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There are many paths to Rome.... frevvo suggests the following best practices for managing your tenants, projects, forms and workflows.


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When a production workflow that has pending tasks associated with it is edited and replaced with an updated version, pending tasks will contain the changes the next time they are "performed" from the task list. For example, let's say you

  • Add or delete controls in a signed section and there are workflows pending in flight that have already been signed.
  • Add/remove a field that was used in a business rule; ex: Add/remove a column from a table that was used in a calculation.
  • Change a spreadsheet that you are reading from or writing to using the Google connector.

When you edit a workflow and change business rule or add/remove fields, all the pending tasks pick up the latest version of the workflow. Pending tasks for a form/workflow that integrates with a Google sheet reflects any changes made to the Google sheet while the tasks are in-flight.

When uploading a form/workflow with the same ID as an existing form/workflow, without checking Replace, a copy will be created and the designer will see an error message: "The form/workflow that was uploaded matches the id of one that already existed so a copy was made. If you intended to replace the existing form/workflow, delete the form/workflow you just uploaded and upload it again but check off the ‘Replace’ option."

When uploading a form/workflow with Replace checked that is currently being edited by another user, the designer will see this error message: "This form/workflow is currently being edited by <user@tenant>. Please try again later."

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titleHow do changes to a production form/workflow impact in-flight tasks?

How do changes to a production form/workflow impact in-flight tasks?

Some changes have little to no impact on your in-flight forms and tasks, but other changes can significantly affect, or even break, workflows that are in progress. 

"Safe" Changes

Usually it is safe to:

  • Move controls (except for moving controls in to/out of sections, tables and repeats)
  • Change control, form or workflow style properties.
  • Change control labels and Option labelsLabels and selection control option Labels
  • Edit Messages, email subjects and email messages (such as for task notifications and doc actions.)
Impactful Changes

These changes can impact the forms schema and routing, and thereby may impact forms and workflows that are in-progress.

  • Changing a control Name or a selection control name Option Value when that control is referenced in business rules, preconditions, and/or task assignments.
    • For example, let's say you change a control name and then perform a pending task for that workflow from your task list. The data entered into the workflow on the prior form version will not display in the task with the renamed control.
  • Move a control inside a section, repeat or table.
    • Similar to the above example, data from tasks performed before the change may not appear on tasks performed after the change.
  • Adding steps with required fields.

  • Update the database (or google sheet, or 3rd party system) supplying data for dynamic select control options on form.[load,activate]. Any task performed from the task list that had an option set that was deleted or changed (for example, to fix a typo) from the database displays the control as blank again and required if that was the default. If you're on a workflow step where these fields are now disabled, such as an approval step, you need to reject back to the user of that prior task to re-enter the data.

  • This same behavior occurs if you change selection control option values.

Form/Workflow designer edit ACL

The Access Control feature in allows the designer to assign other users permission to make changes to forms and workflows.

Warning

The ability to edit a form/workflow should not be given to other users if the form/workflow is in production. Giving this permission would enable those users to edit your production forms directly thereby subverting the best practices described in this guide.

Multi-Tenant Scenario

Development Tenant

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