Project and form structure

General
1

Project Name (if applicable, otherwise just type n/a)

n/a

Question

I work with an organisation that runs wildlife surveys. We want an Epicollect project with a form for the survey event itself, then multiple types of child form (with different fields) for different types of species sighting in that survey. Each child form would be completed N times, once for each sighting.

It seems that Epicollect simply can’t do this. Right?

I confirm I have read the User Guide at docs.epicollect.net

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I confirm I have searched for an answer in this community.

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I confirm I have tried asking the same question to Perplexity AI with the tag #epicollect5, but it did not help.

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A parent form cannot have multiple different child forms. Epicollect5’s hierarchy is essentially:

Survey
  └── Sighting
       └── ...

However, there is an important Epicollect5 feature that actually fits your use case quite well: branches.

You could model it as:

SURVEY
  ├── Bird sightings       [branch, repeatable]
  ├── Mammal sightings     [branch, repeatable]
  ├── Amphibian sightings  [branch, repeatable]
  └── Insect sightings     [branch, repeatable]

Each branch can have its own completely different set of questions, and each branch can be added multiple times to the same Survey entry. Epicollect5 specifically describes branches as dynamic/repeatable sub-forms, including the example of repeatedly recording different entities against one parent entry. (Epicollect)

So, for your wildlife example:

Survey
────────────────────────────
Date:       26 Sep 2026
Location:   ...
Observer:   ...
Weather:    ...

Bird sightings: 3
  ├─ Species: Robin
  │  Count: 2
  │  Sex: Male
  │  ...
  ├─ Species: Blackbird
  │  Count: 1
  │  ...
  └─ Species: Robin
      Count: 4
      ...

Mammal sightings: 2
  ├─ Species: Fox
  │  Count: 1
  │  ...
  └─ Species: Deer
      Count: 3
      ...

Amphibian sightings: 5
  └─ ...

That’s a legitimate Epicollect5 model.

In fact, Epicollect’s own documentation gives almost exactly this kind of pattern: a parent form with a repeatable branch used to collect multiple instances of something. (Epicollect)

The main trade-off is that branches are not full child forms. For example, branch entries aren’t downloaded to the mobile device as independent hierarchy entries, whereas hierarchy entries are. (More Info)