The new Event Form Editor, now in beta, gives administrators a simple, visual way to build and update the forms their teams use in the field, with no specialized knowledge required.
What's new?
The Event Form Editor replaces complex configuration steps and introduces a clean and intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Administrators can now:
- Quickly create and organize Event Categories and Types
- Easily add fields like choice lists, text boxes, locations, and dates
- Customize layouts with headers and sections to better match how their team captures and organizes information
- Create deeply-structured data models with nested collections
- Set default values, required fields, and visibility settings in just a few clicks
Interested in capturing something new for your site, like snowpack monitoring, to better understand climate change impacts? You can now create a “Snowpack Monitoring” Category and add a “Snow Observation” Event type with exactly the fields you need. With nested collections, you can also group related data, such as measurements from multiple points, photos, and weather notes, all under that single Event type, making your reporting more complete and your analysis more powerful.
No more dealing with raw JSON and pinging the EarthRanger team for help. Now it’s as easy as dragging and dropping.
Why it matters
We know our partners in the field need tools that keep up with their fast-moving world. Be it a newly sighted species, a sudden threat, or a local priority, partners on the ground can now configure EarthRanger on their terms. This update makes it easier for teams to manage their own workflows while still having the backing of the EarthRanger team when needed. It’s about giving those on the frontlines more flexibility and confidence to adapt what they collect to fit their strategies, information needs, and daily operations.
One partner shared:
“This is a really exciting update. The Event Form Editor gives us the flexibility to quickly create, test, and edit Events without needing technical skills,” said Dr. Lydia Tiller, Head of Human-Elephant Coexistence, Amboseli Trust for Elephants. “It helps teams capture the information they need right away while encouraging them to think carefully about the questions they want to answer and the best way to ask them, ensuring the data collected is both relevant and useful for decision-making.”
By putting more control in the hands of those closest to the work, the Event Form Editor frees up the EarthRanger team to focus on more complex and evolving challenges. It also helps partners build a stronger connection between what they see in the field and how that information gets used, whether that’s spotting trends, improving reports, or informing real-time decisions that protect wildlife and support communities.
What's next
The Event Form Editor is now in beta and available to all EarthRanger administrators through the Administration screen. This initial release supports the creation of new Event types only. Existing Event types can’t yet be edited using the Event Form Editor. We’ll continue to gather feedback over the coming months as we move toward a general release later this year.
Many of the next improvements are already developed, shaped directly by partner requests. These include conditional logic, role- and device-specific views, visual updates, and multi-language support, all aimed at making EarthRanger even easier to use and configure in the field.
As always, test your new configurations before relying on them operationally.
Ready to try it?
Visit our Help Center guide on the Event Form Editor for step-by-step instructions and tips to get started.