How do form templates work?

Templates are the most misunderstood part of Consent Kit. Please take your time to understand how this works.

A template is like a recipe that creates a fresh form each time you use it.

When you edit a form you’ve created, you’re only changing that specific dish - not the original recipe. If you want to change what gets created for future forms, you need to edit the template itself.

Key concept: Templates vs Forms

• Template: The master recipe that lives in your Templates section
• Form: A copy created from the template that lives in your study
• Editing a form: Only affects that one form
• Editing a template: Affects all future forms created from it (but not existing ones)

Consent form template lifecycle

Here’s what happens when you use a template to create and send a consent form:

1. Define your template - Create a reusable consent template with placeholders and logic
2. Generate a form - When creating a study, the template generates a context-specific consent form
3. Send for consent - When you ask for consent, we attach the appropriate signature mechanism (email, in person or paper), create a unique instance of the form for each participant, and automatically set up your audit trail

Template components

Templates are built from three main components:

Blocks

Blocks are the “building blocks” of your template. They work the same way in both templates and the form builder. Consent Kit has the following blocks:

• Content blocks - For text, instructions and information
• Agreement questions - For consent and NDA agreements (only available in consent forms and agreements)
• Questions - For collecting data (checkboxes, text fields, etc.)

Content blocks enables you add headers, text, Placeholders, Liquid objects and Liquid tags into your template.

Questions enable you to ask more granular questions of your participants. You can add and remove questions by clicking the add or remove buttons.

Note - We will explain how permission questions work in a later section

You can add or remove blocks from any page.

Required blocks

Some blocks must be present for forms to work properly:

• All forms: Must have at least one content section
• Consent forms: Must include “How long we keep your data” section
• Agreements & consent forms: Must have the final opt-in section

Placeholders

Placeholders mark spots where researchers need to add project-specific information. They appear as highlighted text that must be replaced when creating a form from the template.

To add a placeholder:

1. Select the text you want to make a placeholder
2. Click the Placeholder button in the toolbarct the text you want to turn into a Placeholder (1) and click on the Placeholder button (2).

Liquid

Liquid is a templating language that makes your forms dynamic. It pulls in information automatically and adapts content based on study type.

Two main Liquid features:

• Objects - Insert information automatically, for example:
  • {{researcher.name}} - Adds the researcher’s name
  • {{project.name}} - Adds the project name
  • {{organisation.name}} - Adds your organisation name
• Tags - Add logic to show different content:
  • Show different text for interviews vs usability tests
  • Include sections only when certain conditions are met
  • Adapt consent language based on study category

Don’t worry if this seems technical - start with placeholders and basic objects, then explore Liquid tags as you need more sophisticated templates.

Learn more: What is Liquid