A form is built once and reused. You add questions, publish it, and from then on every copy that goes out is the version you published — so you can keep editing without disturbing forms customers are already filling in.
You'll need Manage templates & assignments on your staff account to build or publish anything.
Creating a form
Go to Settings → Forms and click New. Give it a name — Medical history, Treatment consent, Patch test record — and you'll land in the builder.
💡 The name is customer-facing. They see it at the top of the form and in the email that sends it, so name it the way you'd say it to them.
The builder has two tabs, Questions and Details, and a Preview that shows the form exactly as your customer will get it. Changes save as you go; the bar at the top tells you when there's something unsaved.
Sections
Questions live in sections, and a section is just a heading with a group of questions under it — About you, Medical history, Consent. Your customer sees them in order.
Click Add section and you get two choices:
a blank section, which you fill with your own questions;
a customer details section, which builds itself — tick the details you want (first name, last name, email, phone, date of birth, address) and Styler adds a question for each.
💡 Customer detail questions are worth using. They arrive already filled in from the customer's record, so there's nothing to retype, and anything your customer corrects is written back to their record when they submit. It's the tidiest way to keep contact details current.
You can give a section its own instructions — a line or two shown under the heading, useful for "Please answer honestly, this is confidential" or an explanation of why you're asking.
Questions
Add a question and you're asked to choose a question type first. These are your options:
Short text — a single-line answer.
Long text — a paragraph answer.
Yes / No — with an optional details box that appears when they answer yes. This is the backbone of most medical histories: "Are you taking any medication?" → yes → "Please give details".
Single choice — pick one option, all shown at once.
Dropdown — pick one option from a list. Better than Single choice when there are a lot of options.
Checklist — pick any that apply.
Checkbox — a single tick, for a consent statement.
Date — a calendar date.
Number — a numeric answer, with an optional minimum and maximum.
Scale — a rating, from and to, up to a range of 10.
Signature — drawn with a finger or typed. See below.
Image upload — images only, and you choose how many they can add (up to 10). Good for a patch test photo or a reference picture.
Customer detail — one of the fields from their record, pre-filled and written back.
Heading and Text block — not questions at all: a sub-heading, or read-only text such as a consent statement or aftercare notes.
Each question has a Required switch. Required questions have to be answered before your customer can submit — so use it for the things you genuinely need, and leave the rest optional.
Questions can be reordered with the arrows, duplicated, or moved into a different section. You can also change a question's type after the fact: the wording and the Required setting carry over, and options carry over between the choice types.
👀 There are limits, though you're unlikely to meet them: 30 sections, 100 questions in a section and 200 in a form, with between 2 and 50 options on a choice question.
Signatures
Add a Signature question and pick Who signs:
Customer — the usual one.
Parent or guardian — for under-18s, or anyone signing on someone's behalf.
Practitioner (staff) — you or whoever carried out the treatment.
Whoever is signing can either draw with a finger or type their name, and their name, the time and the device are recorded with it.
👀 A required practitioner signature changes how the form finishes. If your customer fills the form in on their own, it won't be complete when they submit it — it sits waiting until someone on your team countersigns it in the Hub. That's exactly what you want for a treatment record, but it does mean somebody has to go and sign it. If you'd rather the form simply completes when they submit, leave the practitioner signature off, or mark it optional.
💡 A form doesn't need a signature at all. A pre-visit questionnaire can be questions only.
The Details tab
Form name — as above, your customer sees it.
Introduction — optional, shown before the first section. A sentence about why you're asking and how long it'll take works well here.
Description — optional, and for your team only. Customers never see it. Use it to tell your staff which treatments the form is for.
Keep for at least (months) — optional. Leave it empty and the form follows your account-wide setting under Settings → Forms → Preferences. Set it when one form has to be kept longer than the rest.
There's also a Customers can complete it online switch. Leave it on and the form goes out with the booking for your customer to do at home. Switch it off and the form can only be filled in with you, in person — the right choice for anything that has to be talked through face to face.
Publishing, and versions
Nothing goes out until you click Publish. Until then you have a draft, and the form is listed as Not published.
When you publish, Styler confirms what's about to happen: new sends use this version from now on, and forms customers have already completed keep the version they were completed against. That second half is the important bit — a completed form always shows the questions that were actually asked at the time, so last year's consent record doesn't quietly change because you reworded a question.
Editing a published form starts a new draft, and the live version carries on going out until you publish the draft. A form has one draft at a time; if you change your mind, Discard draft changes throws it away and leaves the published version alone. Every version is listed on the form's own page, and you can preview any of them.
Duplicating, deactivating and deleting
From the actions menu on a form:
Duplicate — makes a new draft form with the same questions and settings. The quickest way to build a variant for a different treatment.
Deactivate — stops the form being issued or assigned, without touching anything already completed. Reactivate puts it back.
Delete — only available on a form that has never been published or sent to anyone. Once a form has gone to a customer it can't be deleted, because the completed copies have to keep the questions they were answered against. Deactivate it instead.
FAQs
❓ Can I edit a form that's already out with customers?
Yes. Your edits sit in a draft until you publish them, and forms already completed keep their own version. Anyone part-way through a form will have been given the version that was live when it was sent.
❓ Can I ask for a photo?
Yes — an Image upload question. Images only, up to 10 per question, and your customer can take one there and then on their phone.
❓ How do I ask for details only when someone answers yes?
Use a Yes / No question and switch on Ask for details when the answer is yes. The box appears only when it's needed, which keeps a long medical history short for most people.
❓ I've built it but nothing is going out.
Two things to check: the form is published, not a draft, and it's assigned to a service. See getting a consultation form to your customer.