Form Sessions

This section of iCM lists active and saved form sessions. You can also delete sessions and the cached form definition they are using.

Overview

When a form is published its design, including all of the fields and their properties, is saved as a form definition.

Whenever a form is displayed to a user, a unique form session is created for them. A form session maintains the current state of the form, including variables, values entered onto previous pages, validation results, and anything else needed to make the form work.

When a form session starts it uses a copy of the latest version of the form definition which is cached in the database. This cached definition is used by the form session until the session ends (ie the form is submitted or a saved session is deleted). This creates a direct relationship between a user, their form session, and the form they have started to fill out.

If you publish an update to an existing form, a new form definition is created. New form sessions will use the newly published form definition, whereas existing form sessions will continue to use the cached versions (a cached version is removed when the final session using it ends).

That means you can safely publish updates to forms without disrupting existing users and their partially completed forms. However it also means that users who are part way through filling out a form (either actively completing the form or going back to a saved copy) won't see the updates you have published.

Clearing Sessions

There could be situations where the changes you make to a form design are so critical that you want to immediately delete all cached versions of the form definition. The Forms Sessions section of the iCM Management menu lets you manage cached form definitions.

The list includes all of the currently cached form definitions and a count of the sessions using them. Right-click and delete an item in the list to remove it from the cache. You can also use the "Select" button to find the form you are interested in.

Deleting an item from the list removes all cached versions of the form definition and deletes all of the form sessions that use it. Users partway though completing the form will be returned to page 1. Forms saved to complete later will be deleted.

Unpublishing or Deleting Forms

When you unpublish or delete a form, all cached versions of the definition and any form sessions using it are deleted.

Object Type Definitions

A published form also creates a corresponding Object Type Definition (see the Forms and External Type Definitions for more information about forms and objects). If you add, remove, or rename the fields on a form, the underlying Object Type Definition will change. 

Changes to a form's type definition won't be reflected in existing sessions. This isn't a problem in most cases - a form that saves data to history, interacts with workflow processes, sends emails, or performs other actions will behave normally.

You should take care if your form uses the Database Save Action. This action field saves a form submission as an iCM object. If you remove or rename a field in an underlying type definition that is still present in an existing session, the data in that field won't be saved when the existing session is submitted.