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Flow Setting Properties

Live Forms v7.4 is no longer supported. Please visit Live Forms Latest for our current Cloud Release. Earlier documentation is available too.

Flow Setting Properties

Each flow property setting is described below.

On This Page:

 

Flow Name

This is the name you see on the Flows home page where your flows are listed. We recommend changing the name to make it more meaningful than the arbitrary name assigned when you create it, but keep in mind it is a working name only, so users will not see it. It is recommended that you name your form/flows using characters that are suitable for filenames. Following the POSIX filename standard (A–Z a–z 0–9 . _ - ) will ensure it works.

Element Name

There is a now a flow property called Element Name. By default, this is set to form for newly created forms as well as flows. The root element name of the from-scratch document is determined by what you put in here. It needs to be a valid XML element name. The designer can now change the name of the flow without impacting the element name.

Flow schema and the Submission xml document show the element name. When the flow name is updated, and 'Element Name' is kept the same, the previous submissions can be initialized successfully. When 'Element Name' is updated, previous submissions cannot be initialized.

If you change the element name, all existing submissions will become invalid and you will get the error message: " Error. Submission is not valid. An incompatible change was made to the form/flow." 

Description

By default all flow descriptions say, “Edit the flow to change this description,” but you can change this if you wish. The description appears as a tool tip when you mouse over the area just to the right of the flow's share  icon on the Flows home page. You also see this description when you view individual submission documents.

Navigation

 can automatically generate and display a navigation toolbar for your flow which users can use to navigate back and forth between workflow steps. There are four available options:

  • None: This option displays no navigation toolbar. This is useful for situations where the same form is being passed between users for signatures e.g. Vacation Request workflow filled in by an Employee and signed by a Manager.
  • Navigation Toolbar: this displays a standard navigation toolbar with links for each step.
  • Percent: This displays progress through the flow as a percentage.
  • Step 1 of 4: This option displays progress through the flow as a counter.

The default value for Navigation is Navigation toolbar. When you configure the Navigation toolbar for your workflow, users will see the following:

  • The name of the current step displays with a bright blue color. Note that the active step number is also circled in bright blue. Steps that have yet to be performed display with a light blue color.



  • HTTP Wait-Notify and Anonymous Task steps, once performed, display with a faded blue color indicating that the flow cannot be reset to this step.
  • Skipped steps display with a light blue color and steps that have already been performed display with a black color. For example the Expense Report workflow shown in the image, has four steps: Expenses, Reviewer, Supervisor and Accounting. The employee fills out the Expense report for an amount less than $5000.00. The flow is routed to a company reviewer and if approved, to Accounting for final processing. If the amount of the expense had been greater than $5000.00 then the flow is routed to a Supervisor for an additional review before navigating to the Accounting department. The Supervisor step is skipped for Expense reports less than $5000.00. When the Accounting employee performs the task, here is what they will see:




  • The Expenses and Reviewer steps display in black since they have already been performed.
  • The Supervisor step is displayed in faded blue because it was skipped as the total amount of the expenses was less than $5000.00.
  • The name and number of the Accounting step, which is the step that is currently being performed by the Accounting employee, display in a bright blue color.

 Refer to the precondition topic to see how to use them to skip a step in a workflow.

Mobile vs Desktop Behavior

You may notice a difference in behavior when using a flow on the desktop vs on a phone/tablet. For Example: Imagine a two step flow where 1st step has 2 pagebreak controls and neither step has an assigned role/user. On the phone/tablet this translates into a screen flow with 3 steps for 1st step and 1 step for 2nd step. You can use the Previous button to get back to the 1st step from the 2nd step.


However, on the desktop there is no "Previous" button so once the flow gets to 2nd step there is no way to get back to 1st step. If the designer does not configure the Navigation Tool Bar in this situation once the user gets to the second step in the flow, there is no way to return to the first step.



Anonymous Screenflow Navigation

Important Design Fact

Use of the Anonymous Task step requires that the ACL for "who can use the flow" is set to Pubic.This is because your flow now contains a step that is performed by a person who is not an authenticated user - someone who is not logged into  

Note: If you want to control who can use the flow, then set a role(s) on the first step of your workflow.

A screenflow is a type of workflow consisting of a collection of sequential steps performed by the same user. What if you wanted that user to be anonymous? Configuring the Navigation Toolbar in an anonymous screenflow allows anonymous users to navigate back to a previous step in a screenflow. The set of available links is restricted to the steps that are executed in sequence by the anonymous user. Links to steps outside of the screenflow are not visible. The steps in the screenflow cannot have a role, dynamic role or user property assigned to them.

Configuring the Save on Navigate feature enables the screenflow to be completed in multiple sessions.Let's consider a Job Application workflow with the following requirements:

  • The workflow is going to be performed by anonymous users. Anonymous users do not sign in to .
  • The anonymous user receives an email that includes a link to the workflow.
  • The workflow must collect a lot of information from the applicant: Contact Information, Education and Employment history, References and more. You can create one long form or design a screenflow with an Anonymous Task step and subsequent steps as separate screens to collect the information.
  • The user must have the option to compete the screenflow in multiple sessions. Clicking on the email link takes the user back to the last step in the screenflow where the Continue button was clicked. 
  • The user must be able to navigate back to previous steps to review or update information that was previously entered.
Flow Designer
  • The Save on Navigate checkbox is checked and the Navigation Toolbar is configured on the Flow Property Panel
  • Step 1 of the screenflow has a field named EmailAddress that collects the applicant's email address.
  • Step 2 is an Anonymous Task step.
  • All remaining steps in the screenflow are designed to collect the applicant's information: Contact Info, Education and Employment history, references etc. Remember, these steps cannot have a role, dynamic role or user property assigned to them.

The image shows an example of a possible screenflow design:

Use Mode

Anonymous Users can return to a previous step by clicking on the Navigation Toolbar.

Visibility

The visibility field has been removed from the flow property pane in the Live Forms Flow designer. Flow Visibility is selected via the Access Control List wizard. You can access the wizard by clicking on the  icon for your flow on the Flows Home Page . If you are in the flow designers, click the icon in the toolbar to display the wizard. Flow Visibility has the same meaning as Visibility for forms. The one exception is the custom option which is not provided for flows. The default value for flows is Public in Tenant.

Task Info

When you save a partially filled flow to continue it later or when  puts a task on your task list as part of a workflow, the task is accessed via your task list. This field controls the name that gets displayed in the user's task list. For more details, see the Tasks documentation. This field can use templatized strings  for dynamic content, e.g. the Task Info can contain "Vacation Request for {FirstName} {LastName}" where FirstName and LastName are the names of fields in a form from a prior step in the flow. Before putting the task on a user's task list,  will resolve the Task Info string using the actual values of the FirstName and LastName fields e.g. "Vacation Request for Tom Smith".  will truncate the Task Info data to 250 characters.

You access your Task List from your applications home page. You use the Task list to to perform tasks assigned to you, to view a task's history, or search for tasks you've participated in — a tenant admin can also search for other users' tasks.

Pending Msg

This is the message that is displayed on the screen during a workflow when the next step must be performed by a different user/role and  puts it on that user's task list. For example, in an Vacation Request workflow, the first step may be filled in by an Employee but the second step (approval) must be signed by a Manager. When the Employee clicks Continue,  will put the task on the Manager's task list and display this message on the Employee's screen. This message can use templatized strings for dynamic content, e.g. the message can be set to "Thank You {FirstName} {LastName}. Your request has been submitted to your manager for approval." where FirstName and LastName are the names of fields in a form from a prior step in the flow. Before putting the task on a user's task list,  will resolve the pending message using the actual values of the FirstName and LastName fields e.g. "Thank You Tom Smith. Your request has been submitted to your manager for approval.".

This property can be set at the flow or flow step level. If you set up a message at the flow level, it will display after the Continue button is clicked on each step of the flow except for the last one. On the last step, you will see the default message, "Thank You!. Your submission has been received" unless you customized the message using the Form Action wizard.

To set up a message at the flow level, follow these steps:

  1. Click the icon for your flow on the Flow Home page.
  2. Click the Toolbar to display the flow properties pane.
  3. Type your message in the Pending Msg box.

This will work if you want the same message to display for all of the steps of your flow. Typically, designers want to display different customized messages after each step. If this is the case, you must set the Pending Message at the flow step level.

Tracking Id

See Tracking Id described in designing forms.

Deployment

This field is a toggle that sets the state of your flow to production or development. Functionality is the same as Deployment for forms

Printable

If you check a flow's printable checkbox a Print button will be displayed in Summary steps of the flow. If you don’t want users to print your flow, uncheck the checkbox so users will not see the Print button. You can control which fields are printed by setting up which fields are displayed in the Summary View as described below.

Flows do not currently support a print icon as is available on forms. This will be added in an up coming release. One solution is to add your own print link as discussed in the chapter Printing Forms.

Each step also has a printable property which controls whether or not that step appears in the  PDF document view . See the printable property for workflow steps for full details.

Setup Searchable/Summary Fields

Searchable fields configured for a form or flow are the fields that may be used to filter submissions in the submissions view. By default, all your data is saved as an XML document. This is the most efficient way to store/access your data both in terms of speed as well as storage. However, if you prefer to view your data via the submissions user interface, you can choose which fields are available to the user as search criteria in addition to the XML data.

Considerations when deciding which types of fields to configure are listed below.

  • Searchable fields are indexed for easy search of form/flow Submissions. They can also be used when searching Tasks on a user's Task List. You will see the controls designated as Searchable fields in the Submissions table. This is helpful when trying to locate a particular submission from a long list. They are downloaded into the Export Submissions to a CSV file along with the submission default columns. The default for the maximum number of Searchable fields is 10. In-house customers can change change the default value by adidng the frevvo.max.searchable.fields configuration parameter to the <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf\Catalina\localhost\frevvo.xml file.

  • Saved fields do affect performance as they are independently stored in addition to XML data. This can significantly reduce performance, especially for large forms and require additional storage in the repository. Saved fields are not rendered in the submission table and cannot be used as search criteria for submissions. The only reason to configure Saved fields is if you want to use the Export to Excel feature which is available on the Legacy Submissions view

The Submissions Legacy view and the Export to Excel feature will be removed in the next major release. Please use the redesigned Submissions view as soon as possible so you can become familiar with the added functionality and the submission export to a csv file.

Designers should carefully consider which fields to designate as Searchable fields. The selection of the correct fields as search criteria can be very helpful with submission and Task List searches.

Clicking on the Setup Searchable/Summary fields link displays a wizard. The wizard displays the fields from your flow on the Available Fields tab . Drag and drop or use the arrow keys to move the available fields to the Searchable Fields list. If the Legacy Submissions view is configured, designers will see a Saved fields tab listing the fields used for the Export to Excel feature. The Saved Fields tab will not display when the Legacy Submissions view and the Export to Excel feature are removed in the next major release.

Please refer to the Setup Searchable Fields documentation for forms for information about how the wizard works.

In a flow, controls are listed in the Available and Saved Lists using the control name. If you change the name of a control in a flow step, it will unset the saved field. The newly renamed control will now show on the Available list and the designer must move it to the Saved List again by clicking on the Setup/Key/Saved/Summary Fields wizard.

Summary Fields

Check the individual fields to select the fields you want to appear in the Summary view if you have a Summary step in your flow.Only checked fields will appear in the Summary. There are also two checkboxes labeled "All" and "None" which will show all the fields or none of the fields, respectively.

These controls are excluded from the Summary Fields list:

  • Signature
  • Formviewer
  • PageBreak
  • Message
  • Link
  • Trigger
  • Image
  • Video

Save PDF

When checked a PDF image of the flow is saved in ' submission repository. See the documentation for the