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  • 1.  New Feature Announcement - Refresh on Form Open

    Staff
    Posted 10-19-2022 17:21
    Edited by Pat Cooney 10-20-2022 08:59

    I wanted to let you know about a new feature we recently made available to our Enterprise tier in response to a specific use case some of our customers have been experiencing. 

    Some customers use an app-to-app call to open a Pronto Form from a third-party app. In many cases they have just updated information in the third-party app that they want to use in the Pronto Form. If they are using a data source to retrieve this information from the third-party app, they can set up the data source to refresh quickly, but since an app-to-app call opens a form so quickly that a reconcile can't be started, they needed a way to ensure that the data for the form they want to use is the freshest data we have on the ProntoForms server. 

    One customer's solution was to have their field staff open the ProntoForms app and manually start a reconciliation before going back to the third-party app to initiate the app-to-app call. This method created a poor user experience and we've eliminated this step entirely. The field user can go directly to the app-to-app call. 

    We've added a new Refresh on Form Open feature to solve this challenge. When a user opens a form and, more excitingly, when using app-to-app calls from a third-party app, the feature will immediately check for data freshness. Your field workers no longer need to open the ProntoForms app, reconcile, and then return to their standard workflow to avoid the risk of not having the data required. 

    In addition to this particular use case, this feature is useful when compliance requirements mandate that your field employees always use the most recent form version, resource images, or documents. 

    You can configure the feature to display a warning to field workers that they may not be working with the most recent data. Or, you can completely block their access to the form if, for any reason, a refresh is not possible. (See the below screenshot).  

    Use caution when using the blocking function. If the user is working offline, a data refresh will not be possible, and the function will prevent them for launching the form and proceeding with their work. 

    To use this feature, go into SETTINGS > Workflow Settings. In the Refresh on Form Open option, select "Download the latest form version, resources, and data before opening."  

    A screen capture of the ProntoForms form editing interface showing where to find the 'Refresh on Form Open' option.

    When doing this, the system will ask you what to do if a refresh is incomplete. Select the option there, and you are done. 

    You can find complete documentation for this feature can here: https://docs.prontoforms.com/1374411/Content/Features/DataFreshness/RefreshOnFormOpen.htm 

    Let us know how you plan to use this feature and how it will help you run your business more efficiently and accurately!



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    Pat Cooney
    Community Engineer
    ProntoForms
    community@prontoforms.com
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  • 2.  RE: New Feature Announcement - Refresh on Form Open

    Adopter
    Posted 10-21-2022 13:44
    Hi Pat! Just wanted to share my experience with this today. I turned it on with the Warn feature selected for our site survey form, and because I am still working in draft states of this form, enabling this new feature didn't let me open the draft anymore. When I go to my form folder, and select the draft form that is labeled In Testing, it opens up the live version that has none of my changes because they aren't deployed yet. Is this to be expected? I have turned off the feature for now since I am not done with testing, and now when I open the In Testing form in my form folder, it opens the undeployed version as expected. I really like the concept of this though and I'm excited for our team to experience it!

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    Lisa Zido
    Technical Systems Analyst
    GOJO Industries Inc.
    OH
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  • 3.  RE: New Feature Announcement - Refresh on Form Open

    Staff
    Posted 10-21-2022 14:35
    Hi Lisa, we were not able to replicate your issue in our initial attempts. I will ping you offline to clarify and we'll report back to the community once we have this sorted out.

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    Pat Cooney
    Community Engineer
    ProntoForms
    community@prontoforms.com
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