Developing Your Organizations Form Lifecycle Strategy

The Importance of the Form Lifecycle

In the context of a Youreka implementation, a robust Form Lifecycle Strategy is essential for maintaining database hygiene, optimizing the Youreka Mobile user experience, and ensuring data integrity.

By defining clear processes for every stage in a form’s lifecycle: Creation, Completion, Locking, and Archiving, organizations can reduce data storage burdens, streamline workflows, increase solution adoption and improve mobile app performance.

A well-planned strategy implemented at the beginning of your organization's Youreka deployment will not only address current needs, but also ensures scalability and adaptability for future growth. The following article provides an introduction to the topic along with brief explanations of some considerations to think through when developing your organization's own Form Lifecycle. 

The attached PDF also provides a more detailed breakdown of each stage of the Form Lifecycle and actionable steps to implement them effectively.

The 4 Form Lifecycle Stages

 

The Create Stage

This stage focuses on generating forms tailored to organizational workflows. Proper planning ensures forms are created efficiently and reach users at the right time.

Key considerations at this stage

The Organizations Data Collection Needs: Identify specific forms required for tasks (e.g., asset inspections or installations for a Work Order).

What Triggers Form Creation: Decide when forms should be generated (e.g., Service Appointment scheduling, Work Order status updates).

Creation Methodology: Determine whether forms are created manually, in bulk, via automation or a collection of all three methods.

Best Practices for the Create stage:

1. Define Criteria for Form Creation
   
   • Use business logic to decide what types of forms are generated for specific scenarios (e.g., generating different forms based on Work Order Work Types like "Inspection" or "Installation").
2. Automate Creation & Distribution
   
   • Use Salesforce automation tools like Flows or Apex triggers to automatically create forms based on defined triggers (e.g., when a Service Appointment is scheduled create these Forms).
   • Assign Mobile Shares or Form Record ownership to those responsible with submitting Youreka Forms.
3. Batch Creation for Scale
   
   • Implement batch processes for creating large volumes of forms. This is ideal for organizations managing hundreds of forms daily.
4. Empower Users for Manual Creation
   
   • Equip users with tools like the Youreka Lightning Web Component or Mobile New Form buttons to create forms on-demand when decisions require human judgment.

 

The Complete Stage

At this stage, forms are submitted by users. Efficient handling of these Forms and ensuring seamless downstream processes are critical.

Key considerations at this stage

What Happens to Unused Forms vs Submitted Forms? Have a plan for managing forms left incomplete or unused to avoid database clutter. Think about what should happen to a Form when it is Submitted.

Define Post-Submission Actions: Define what happens after a form is submitted (e.g., updating related records, triggering notifications).

Define User Access Upon Submission: Decide on access duration and editing ability post-submission.

Best Practices for the Complete stage:

1. Monitor and Manage Incomplete and Submitted Forms
   
   • Use automated processes like nightly batch jobs to identify and remove forms that haven’t been updated for a specified period.
   • Set the disco__Mobile_Available__c field to FALSE for such forms, ensuring they are removed from user devices.
   • For more straightforward use cases, Form Lifecycle settings can be set on the Form Template record (parent record of the Form) to handle what happens to Forms after they are submitted.
2. Implement Downstream Automation
   
   • Use Salesforce Flows to trigger actions like updating a service appointment statuses upon Form submission, creating follow-up tasks or new Forms, or notifying stakeholders when a form is submitted.
   • Try to run any automation asynchronously to avoid delays in user interactions (such as with Queueable Apex or delayed Flow actions).
3. Define Post-Submission Access
   
   • Configure Mobile Availability to control whether users can edit submitted forms and for how long after they have been submitted. For instance, allow edits for a fixed time before moving to the Lock stage.

 

The Lock Stage

Locking ensures the integrity of submitted data by making forms no longer editable. This de-clutters the Youreka Mobile app of unneeded Forms and protects data accuracy.

Key considerations at this stage

Timing: Determine the criteria or triggers for locking forms (e.g., number of days after submission or upon Work Order completion).

Custom Locking Logic: Some organizations may require complex locking rules beyond the default settings. Consider when your organization needs to memorialize collected Form inputs and create automation to satisfy the requirement.

Unlocking Policies: Decide under what conditions (if any) Forms should be unlocked.

Best Practices for the Lock stage

1. Form Lifecycle Settings
   
   • Use Youreka’s lifecycle settings (located on the related Form Template record of a Form) to automatically lock forms after a predefined period
2. Custom Locking with Salesforce Automation
   
   • If needed create Flows or use custom code to lock forms based on custom business rules. For instance, lock all related forms when a Work Order status changes to Complete
3. Manage Exceptions with Unlocking
   
   • Allow administrative unlocking for special cases. Ensure that unlocking is tracked and performed only when necessary to maintain data integrity.

 

The Archive Stage

Archiving reduces the database footprint by compressing Answer records onto the parent Form record (in JSON format) and then deleting them. Archived Forms remain accessible for review but are not editable or reportable.

Key considerations at this stage:

Archiving Timeline: Decide how long Forms should remain locked before being archived.

Custom or  Declarative Archiving: Choose between lifecycle settings (declarative) for automatic archiving based on predetermined days after submission or custom automation for more complex needs.

Unarchiving Needs: Plan for rare cases where archived Form's related Answer records must be restored.

Best Practices for the Archive stage

1. Establish Archiving Timelines
   
   • Use lifecycle settings to specify the number of days after which locked Forms are archived.
2. Custom Archiving
   
   • Implement batch processes or trigger-based workflows for archiving Forms. For example, archive Forms marked that have been flagged for archiving using custom automation.
3. Unarchiving Forms
   
   • Allow reinstatement of archived Forms when necessary. Keep in mind that unarchiving reactivates Answer records, which may trigger associated automation.

 

Additional Considerations

Deleting Forms: Plan for handling erroneous or duplicate forms by implementing automated deletion processes tied to specific criteria (e.g., canceling a service appointment).

Data Storage Management: Regularly review and optimize data storage to maintain system performance. Running queries on Answer records specifically to find out how many of these records exist at any one time can be a good indicator of the data burden being placed on Salesforce by Youreka records. A robust Form lifecycle strategy implemented early should mitigate this issue from arising.

The following attached PDF is useful for understanding the above in more detail. Here we provide real world examples of how to solve for each of these stages and best practices used by many of our customers that have implemented Youreka successfully. We encourage you to download this resource and get hands on in a Sandbox environment to begin testing some of these solutions out!

The Youreka Form Lifecycle PDF Tutorial