Administrator Best Practices

Live Forms In-house Test/Staging Server Installations:

Multiple Live Forms server installations are the most flexible and best practice for maintaining a production environment. In this scenario, you may have a development server, a test/staging server and a production server. Or you may have only a development server also used for testing and a production server for deployed forms/flows.

1. Create test roles and users in your development tenant. If you are using the default security manager, simply create the test users and roles in the tenant. Refer to this topic below if you are using the LDAP/Active Directory Security Manager.

   The role names in your development tenant should be the same as the role names in your production tenant. If they are different, modifications to your workflows will have to be made to users and workflows to reflect the production roles when they are moved to the production server.

2. Multiple designer users can create and test forms/flows in each of their user accounts using the test users and roles.
3. The designer users will download a finished and tested application and check it in to a source code repository (versioning) as the new version of the application. Ex: SVN, CVS, Google drive.
4. Create a generic user account that has the frevvo.designer role (ex: “formuser” or whatever you want to name it) on your production tenant to which you publish all forms/flows.
5. Assign the frevvo.publisher role to one or more users on your production server.
6. One of the users with the frevvo.Publisher role will check-out the new application from source code (a repository outside of a frevvo server) and upload/replace the application into the production tenant.
7. Steps 5 and 6 can be performed by the tenant admin or the generic user if you prefer not to create users with the frevvo.publisher role.

8. When further updates/modifications are required, the forms/flows should again be edited in the designer user accounts and then upload/replaced in the generic user account in the production tenant.
   

9. The tenants on your development and production servers may have the same name although this is not required.

Live Forms In-house Single Server Installations & Cloud Customers:

We recommend that all cloud customers and in-house customers with a single server have two tenants: a development/test tenant and a production tenant.  

• The frevvo superuser can easily create both tenants for In-house customers.
• Cloud customers must purchase a second tenant for production.

Separate development/test tenants is recommended for the following reasons:

1. • The role names in your development tenant contains test users with test email addresses so that workflow notification does not impact/spam real company employees
   • Test submissions will not be mingled with production submissions. 

Publishing Forms/Flows from Development to Production

We recommend that the forms/flows be created by one/multiple designers in their own accounts in the development tenant. After the forms are designed/tested, they can be downloaded from the individual designer user accounts and uploaded to a generic special user account (ex: “formuser”) where the forms can be published.

We recommend using a generic special user account to publish apps/forms/flows in your production tenant for the following reasons:

1. If designers edit forms/flows, they will be editing a live form. This does not give any source code / QA control.
2. If there are multiple people designing forms in their own accounts, then the apps/forms/flows will be scattered around between different user accounts and it may be more challenging to maintain them.
3. The username of the user account where the form/flow is published is used in the form/flow url and you might not want the username to be known to all other form users.
4. Designer users have permission to view submissions. Publishing forms in a special "formuser" account prevents the designer from viewing them.

Development Tenant

1. Create test roles and users in your development tenant. If you are using the default security manager, simply create the test users and roles in the tenant. Refer to this topic below if you are using the LDAP/Active Directory Security Manager.

   The role names in your development tenant should be the same as the role names in your production tenant. If they are different, modifications to your workflows will have to be made to users and workflows to reflect the production roles.

2. Multiple designer users can create and test forms/flows in each of their user accounts using the test users and roles.
3. The designer users will download a finished and tested application and check it in to a source code repository (versioning) as the new version of the application. Ex: SVN, CVS, Google drive.

4. When further updates/modifications are required, the forms/flows should again be edited in the designer user accounts and then upload/replaced in the generic user account in the production tenant. 

Production Tenant

1. Create a generic user account assigned that has the frevvo.designer role (ex: “formuser” or whatever you want to name it) on your production tenant to which you publish all forms/flows.
2. Assign the frevvo.publisher role to one or more users. These users have permission to upload new versions of your applications to your production user formuser account.
3. One of the users with the frevvo.Publisher role will check-out the new application from source code (a repository outside of a frevvo server) and upload/replace the application into the generic user account 

Customers using the LDAP/Active Directory Security Manager:

LDAP customers (cloud or in-house)  are encouraged to set up both the development and production tenants with the same security manager. If your production tenant uses LDAP then your development/test tenant should also be configured for LDAP.  This is recommended for the following reasons:

• The only way to guarantee the same behavior for both tenants is to configure both with the same security manager.
• Each tenant should point to it’s own instance of LDAP
• A development  LDAP domain with a set of LDAP groups that are EXACTLY the same as your  production LDAP domain is suggested. This way flows can be moved from your development tenant to your production tenant and workflow navigation w/roles is guaranteed to work correctly.
• Continue with these for recommendations for your development\productions tenants or these recommendations if you have a separate development/production server. The generic user referred to in these instructions should be created in Active Directory.