Prefill fields from your entity schema

Annotations live on the entity, not the form. That means one edit to the entity propagates to every form (and every other LCAP surface) that consumes it. The Forms builder reads those annotations at import time, and the admin preview reads them again at render time — so the loop is short.

1. Annotate the patient entity

Open Entities, type patient, click Load, then open the Annotations tab. Add three annotations:

• first_name → label First name.
• dob → label Date of birth, formatting: "MM/DD/YYYY".
• preferred_language → label Preferred language, with enum options English, Spanish, Mandarin, Other.

If you'd rather author by hand, the panel accepts JSON:

{
  "first_name":         { "label": "First name" },
  "dob":                { "label": "Date of birth", "formatting": "MM/DD/YYYY" },
  "preferred_language": {
    "label": "Preferred language",
    "enum":  ["English", "Spanish", "Mandarin", "Other"]
  }
}

Save. The annotations are now read by both the builder's From entity importer and the admin preview's renderer.

2. Re-author the form from the entity

Open Patient Intake in the Forms list. In the builder's field palette, switch to the From entity tab and pick patient. The importer lists every field on the entity and offers to drop them onto the current page. Accept all.

Existing fields with matching keys are replaced — the importer is destructive on key collisions by design, so the imported metadata wins. Every imported field gets a source.entity = "patient" provenance stamp; the builder uses that stamp later to decide which renderer to use.

3. Watch SmartField pick up live edits

Open the admin preview. Source-stamped fields now render through the LCAP <SmartField /> resolver — the label on first_name reads from the entity's annotation, not from a copy frozen into the form.

Prove it: leave the preview open in one tab, open the patient annotations in another, and rename first_name's label from First name to Legal first name. Save. Reload the preview tab — the label updates. No form re-publish, no build step.

4. Save and re-publish

Once the page reads the way you want it to, click Save, then Publish. The published version row freezes the current label and enum text into the public renderer, so submitters see the same options as your operators do — until your next annotation change and re-publish.

Verify it worked

Open the admin preview for Patient Intake. Confirm:

• first_name shows as First name.
• dob shows as Date of birth with an MM/DD/YYYY placeholder.
• preferred_language shows as a select with English, Spanish, Mandarin, Other.

Now open the patient annotations and rename preferred_language to Language preference. Save, reload the preview. The select's label updates — the options stay put. That's the loop: edit once on the entity, the admin preview tracks it.

Next

Continue with Conditional routing.