet and can approve, reject with a reason, or discard them, and can hand a form to another crew member on board when the person who started it has left. Forms work the same in the ship app and the office app.
  - Crew fill forms on vessel
  - Office reviews & approves from shore
  - Complete ship-to-office handoff
  - Hand a form to another crew member
  - Filled in on board or ashore
- **Ship & Rank-Based Assignment**: Assign forms to specific vessels and crew ranks with granular control. Send a form to ship groups or single ships, and choose which of 51 onboard ranks fill it in. A ship that joins a group later gets the group's forms automatically. Crew in the responsible ranks get a newsfeed item when a form is assigned, and only crew in the rank that started a form can save, send or delete it. Assignments support both one-time and recurring schedules.
  - 51 onboard ranks supported
  - Ship groups or single ships
  - New ships in a group get its forms
  - Newsfeed item on assignment
  - Rank-specific form distribution
- **Office Forms**: Not every form is filled on board. Give a form an office assignment and the user groups you choose fill it ashore: they start it, save it, send it, and hand it to a colleague when needed. A user group approves it, with one of or all of its members, as set on the form. Office forms run on a schedule like ship forms, with notices to the people filling them when one is due soon or overdue. Any published ship form can be copied as a new office form, and the other way round.
  - Filled ashore by the user groups you choose
  - Approved by a user group: one of or all
  - Scheduled, with due-soon and overdue notices
  - Hand a form to a colleague
  - Copy a ship form as an office form
- **Four Form Types**: Not every form belongs in a browser. Navatom supports four form types: web forms built in the visual form builder, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PDFs. Each type has its own creation, editing, and distribution workflow. Web forms use the drag-and-drop builder with 17 field types. Word, Excel and PDF forms open in the built-in document editor, or are downloaded, filled and uploaded where a vessel works without it. When a Word, Excel or PDF form is approved, a PDF copy is kept with it. Choose the right format for every use case, from daily checklists to complex inspection reports.
  - Web forms with drag-and-drop builder
  - Word and Excel templates
  - PDF forms
  - Filled in the browser or uploaded
  - PDF copy kept on approval
- **17 Field Types**: Build forms with 17 field types designed for maritime operations. Input fields include single-line text, number, multi-line text, date, time and star rating. Selection fields cover toggle, select, multi-select, checkbox group and radio group for structured choices. The question field captures Yes, No and N/A answers, and you choose which of the three it offers: the bread and butter of maritime checklists. Table fields handle structured data entry with rows and columns. Layout fields (paragraph, header and space) let you add instructions, section dividers, and visual structure to your forms. Rich text fields capture formatted text with inline styling.
  - Text, number, date and time fields
  - Yes/No/N/A question field for checklists
  - Select, multi-select, checkbox and radio groups
  - Table field for structured data entry
  - Rating and rich text
- **Issues Raised from a Filled Form**: When a filled checklist turns up a problem, the deficiency, non-conformity, near miss, accident or technical finding records the form it was raised from, down to the question that failed. On the ship or at the office, pick the form, the filled copy and the question. The filled form lists every issue raised from it, so an auditor can follow a "No" on a checklist to the corrective action that closed it.
  - Deficiencies, non-conformities, near misses, accidents and technical findings
  - Points to the filled form and the question
  - On the ship app and the office app
  - Every filled form lists its linked issues
- **PMS & Risk Assessment Integration**: Forms can be attached directly to maintenance jobs in the Planned Maintenance System and to risk assessments. When a maintenance job requires a structured form, such as an inspection checklist or test record, the crew fill it in as part of the job's work report. Risk assessment integration lets you attach forms to risk evaluations, capturing structured data as part of the assessment process. Each linked form belongs to the vessel of the job or assessment it is attached to, and the form shows where it is attached.
  - Attach to maintenance jobs
  - Attach to risk assessments
  - Filled in the job's work report
  - Vessel taken from the job or assessment
- **Six-Stage Definition Lifecycle**: Form definitions follow a controlled six-stage lifecycle: draft, in review, completed, published, revised and deprecated. Only published forms can be assigned to vessels and filled by crew. Each transition enforces validation and records who approved or rejected the change. The lifecycle prevents unfinished or unapproved forms from reaching the fleet. Development versions let your team iterate on form design without affecting live assignments. Revision creates a new development copy while keeping the current released version active until the revision is approved.
  - Draft, in review, completed
  - Published, revised, deprecated
  - Only Released forms reach the fleet
  - Transition validation & attribution
  - Parallel development versioning
- **Seven-Stage Request Lifecycle**: Filled forms follow a seven-stage lifecycle: draft, awaiting ship approval, ship rejected, awaiting company approval, company rejected, company approved, and discarded. The lifecycle adapts to the configured approval flow, skipping stages that do not apply. Crew members fill forms and submit them for approval. Ship officers review and approve or reject. Office staff provide final sign-off when required. A rejected form goes back with the reason, and can be returned to draft and sent again. The lifecycle ensures every form submission follows the exact approval chain configured for its assignment.
  - Draft, awaiting ship approval, ship rejected
  - Awaiting company approval, company rejected
  - Approved or discarded outcomes
  - Flow-adaptive stage skipping
  - Rejection feedback loop
- **Version History & Revision Management**: Every form definition maintains a complete version history with version numbers, development versions, and revision tracking. When you revise a released form, the system creates a new development copy with an incremented version number while the current version remains active. The changelog lists every published version and when it was replaced or deprecated, with a preview of each. A reason is recorded when a form is first published and with each new version, providing a complete audit trail of why the form evolved over time. Assignments carry over to the new version.
  - Version number per release
  - Changelog of every version
  - Preview of each earlier version
  - Reason recorded per release
  - Active version preserved during revision
- **Periodic Form Review**: Schedule a review for each published form: first due on a date, then every set number of months, with an optional notice before each due date. The people on the form's approval route get a notice when a review is due soon and again when it is overdue. Record what each review found: no change, revision needed, or withdraw, with a note. Each form keeps its review history, with every due date, who reviewed it and when, and what they found.
  - Reviews every set number of months
  - Notices before the due date and when overdue
  - Outcomes: no change, revision needed, withdraw
  - Review history ready for auditors
- **Approved Form Archive**: Approved forms are archived by ship, listed by ship or as one list, for any date range. When a Word, Excel or PDF form is approved, a PDF copy is kept with it, so the record reads the same years later. On board, a new web form can start from the values of the last approved copy, so a monthly checklist only needs what changed since last month.
  - Archive by ship, for any date range
  - A PDF copy kept of every approved document form
  - Start from the last approved copy
  - Discarded forms kept apart from approved ones
- **Built-in Document Editor**: Edit Word, Excel and PDF forms directly in the browser with the built-in document editor. It opens your files with full formatting support: tables, styles, formulas, headers, and footers render just as they do on the desktop. Each editing session is opened with a signed token that carries the user and the document, so only authorized users can change a form. A forced save keeps the work after any interruption, and the editor follows your light or dark theme. No desktop software or file downloads required: template creation and filling happen entirely in the browser.
  - Word, Excel and PDF in the browser
  - Signed editing sessions
  - Forced save after any interruption
  - Follows your light or dark theme
  - No desktop software required
- **Print & PDF Export**: Print any filled form as a PDF with its values, at the office or on board. Choose the color theme, orientation, page size, margins and watermark, and whether to include comments. Word and Excel forms print with your company's headers and footers, filled or blank. The output preserves form layout and field responses in a clean, professional format suitable for management reviews and external audits.
  - Print filled forms as PDF
  - Company headers on Word and Excel forms
  - Landscape & portrait orientation
  - Page size, margins and watermark
  - Comments included on request
- **Dashboard & Analytics**: Monitor your form program with six dashboard widgets: forms awaiting my approval, the same grouped by vessel, all forms awaiting approval, scheduled forms that are overdue, completed forms, and my drafts. The by-vessel widget lets approvers prioritize by ship, and the overdue widget shows which scheduled forms were not filled in on time. My drafts ensures in-progress forms are not forgotten. Drill down from any widget to the underlying form data.
  - Awaiting my approval, by vessel
  - Fleet-wide forms awaiting approval
  - Overdue scheduled forms
  - Completed forms and my drafts
  - Drill-down to underlying data
- **Form KPIs: On Time and Right First Time**: 26 KPIs follow scheduled forms from deadline to approval: the share sent and approved on time, forms overdue or never completed, and the median days to fill a form, to approve it on board, to approve it in the office and end to end. Usage KPIs show how many templates each vessel has been assigned and how many of the templates in force a vessel actually sent. Quality KPIs show forms sent back, forms right first time, the days a returned form takes to come back and form requests discarded. Template control KPIs show forms sent on a template version already replaced, days from template draft to release and reviews done on schedule, and two monitor-only KPIs look for web forms with copied answers or sent less than a minute after they were started.
  - Forms sent and approved by their deadline
  - Fill time and approval time, on board and in the office
  - Forms sent back, and forms right first time
  - Forms sent on a replaced template
  - Copied answers and implausibly fast forms tracked
- **Custom Label & Categorization System**: Organize forms with a flexible labeling system. Create hierarchical label structures with sub-labels for multi-level categorization: Safety, Compliance, Operational, Environmental, or any taxonomy that matches your organization. The published forms list is grouped by label, at the office and on the ship app, so the right template is quick to find. The hierarchical structure lets you drill from broad categories to specific form groups without a rigid folder system.
  - Labels for every form
  - Hierarchical sub-label structure
  - Published list grouped by label
  - On the office and ship apps
  - Flexible organizational taxonomy
- **Comments, Notes & File Attachments**: Add comments at every stage of the form lifecycle — during definition development, review, and request processing. Comments support add, edit, and delete operations with full user attribution and timestamps. Notes capture additional context that does not belong in form fields. File attachments support evidence uploads on every filled form. Attach reference documents, images, supporting materials, and verification evidence directly to the form record, with who uploaded each file and when.
  - Per-lifecycle-stage comments
  - Add, edit, delete with attribution
  - File attachment evidence uploads
  - Attachments on every filled form
  - Uploader and date on every file

## Technical abilities
- **Server-Side Form Grids with Advanced Filtering**: All form definition and request views handle large volumes of records with instant filtering by form type, status, vessel, rank, label, date range, and more, so the system stays responsive regardless of data volume.
- **Dual-Lifecycle State Machine**: Two independent state machines govern the six-stage definition lifecycle and seven-stage request lifecycle with four approval flow variants. Each transition enforces validation, records attribution, and triggers downstream workflows — ensuring controlled progression through both lifecycles.
- **Browser-Based Document Editing**: Word, Excel and PDF forms open in a document editor inside the browser, in sessions opened with a signed token that carries the user and the document. A forced save keeps the work after any interruption, and the editor follows your light or dark theme. Template creation, editing and filling happen entirely in the browser without desktop software.
- **Drag-and-Drop Form Builder with Virtualized Rendering**: The web form builder places fields by drag and drop on a grid of rows and cells, and draws only the rows on screen. Unsaved changes are kept in the browser session until you save. The builder handles forms with hundreds of fields without performance degradation.
- **Per-Form Configurable Approval Chains**: Each form configures its approval flow from four variants: the approving ranks on board, one of or all of them, and the office approval, not required or one of or all of a user group. The route applies to every ship the form goes to, including ships that join its groups later.
- **PMS & Risk Assessment Integration Layer**: Forms attach to maintenance jobs and risk assessments, are filled in the job's work report, and take their vessel from the job or assessment they belong to.
- **Office-Ship Synchronization**: The office and the vessel work on the same form records: crew fill in and send forms on the ship app, and the office reviews and approves them on the company app.
- **Complete Event History**: Every action on a form is recorded as it happens, with who did it and when. The same record feeds the audit trail, notifications and dashboards.

## Benefits
- **One Platform for Every Form Type**: Web forms, Word templates, Excel spreadsheets, and PDF documents — all managed in a single platform with unified distribution, approval, and tracking. No more switching between tools or losing submissions in email threads.
- **Build Custom Forms Without Code or External Tools**: The visual drag-and-drop builder with 17 field types and the built-in document editor let your HSEQ team create any form, from simple checklists to complex inspection reports, entirely in the browser without IT support.
- **Four Approval Flows for Every Operational Scenario**: Give each form its approval chain: ship and office, ship only, office only, or no approval. One of or all of the approvers, on board and ashore, adapts to every organizational structure and compliance requirement.
- **Forms Integrated Directly into Maintenance and Risk Assessment**: Attach forms to PMS maintenance tasks and risk assessments. Inspection checklists, test records, and safety evaluations link directly to the work orders they support — no duplicate entry, no lost context.
- **Controlled Form Management with Full Audit Trail**: The six-stage definition lifecycle, seven-stage request lifecycle, version history, periodic review and a complete event history provide the controlled documentation trail that ISM Code, SOLAS, and classification society audits demand.
- **Scales from Single Vessel to Global Fleet**: Fast lists, ship groups that give each new vessel its forms, rank-based distribution and one approval route per form mean the system performs the same whether you manage one vessel or five hundred. Grow your fleet without outgrowing your forms platform.

## Frequently asked questions
### What types of forms does the module support?
Navatom Forms supports four form types: web forms (built in the visual drag-and-drop builder with 17 field types), Word forms, Excel forms and PDF forms. Word, Excel and PDF forms are filled in the built-in document editor, or downloaded, filled and uploaded. Each type has its own creation, editing, and distribution workflow.

### How does the web form builder work?
The web form builder provides a visual drag-and-drop interface where you arrange fields in a flexible row-and-cell grid layout. Add fields to rows, reorder them by dragging, and set each field's label, placeholder, options or columns, and whether it is required. 17 field types are available, including text, number, date, a Yes/No/N/A question, table, rating and more. Unsaved changes are kept in your browser session until you save, and the builder stays responsive for large forms.

### Can I use my existing Word or Excel form templates?
Yes. Upload your existing Word or Excel templates and edit them directly in the browser using the built-in document editor. The editor supports full formatting (tables, styles, formulas, headers, and footers), so your templates look and work just as they do on the desktop. No desktop software or file conversions required, and a PDF copy of each approved form is kept with it.

### How does the approval workflow work?
Each form follows one of four approval flows: ship and office, ship only, office only, or no approval. On board, you choose the approving ranks and whether one of them or all must approve. At the office, approval is not required, or comes from one of or all of a user group's members. The route is set once on the form and applies to every ship it goes to. A rejection goes back with its reason.

### Can forms be linked to maintenance tasks?
Yes. Forms can be attached directly to maintenance jobs in the Planned Maintenance System and to risk assessments. When a maintenance job requires a structured form, such as an inspection checklist or test record, the crew fill it in as part of the job's work report, for that job's vessel.

### How does scheduling and recurring forms work?
A form can be scheduled once, or every 1 to 30 days, weeks, months or years, with an optional window before each due date. Scheduled forms appear on the ship's calendar, and the responsible crew and the master get a notice when one is due soon and again when it is overdue.

### Does the module work offline on vessels?
Forms are filled in, sent and approved on the ship app and the office app while connected. Reports raised from them, such as deficiencies, keep working offline.

### Can the office fill in forms too?
Yes. Give a form an office assignment and the user groups you choose fill it ashore, on its own schedule, with due-soon and overdue notices. A user group approves it, with one of or all of its members.

### Can a deficiency or non-conformity point to the checklist it came from?
Yes. A deficiency, non-conformity, near miss, accident or technical finding can record the filled form it was raised from, down to the question, on the ship app or the office app. The filled form lists every issue raised from it.

### What happens when a scheduled form is not filled in on time?
The responsible crew and the master get a notice when the form is due soon, and again when it is overdue. Overdue scheduled forms also show on the forms dashboard, fleet-wide or by vessel.

## Related modules
- [Manuals](https://navatom.com/products/manuals): Create, distribute, and manage controlled manuals and procedures across the fleet.
- [Circulars](https://navatom.com/products/circulars): Distribute company circulars and notices with read-receipt tracking and acknowledgements.
- [Certificates](https://navatom.com/products/certificates): Track vessel certificates, the surveys behind them, expiry dates and renewals.

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