Blog Post

Happy Holidays from forms2mobile

Written by Jamie
December 13, 2018
Happy Holidays from forms2

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Happy Holidays form forms2mobile

We’ve got another round of new features landing over the next couple of weeks, including our last 2018 update for our native mobile apps. It’s been a busy year for us and we’re finishing 2018 with a bang steadily and methodically as always 😉

We’ll be releasing another update in January with a few additional features that that didn’t make it into this round.

 

SQL Connectors
For those of you that use Microsoft SQL Server, we’re adding some new Premium connectors to give you a direct connection to your server. Similar in function to our existing SQL Sync bolt on, the new connectors give you the ability to push form submissions and task templates, directly to your SQL server once they’ve been received from your mobile teams. A second connector will also go live for pulling rows from your SQL server directly into Data Sources.

Our focus has been towards Azure SQL Databases for this connector, this way no data ever leaves the Azure Data Centres. That being said, a connection to any SQL database, preferably cloud hosted, can be made. Those that have on-premise Microsoft SQL Servers should still consider our SQL Sync Bolt-On as this provides additional security and compatibility with DMZ’s, making sure your database isn’t publicly exposed.

Azure Active Directory Single Sign-On and Ping Identity
Support for Single Sign-On and User Provisioning through Azure AD and Ping Identity Services is coming soon. Working closely with a customer on a Shared Project, these new integrations will line up next to our existing Okta Single Sign-On connector.

Datasource Driven Tables
After not making the grade for our Shoot for the Moon update, we’re continuing to work out the kinks for our tables upgrade. November was a very busy time for us so we’re doubling down on our efforts in December with a view to a second take for the release in January.

Upgrades to Tasking Engine
We continue to spread our coding love across the platform with a bunch of updates to our Tasking Engine. The new Task Map page will provide a geographic overview of tasks that are current. These can further be filtered by User, Date or Job Type. As with all our new features we’ll be updating this new page based on user feedback.

You asked, we listened, we spent longer than anticipated building it. The ability to assign Tasks to Groups of users will finally be switched on. This allows the first user of a group to “claim” a task (first in) rather than having it assigned to them. In addition to this we’ll be adding the option for all users in a group to complete the task. We’re shipping both options separately, All Users option will ship in December, followed in January by the First In option.

Notification Area Upgrades
I’m sure you’ve noticed the new notifications options? We’re continuing to add new features here with the addition of a new Notifications Page. This will give you a helicopter overview of notices and history for connectors etc. The next feature is long overdue and has been asked for by lots of customers, soon to be live, email notifications! Yep, if any errors occur you can now notify members of your team or pass the email straight into your fault management system.

Multiple Connections of the Same Type
Despite our best efforts this feature, like our Datasource Driven Tables above, didn’t make it into our Shoot for the Moon update. We’ll be shipping this feature as part of our Enterprise Toolkit Bolt-On, giving you options to create multiple connections of the same type. Great for those who have multiple SharePoint or FTP instances for example.

Generating unique numbers across Forms
Given the offline nature of our mobile apps, it’s always been a little tricky to generate unique numbers for form submissions. For those use cases where offline is a key requirement, our formula based options can still be used for device side generation. For those online use cases we’re adding the option to generate custom numbers for form entries, platform side. This guarantees that numbering will be unique and consistent across form entries.

 

Other Bits & Bobs

  • New Clone Connector option, this will, you guessed it, clone the existing connector and all it’s settings.
  • Datasource driven Choices Fields now have the ability to specify a sort order.
  • Amazon S3 Connector will now have support for formulae for the Bucket Name option.
  • For PDF outputs we’re adding the ability for Clickable Images. You’ll be able to click on an image within the generated PDF and view the full size image in a browser window.
  • Similar to sending cURL based “application/x-www-form-urlencoded” requests, we’re adding “URL Encoded” option to our REST connectors.
  • XMLVAL() formula function is gaining support for XML attributes.
  • Our new REST field type is getting an early new feature. We’re adding support for non 200 HTTP responses. This will help with handling error responses from other external services.
  • For App-as-a-Service customers we’ve finalised our support for Fast and Slow release tracks.

Compatibility Improvements & Fixes

  • Fix : occasional dropdown layout and sync overlay issues on iPad devices.
  • Improvement : During form entry, when using the “force sync” action, improved handling and re-loading of Datasource rows.
  • Fix : Layout issue for image annotation button on iPhone X devices.
  • Improvement : validation summaries will now include Action field names whenever a button push is required.
  • Fix : when the “force Sync” action is configured to not save changes, stop auto-saving the form entry.
  • Improvement : Better display long descriptions for Icon Board’s and Icons.
  • Improvement : New splash screen sizing for iPhone X devices.
  • Improvement : New exception handling if the app does not have permission to write media files to local device gallery.
  • Improvement : resolved layout differences for Action Button placement between Android and iOS devices (Android now matches iOS).
  • Fix : prevent app from crashing when image watermark formula is not specified in the field properties.

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