Big Bend Release

Kendall Kunz

Customization is BIG in the Big Bend Release

The Forms On Fire platform is known for its depth and breadth of customization options. Are you ready for even more options in the Big Bend release? We named this release after America's national park located in West Texas bordering Mexico. The park has national significance as the largest protected area of Chihuahuan Desert topography and ecology in the United States. The park protects more than 1,200 species of plants, more than 450 species of birds, 56 species of reptiles, and 75 species of mammals. Like our newest release, Big Bend is truly a scenic area of amazing features.

Render Custom Layers and Polygons on your Maps

Many of our clients are using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to create their own maps of key land areas, complete with detailed information layers on top. Layers can provide everything from soil composition, hydrological data, and even stoplights. Having this information in a GIS is great, but what if you need that information out in the field?


The platform will soon make this possible with new "Overlay With Geo Data" properties that will be added to the Mapping Designer and Form Designer. Now you will be able to render polygons and other data layers on top of map locations right inside the Forms On Fire app.


The capability will be driven by Keyhole Markup Language (KML), which defines the layers and their display elements. You will be able to import static KML text directly into the new Overlay property, or dynamically acquire the KML from Data Sources or Form fields by using a formula.


We are really looking forward to seeing what you create with this new option.

Use Custom Tile Sources for Map Display

Currently the maps displayed in the Forms On Fire app are driven by the default "tile source" including Apple Maps on iOS, Google Maps on Android, and Thurderforest map tiles for Windows.


If you are one of those GIS users, you likely already have the ability to generate your own custom map tiles, embedded with extra data points such as contouring. But even if you don't use a GIS, there are many mapping providers around that can provide a variety of defined maps which may be useful for your workers. An example might be to use a highly detailed satellite imagery, not something we can provide due to cost, but may be a game-changer for your team.


That is why we are releasing a new "Mapping Tile Source" option which you can set at the organization level as a default, as well as at the Screen level. With this new ability, you will specify the URL to your custom tile source, and the app will display maps using those tiles accordingly.


Like rendering custom layers and polygons, we are really looking forward to seeing how you use these custom tile sources.

Full Control Over the App Title Bar

Now that the v6 app engine is complete, you may have noticed that the app adopts the same navigation and layouts for the top title bar across all devices. Previously, Android differed somewhat from iOS for its layouts.


What did not change with v6 was that Form screens were still locked in terms of being able to change the top right buttons of the title bar. These were strictly controlled by the app engine to provide default page navigation within the Form entry. Also, the left-most button was locked down on all Screen types to ensure users always had an Exit capability to get out of the Screen.


The locked-down behavior was not an issue for most use cases. But it also restricted some new an interesting uses of the app, particularly in terms of providing drill down behaviors from one Screen to the next. There were also scenarios where a power user wanted to use a different approach for Screen navigation that did not rely on the title bar to provide options like Exit.


If you were one of those power users, the good news is that we are now unlocking these title bar areas for you to customize. All four title button slots will now be editable in all Screen type designers, including Forms. We know that this may result in a few of you forgetting to provide Exit or other navigations, but remember, with great power comes great responsibility. 😄

User Interface Improvements

Various cosmetic and user interface improvements are also on the way, which provide for some handy functionality tweaks. We hope these make the platform more intuitive for you!


Dropdown Buttons for a Cleaner UI

In the top right corner of the Form designer sit five very large buttons. We'll be the first to admit that they haven't aged well.


To make the platform more functional and visually appealing, we are folding these buttons into a dropdown. They'll be in the same place, super easy to find, and a lot less clunky looking. We'll be looking to make similar improvements to other screens that suffer from the "too many buttons" syndrome.


Relocating Various Action Buttons

On the Screens view of the web portal that shows all your screens, the "Organize" and "Manage" buttons are all the way over to the right, next to the "Add New" button. This is fine once you get used to it, but what if you don't get used to it? 😮


In a further effort to clean up the UI and create a more intuitive user experience, those buttons will be moved over closer to the table containing your Screens/Apps so they will be within easier reach.


Form Page Links

Having to hover over rows on the Screens page to find the options: Settings, Design, Connect, and Clone is not always obvious. Because of this, we are fixing this by adding always-visible icons to represent these actions. This allows quicker navigation and provides a more intuitive user experience. For Design, just click on the name of the screen.


New Icon Column on Task Recurring Template

Currently, there is no way to assign icons to the Excel Task Recurring Template. This can cause a situation where every uploaded task is defaulted to an icon that is not desirable for a particular task. We recognize that this may cause a lot of manual work, so we are working on a fix to avoid the time lost in editing.


Adding Access Permissions to User Imports

When importing a user via an Excel template, you may specify the Access Level, such as Read-Only, User, Enterprise Admin, etc. Though this works well, it does not allow more specific permissions for each user, this will be added to save you time in editing individual users after import.


Revised Locked Form Flow

Currently when you lock a Form, it takes the Form out of Test mode. This is changing so that you can keep testing while preventing others from making changes. Only the user that locked the Screen can edit, but Admins will also be able to unlock screens to prevent potential "forever locked" scenarios.

New API Endpoints and Methods

Adding API Methods to Extend Screen Searches

The Screens endpoint, v2/screen/form, currently supports Form screens. Support for the various other screens are being added. These include:

  • /v2/screen/detail/search - Returns the Published version of matching Details Screens or all versions of a single specified Detail Screen
  • /v2/screen/iconboard/search - Returns the Published version of matching Icon Boards or all versions of a single specified Icon Board
  • /v2/screen/list/search - Returns the Published version of matching Listing Screens or all versions of a single specified Listing Screen
  • /v2/screen/map/search - Returns the Published version of matching Map Screen or all versions of a single specified Map Screen


This means you'll soon be able to search for all screen types!


Making FormEntry/Search Properties Optional

Currently, the /v2/formentry/search API requires a FormExternalID or FormID to be passed into it for results. With this update, the FormID and FormExternalID will be optional, allowing you to run a search based on only a Date filter. This would be very useful if you have a quick question such as "how many forms were submitted last month. An example might look like this:


https://secure.formsonfire.com/api/v2/formentry/search?CompanyId=XXXXX&IntegrationKey=YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY&&&&FromDate=2022-10-01&ToDate=2022-10-31&&&&&&&PageSize=1


This is where XXXXX = your Company ID, and Y = your Integration Key. Very handy for quickly showing you how many form entries were created during a particular date range. (Please note: if you are a private label Website-as-a-Service account or on our EU server, you will need a different domain/URL.)


GET Repository/Search: Add Screen Name

Currently, neither the Screen Name nor the External ID is part of the API. This will allow users to specify the Screen Name or the External ID to search via the repository/search (GET) API.


Folder API Endpoints - v2/folder

The Folders API currently only has a GET endpoint that supports searching folders. The following additional Folder API endpoints are being added:

  • GET v2/folder/search - finds all the Folders matching the given criteria
  • GET v2/folder - return the Folder matching the given parameters as well as the contents of the Folder
  • PUT v2/folder - add items to a Folder
  • POST v2/folder - create a new Folder
  • DELETE v2/folder - deletes a Folder

Maintenance Items

The following is a quick list of general maintenance items and bug fixes. There will likely be more items on this list when Big Bend is released.


  • Fix File Renaming bug
  • Sort Salesforce Connector Fields
  • Section fields Visibility not taken into account on export (new layouts)
  • Cater for Nulls Sorting in SQL Pagination
  • iOS 16 Devices unable to close Captured Video Preview
  • "Run required apps" won't remove all previous answers
  • OCR Field "Copy to Device Gallery" crashes Android App when processing the photo.
  • OCR Field "On Capture Action" doesn't work for Windows App
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