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Feature Request: Forms Process Versioning

posted on March 29, 2023

I couldn't find this feature request on the form, but I would love to have versioning on forms processes; when I need to make a change to a form I don't like to make the change live but I also don't want to have to make a copy of the process, make the change, then change that to the production form.  Besides being such an unwieldy process it causes loss of instance history and current instances.

If there's already something in place for this and I've just missed it please let me know, but besides being able to make and test all of your changes before publishing them, it would be nice to be able to revert to a previous published version when things go sideways.

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replied on March 29, 2023 Show version history

I would love having the ability to see the history of revisions and access the historical versions.

It would be a huge change to have it work the way that Workflow does, where you publish it, and the in-progress items can be switched to the new version or left on the version they were on, and historical logs can tell which version it was on.  Forms just isn't built to work in that way.  Just thinking how Forms has things set-up in the database and how it handles changes - I don't see that being possible without some really big changes to the structure of the system.

But maybe something in the middle...  Maybe every night, it identifies any processes that were changed that day, and saves an export of the process to the database - so we wouldn't have revision history for each individual change, but at least a snapshot of what it looked like at the end of any day that changes were made.  The individual instances would still work like they do now, entirely on the newest revision.  But the history of revisions (at least much of it) would be archived and could be retrieved if needed.  I would like something like that.

EDIT TO ADD: I currently manage changes with a Production environment and a Test environment.  When I need to make changes, I copy the process from Production to Test, make the changes I need, and then coordinate with the team members that wanted the change to review and try the process in Test.  Once they approve the change, I copy back from Test to Production, and that this point, any in-progress instances are updated.  There are one or two processes where I can't really have any in-progress ones (where version of the document is very important) - luckily those are not really active processes, so there is usually only a couple active that I can pester people to complete, or none active at all.  Most processes we accept it as a given that changes will be applied to items in progress.

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replied on March 30, 2023

Can you explain what your process is for copying your changes from test to production?

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replied on March 30, 2023

I just open two browsers, one for LFForms Production and one for LFForms Test.  From the Manage page, I download the process from one.  Then I upload it on the other.  In Forms 11, it has a full wizard it follows when you import it that verifies a bunch of stuff (repository connections, workflows, user assignments, etc.)  I have to do some updates there, because I keep separate databases, repositories, and workflow servers for both environments, so everything has to be changed.  Once the Wizard is complete, the only thing that really has to be changed is the "Published" status, because anything imported automatically defaults to "Unpublished" even if it was overwriting a process that was previously published.

And then, this is not a requirement, but something I do personally.  I go to each form in the process and change it's theme.  All of my themes have a Production version and a Test version, the only difference being tha thet Test version has an obnoxious color for the title.  It's just a reminder to anyone working in the Test environment that they are definitely in the Test environment.  This means I have to do this both when importing into the Test environment (add the obnoxious color) and when I import back to the Production environment (switch back to the normal color), but since changing a theme is only a few clicks, I feel it is well worth it to have that reminder for staff that they are working in the Test environment.

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replied on March 30, 2023

Thanks for sharing, I wasn't aware you could import the process like that!

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replied on March 30, 2023

You are welcome.  They added it somewhere in the middle of version 10 - around 10.3 or 10.4 I think. 

I upgraded to version 11 (initially Update 2, but now on Update 3) about 11 months ago, and that was when I set-up the Test environment.  I worked really hard to mimick the configuration of things in the Test environment as much as possible to match the Production environment.  I run a separate repository, a separate Forms instance and a separate Workflow instance on that Test environment.  It's been so helpful for helping manage the "development" process of new stuff in Forms and changes to Forms.  I'm able to limit changes to Forms in-progress until I've fairly thoroughly tested whatever changes I'm making in the Test environment.

It still doesn't mean that I have historical versioning, which is why I agree that something should be implemented - but at least it help keep the changes from impacting the Live environment until I'm ready.

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