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Question

Question

Resubmit a failed form

Forms
Updated April 18, 2024
asked on July 22, 2014

 Hi There

 

I would like to know if it is possible to restart a forms process that has failed.

 

One of the branch conditions failed and was unable to rout the form to the next process. This resulted in the entire process failing. 

 

I would like to restart the process on the initial form submitted now that I have corrected the branch condition. This means i will not have to recapture all the details on the form again.

 

Is this possible?

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Replies

replied on August 13, 2014

Hi Rob, Abby,

 

Thanks again for your input.

 

I can summarise some possible scenarios that I have encountered:

 

  1. Outflow paths/conditions are incorrectly configured, resulting in a "failure" in the process model. This is a user configuration problem in the Process Modeler, but since the modeler validated correctly, it's difficult to detect early. In this case, it's too late and the form needs to be submitted again. This error is recorded in the Application Event Logs, perhaps it could actually be caught (like a Try-Catch or something) and the submission be held back...since it doesn't know which Outflow path to follow.
  2. I've had errors trying to save to Laserfiche on occasion. I can't recall the exact details, but I know that in some instances (Like the server being offline) I am able to restart the specific step that was suspended by viewing the Instance itself under "Results" section. It's not that obvious that an error occured at this point and requires manual intervention to fix, would be nice if we handle this "error" and send an email notification or something. In cases where it fails altogether, well, one needs to start over again.
  3. Made changes to the process modeler for one process (on one of the final steps), not realising that existing instances already in the middle of that process may be affected by that specific change. The result was that those instances failed and needed to start from scratch.
  4. I've seen this, but not sure about it causing total failure, but I have seen SMTP errors logged in the Event logs for forms. Just mentioning it, not sure how those errors are handled.

 

I will see if I can chat with my colleagues and get some more examples, and if need be, I will try and get the detailed information if you need it.

 

In general, I think having a "blanket Catch All" setting as opposed to individual "Try-Catch" type settings like in WF (for now), would be very useful. If the errors are being logged to the Application Event Logs, then clearly you're catching them somewhere. At the same time the error happens, perhaps we can have options to control the behaviour of the process. Maybe "Suspend" and not execute that specific step until it's been fixed in the Process Modeler. Having an email notification to the administrator would be useful too.

 

Cheers

Sheldon

 

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replied on July 22, 2014

It is currently not possible to do it through the interface. There might be a way to do it through the database, but I do not know how.

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replied on August 11, 2014

Hi Rob,

 

Thank you for your input.

 

I'm sure I'm not explaining the scenario quite clearly enough. If the failure of the process is as a result of something out of your control, it is difficult to manage without any error handling capabilities. This is definitely not a one time thing.

 

In this scenario, the process is quite far down the line and it could be something like 3 weeks before it reaches the final step. Now if the final step (or any other in between) fails for whatever reason, it's not ideal to ask the initiator (i.e. the customer) to resubmit, especially if the initiator may not have access to the information or attachments that they had before. I don't want to ask the initiator to resubmit and have to go through the entire process/steps all over again. There are multiple approval steps that take place with many people involved and it can be time consuming. For example, the final step performed by the COO is only done once a week when the COO has time to log in and do it.

 

Since it's not possible to just easily "reset" a failed submission, perhaps what I am asking for should be a feature request? i.e. Customised Error handling in Forms.

 

What do you think?

 

Regards,

Sheldon

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replied on July 22, 2014

I don't think this is possible as it's finished running. However I could be wrong....frown..dunno

 

Maybe what would be the best idea for testing purposes is to 'hard code' the data into the form in the form design under default value?

 

This way you can submit it over and over again without having to fill anything in?

 

 

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replied on July 22, 2014 • Show version history

Hi,

 

I would also like to know how to accomplish this.

 

I have a form that was submitted by an end-user and somewhere in the process, it failed. Updating the process modeler, I fixed the problem, but that form Instance has failed and cannot be re-submitted.

 

Surely there must be a way to "reset" the status of this submission by editing some of the data in the Forms SQL database to allow the form and it's previous data the be used again and simply pick up from the same step that failed before.

 

I'm sure this will be a great feature to have in the next version of Forms i.e. better error handling.

 

Thanks

Sheldon

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replied on July 23, 2014

As Chris mentioned, this isn't available out of the box with Forms.  If this is a one time thing, I would recommend just filling out the form again.  If you're looking to safeguard your system against this happening again, you might want to use Forms in conjunction with Workflow to write the values to a database and use a unique identifier in the form to trigger a Forms database lookup that fills out the rest of your fields.

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replied on July 24, 2014

Hi Rob,

 

Thank you for the idea. However, how would one "re-attach" the old files that were uploaded to this same form in that scenario?

 

This won't be a one time thing, since Forms is not a perfect product as yet and there can be a number of reasons on why a process might fail. Without any error handling, it's still difficult to manage.

 

Thanks

Sheldon

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replied on July 24, 2014

Hey Sheldon,

 

I'm not sure that figuring out a way to re-attach a file upload automatically would be worth the sweat.  Attaching files in Forms only takes about 3 clicks and I don't believe its possible to use the lookup rules to populate a file upload field out of the box.

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replied on August 12, 2014

Hey Sheldon,

 

I'll definitely pass this along to the Forms developers!  I was doing my best to come up with workarounds in the current state of the product, but I absolutely understand the desire to include a feature such as this in a future release.

 

I really appreciate the full use case that you included above!  That works wonders when making a feature request.

 

If I may ask, what are the scenarios in which you're finding that the form "failed".  Is it because the form is denied somewhere along the line or is it because there was a malfunction with the system?  If the form has simply been denied, then sure, you're able to create branches to allow that process to continue.  If the system has ended the process because of some other error, can you add a little more information about why the error is occurring?  Perhaps we can address the issue from the hardware side while we prioritize the software-side fix.

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replied on August 12, 2014

Hi there,

 

What's the common cause of process failure?

Is it a task assign to null issue? Or it's a gateway condition issue?

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View 1 previous reply
replied on November 2, 2014

Hi Abby,

Sorry for missing your question.

For me, the most common causes are incorrectly configured gateway conditions and save to repository errors. I'm sure that with the more detailed integration with Workflow now in 9.2, there may be potential error handling scenarios there as well.

Right now, the biggest frustration is not having any notification system that tells me when any kind of error occurs.

Cheers

Sheldon

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replied on November 3, 2014

Thanks for the information. What kind of notification you think will be helpful, eg. Email notification? How frequently, eg. Immediate, Daily?

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replied on November 4, 2014

Hi Abby,

An email notification would be very helpful. The notification should be sent immediately when the error occurs so that it can be corrected as soon as possible.

Thanks

Sheldon

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replied on April 18, 2018

Hi, 

Any news about the possibility of doing this?

 

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replied on April 18, 2024

Its 2024 and I am trying to find the answer to this also?  Simply restarting the forms from the beginning with all the saved data.

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replied on April 18, 2024

Hi Trieu,

Do you have some more context of the question you want to ask? The original post is 10 years ago, and Forms has released 11 Update 5, where you can restart a failed user task easily, is this what you want to ask, have you tried out the latest Forms version, or any specific issue you meet with?

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