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Why Upgrade?v5.3 contains many new features that improve usability and the look & feel of your forms. Here are a few of the top reasons to upgrade:
See the v5.3 release notes for more reasons to upgrade. Most forms/flows created on Live Forms v4.1.7+, or v5.1.1 will not require further attention after migration. However we do recommend that you read the information below before you begin.
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If a theme was removed along with margins and padding on controls, you will see this message when you click on the Style Warning icon.
Warning |
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It is very important that the designer check all migrated forms/flows flagged with the Style Warning icon, to make sure that the forms/flows look correct. See the list of topics to consider below. |
Make any additional changes and don't forget to save.
Form Designer
Custom Themes
Customers have been struggling with Themes when upgrading to the latest Live Forms. This feature is replaced with a new feature called Layouts and Styles which removes this migration headache.
Themes are removed from forms/flows that are being migrated. These forms/flows are flagged so the designer is aware that some manual attention is required. Typical theme customizations such as, background color, panel background color, setting a default label color, reducing white space between controls, are handled using Layouts and Styles. For example, forms with a Nouveau Blue theme convert to the Nouveau layout and the Aqua style after migration.
CSS Class
Some customizations will no longer work due to css changes. Some CSS Class properties, such as showhelp. can still be used. Refer to this documentation for more information.
CSS
If you are using Live Forms in-house, Cascading Style Sheet code that was used in themes applied to forms/flows in previous Live Forms releases, can be added to ta newly created style.css file in the frevvo.war file . The context parameter, frevvo.css.url, in the web.xml file must be changed to point to it.
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In this case, the width of the panels or the form have to be manually adjusted by the designer.
Tab Width
Tab width may not be retained post migration. Let's take a form created in an earlier version that has a Tab control with five tabs. The Width property is set for 15%. In the fully migrated form, notice the tab labelled Section 5 slips to the 2nd line as the tab width property is lost.
The designer will have to add the Width property manually for the tabs to display correctly.
Date Control with Small Widths
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Margin, Padding and Border Properties
Margin, Padding, and Border properties (Border width, style and color) have been removed. Migrated forms/flows with controls using these properties, will show the Style warning icon on the Forms or Flows Home page to alert the designer that some manual attention is needed. Along with the changes to the Width property, it is very important that the designer check all migrated forms/flows flagged with the Style Warning icon, to make sure that the forms/flows look correct. Layouts and Customized Styles can be combined to ensure that the migrated form/flow looks similar to the previous versions.
For example, Let's say you have your company logo and product statement as your form title.
Here's what it looks like in the designer. The Image control in Panel 49 has a padding of 8px and the Message control in Panel 48 has a padding value of 30 px. This was done to align the text in Panel 48 with the image in Panel 49.
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After migration to v5.3, the form will look like this. Notice the alignment of the the second panel has changed due to the elimination of padding.
One workaround the designer can implement is to add a section with two 6-column Panels. Add the Company logo to the first panel then add a non-decorated Message control to both panels. Set the background color for the section using the BG Color Property on the Style tab. You can use an HTML <br> tag in the message control to move your text down a line in the second panel.
Another solution would be to not use a background color in the form title at all.
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Border properties of some controls (signature, radio, checkbox) are not retained as there is no border property in 5.3. |
Message controls in panels using padding may not align as expected after migration. For example, the panels in the image both contain message controls for the Financial Counselor and Phone fields in this form that was created in v4.1.7.
After migration, the alignment looks like this:
The designer can modify the width of the panels/form or discard the panels completely so that the alignment is closer to the previous version.
Nillable Element Attribute
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Message and Trigger Control Default Type
The default type for the Message control will change to type None post migration. This message type has no decorator, border or color. New Message controls added to your form will have the default type.
Triggers change to type Default. The Default type uses the base color of the Style that is applied to your form for the background color of the Trigger control. Select None from the Button Color dropdown to remove the decorator on the Trigger control.
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Text in Trigger controls may not correctly align post migration. For example, the Trigger control in the image had a width set to 100px. Notice the text inside the control is not centered. In some cases, the text could be missing. The designer can manually increase the Width or remove the decorator as described above.
Panel Height Property
The panel height property has been removed. Panels with height set in forms/flows created previous to v5.3 will look the same but the designer will not be able to change the height of the panel in the designer.
Time Control
The Time control is now a time of day control. This means it is independent of any timezone and simply displays the value as is. The time you set in a time control will be the same each time you view it even if you view it from a different time zone.
Form/Flow Visibility and Access Control List
The form/flow visiblity property and the Access Control List feature have been combined into one wizard in v5.3. Migrated forms/flows will retain the assigned visibility and submission permissions. The designer should be aware of the enhancements incorporated into these features. Read the documentation for Access Control and form/flow visibility
Localization Changes
Locale Enhancements:
v5.3 supports localization from the browser locale setting. Live Forms will recognize the browser locale and alter displays and input formats as well as language according to the user's setting. The locale can be overridden with a locale URL Parameter.
Date and Time controls have a new format, Automatic. When the form designer sets the format of date and time controls to automatic, they become locale parsing and formatting aware. The automatic locale specific formatting and parsing for date, time and date/time controls can also be configured by the designer. These enhancements apply to localization of the designer and use mode forms. Refer to this documentation for all of the details.
PDF Print Font Enhancements:
The ability to add font families that will display in the designer as choices for the PDF Print Font has been added in these areas:
- PDFs generated in the Live Forms submission repository when you check Save PDF on your form
- PDFs generated for print view
- PDFs generated for mapped PDFs
Font families can be used to print international characters. The designer can select the font to be used in the PDFs generated by from the Print Font dropdown on the form/flow Property pane.
Label Color and Layout for Select Controls
If the Label Color property on the Style tab is set to a color for Dropdown, Checkbox or Radio controls, it applies only to the control label. The control options will not display in the specified color.
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There may be cases where the selection control labels take up 2 lines instead of 1. To fix this, increase the width of the control/panel, whichever is applicable. If this does not seem feasible, reduce the font size of the form. |
HTML in Labels
You can no longer use arbitrary XHTML for styling labels. Due to the incorporation of a new whitlelist approach to filter out XSS attacks, there are restrictions on what you can do in the label markup. Refer to this topic for the details. The ability to turn off XSS cleaning, which would lift the restrictions, will be available in a future release.
Checkbox Labels in Panels
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Several new features have been added in v5.3. You will see these when you design your forms/flows for the first time. See the tips listed below:
Decorator Property
The Decorator property, new to this release, is enabled by default. The designer can control this on a form /flow level by unchecking the Decorated checkbox on the form/'s Setting tab. Input controls added to your form will show the decorator. Controls in migrated forms or forms created in a previous release and then uploaded to v5.3, are not decorated. However, if you modify the Control Type or Display As properties for an input control, the decorator will display if they are turned on for the form.
The designer can also check/uncheck the Decorator property checkbox for individual input controls located on the Settings tab in the control property panel.
Placeholder Property
The Placeholder property, new to this release, display in your input control until the user enters data into the field. You may have noticed the user@tenant placeholder on the login screen.
Additional Date Format Support
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