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Feature Request - Forms Save to Repository Referencing Fields by ID

Forms Business Processes
Updated March 24, 2023
posted on March 23, 2023

In this case we are in Cloud but the same need applies to on-prem.

We had a situation where one department changed just the name of a field, then a business process said that the fields no longer exist.

The field does exist it just has a different name now. 

Since it is difficult for whoever is managing the names of the fields used in templates to ask every developer if they have anything anywhere in any part of the Laserfiche suite referencing the field, it would be best to internally reference fields by their ID everywhere rather than their Name, allowing the name to change anytime without conflict.

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replied on March 23, 2023 • Show version history

The other side to this is that if your refer to fields by ID, if you export the Forms process and import it to another repository, there is no guarantee that what you think of as the "same field" will have the same ID. In RepoA, FieldID=6 might be "Phone Number" and in RepoB it might be "SSN". Using names allows for easy matching.

Also, what if you delete FieldID=6 (Phone Number), create a new field (Birthday) that gets assigned the now-available FieldID=6, and then re-create Phone Number which gets assigned FieldID=7? The repository doesn't have a mechanism to "inform" Forms of this change, so now your Save to Repo activity is trying to write a phone number into the new Birthday field.

Examples above should be taken as general illustrations of problematic cases and not precise technical descriptions of Laserfiche software behavior.

In short, there are a great many nuances, edge cases, and tradeoffs for whichever attribute Forms uses for field references. You win some, you lose some. If I filed this internally, it would likely get tagged as something that needs documentation in the help files, but otherwise won't be changed.

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replied on March 24, 2023

"if you export the Forms process and import it to another repository"

I can do this with a document and it does not have any problems, it will look for other fields in the new repository by matching name instead of by the internal reference. But I can still freely change the names of fields without breaking any assignments to that field per document.

"Also, what if you delete FieldID=6 (Phone Number), create a new field (Birthday) that gets assigned the now-available FieldID=6"

This does not cause any problems with my documents or templates. If I delete a field and create a new field it doesn't somehow jump into a template somewhere or show up on a document because it re-used an ID. I think the methodology is possible, it would be a big help to be able to change the label of the field without finding all possible references.

If it is not possible, then an alternative would be to be able to pick a field and see all references to it so they could be updated.

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