Introducing and Testing New Form Versions in a Production Environment

Available on all tiers:

• About
• Allowing Administrators to Work with Active and Draft Forms
• Eliminating Production User Interruptions

About

TrueContext makes testing new forms and form changes straightforward; configuring form states and FormSpace Permissions makes it possible to test new forms and form versions in a production FormSpace without causing user interruptions or affecting production forms.  It is recommended that all form changes are tested before new versions are deployed to field users.

Creating new versions of a form allows the TrueContext system to track important changes, like re-ordering questions on the form. This tracking will improve the system's ability to give consistent data exports across versions.

• Active forms are intended for production; Draft A draft form is a partially filled-out form saved on a device, or a preliminary version of a form that's been saved but not deployed in the Form Builder. versions are intended for testing new forms and form changes.
• A Draft version of a form can be created in the Form Builder The Form Builder is the tool that form designers use to create forms. In the Form Builder, accessed from the TrueContext Web Portal, form designers can add and edit pages, sections, and questions, as well as attach data destinations and configure the form's settings.;  after making changes, select "Save as Draft".
• Default group permissions ("Can Submit") allow users to see only Active/deployed forms on their devices; Draft forms are automatically hidden from them.
• "Can Test" group permissions allow users to access and submit data for Draft forms in assigned FormSpaces.
• To simplify things, it is often useful to just create a separate "Test FormSpace" to test changes in.

Allowing Administrators to Work With Active and Draft Forms

Administrators or users can have access to both Active and Draft versions of the same form on their devices by correctly configuring group permissions. This allows them to test the Draft form while still being able to submit data against the Active form An active form is a form that a form designer saved and deployed. Depending on your configuration settings, a mobile user can open an active form from their Forms box (user-initiated) or Inbox (dispatched)..

1. Ensure the desired administrators or users are in a group like "Test Group," containing only users who should have access to Draft form versions.
2. Assign the group to the desired FormSpace.
3. Configure the group's FormSpace permissions

• For the relevant FormSpace, check off Can Test to allow access to Draft forms and Can Submit to allow access to Active forms.

Eliminating Production User Interruptions

As noted above, groups are created with default "Can Submit" FormSpace permissions FormSpace Permissions control the permissions that a user group has in a particular FormSpace. These are primarily used to control the forms (and the state of form) users can access on their mobile devices. Less commonly, FormSpace permissions give non-admin Users some administrative access to a particular FormSpace without giving them full Admin access to all FormSpaces., allowing users in the group to view and submit data for Active or deployed forms; Draft forms will be hidden on their devices. 

To ensure production users are not affected by form development and testing, simply ensure that:

• Groups containing production users have only “Can Submit” permissions for a FormSpace containing forms in development/testing, and not "Can Test."
• Any new forms/form changes made in the Form Builder are saved with "Save as Draft"; these options will leave the form in a Draft state.  Do not use "Save and Deploy" until the new form/changes should be accessed by production users.