Often you will want to make changes to an existing published screen.
Our platform lets you do this by creating and publishing new versions of your Screens, allowing you to iterate your Screen designs based on user feedback rapidly.
The published version of a Screen is considered to be the current stable, production copy for all users, and the platform automatically pushes this version to your app users.
This great Publishing functionality has some risks but should you need to make any changes and test out the changes as you go.
If you were to publish a new Form design every time you want to test out some Screen changes, you would risk disrupting live users with a broken/incomplete Screen design.
Your users would also be capturing Form entries across many Form versions – this will make it challenging to track down entries in the Data area of the secure website. Additionally, you would have many different Form field configurations to cater to if you do any integrations.
Thus we strongly recommend you instead use our Test mode when you are developing/testing changes to a Form design.
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Test Mode
Test mode allows you to test and tweak your Screen changes during the design process. Instead of continuously publishing new versions to see the changes on your device, you simply save changes in the relevant Screen designer while in Test mode and then sync these changes to your device. Make more changes and test again without having to publish a new version of the screen every time.
It’s a simple and easy way to iterate on your design, figuring out formulae and other functionality you desire.
All you need to do is to hit the Manage Test button in the designer, then choose who will participate in the test.
Note, that the Manage Test option is only available on Screens that are in Draft status.
If you have a Published version, you will need to click on the New Version button. A new version of your screen will then be available in Draft status.
When you put a screen into Test mode, you must nominate the particular users that should see the Test version.
Often this might just be yourself as the designer, but you can also add more users later if you want to expand the testing group.
While a screen is put into Test mode, the Published version (if one exists) will remain visible to everyone else.
So you are free to change the screen design as much as you like, without fear of disturbing the stable production version of your screen. As long as the form is in Test Mode, your testers’ devices will update every time you save changes to the form design.
This makes it easy to make a change, save the design, and then jump over to your device to test it out.
The only thing you need to ensure is that an app synchronization occurs so that the changed design downloads to the device.
You can do this by simply sending the app to the background and bringing it back to the foreground. Otherwise, on the App’s Settings, click Force Sync.
Once you are done with your testing and have finalized the design changes, you’re ready to roll out the new version to all your users.
To do this, simply hit the Publish button – this will end the Test mode on your new version and set the version as being the current Published copy.
Rollback to a previous Form version
If a situation arises where too many changes have been made to a form in test mode, and you need the form to look and behave the way it did before all the changes, or you simply want to roll back to a previous version.
You can achieve this on the Settings page of a form, where you can view the form’s Version History on the right.
By selecting an archived, published, or draft version of the form, the context of the Settings page will change to that version.
Note, the selected version will display after the form's title at the top left of the page.
Now, simply export that form’s version (XLSX spreadsheet) and import it into the new version you’re working on that will be in draft status.
If you’re unsure of the design of a particular version, while in the context of that version, you can select the option Design at the top left to view the form and make sure it’s the version you want.
Disable Required Fields
When testing out a screen with numerous required fields and all you’re trying to test is a particular/newly added functionality. The ability to disable all required fields can come in handy, allowing you to swiftly navigate and test out specific functionality without having to fill out required fields or disable each required field’s property.
For testing purposes, when assigning test users to a screen, the Manage Test option Run Required Checks disables all required field value validation to allow for faster testing of large Form designs. This feature is only available while your Form design is in Test mode. All checks will be run when the Form is published.
