New Features – Connectors, Tasks, Notices, and More

Kendall Kunz

New Features Available – March 2019

This month, several new and exciting features have been released. In case you missed the announcements in January, Premium Only Features were released and new Enterprise Toolkit Features were also announced. Reach out to us on engage@formsonfire.com or support@formsonfire.com with any questions about the following features.

Premium Only – Microsoft SQL Server Connector

A new set of Premium Edition direct connectors to Microsoft SQL Server are now available. Using a similar approach to Forms On Fire SYNC, we’ve provided connectors to push data from Forms and Tasks to a Microsoft SQL Server database, as well as a connector for pulling rows into Data Sources directly from a Microsoft SQL Server table.

The main target for this connector is the Microsoft Azure SQL Database (as this way all data stays within Azure data centers), however, a direct connection to any Microsoft SQL Server database (e.g. via Amazon RDS) will work. For on-premise cases, we believe Forms On Fire SYNC continues to be a more secure option, as SYNC provides DMZ compatibility, ensuring your on-premise database is not exposed to the internet.

First, you have to be sure that your database firewall has been configured to accept connections from platform servers. Review our support documentation for Platform IP address information.

In the field title “Connection String”, enter the SQL Server connection string to be used by connectors to access your database. Windows Authentication is NOT supported; you must include username and password credentials in the string. The SQL user specified MUST have at least db_ddladmin and db_datawriter database-level roles assigned. For the simplest configuration, grant db_owner role to the user.

Need to add two different Microsoft SQL Server databases? No problem, just press ADD CONNECTION after the first one is complete.

Premium Only – First Available Person

The ability to assign Task to the first available user is now live. When assigning a task to a user, if the First Available option is selected, the system will randomly assign this Task to the first ‘available’ app user. A user is considered to be available if they do not have any existing Tasks already scheduled during the start/end period of this new Task. This is useful for Tasks where any user can be assigned and saves time spent searching calendars for availability; instead the system smartly allocates this Task according to existing assignments.

Multiple Connections of the Same Type – Premium Only

This is one of the most requested features over the last 3 years and are pleased to announce its general availability for all Premium Edition accounts. This feature allows you to connect to multiple destinations on the same external service (e.g. multiple SharePoint instances or multiple Google accounts). When you have multiple Connections of the same type, you’ll see a Connections dropdown when you configure connectors, allowing you to specify which Connection to use when that connector executes. Additionally, you can now name your Connections and there’s also a helpful Clone option to quickly copy Connections.

Other Minor Improvements

Open URL in App – Open and view web pages within the app as opposed to launching a browser from your device. Very handy for in-app analytics.
Attach files during Create a Task from a Template flow.
Added ALL INCOMPLETE option to Task status filter in web dashboard.
Added Task Description property to Task Templates, allowing defaulting of new Tasks’ description to something other than the Template name during creation flow.
Adding support for formulae within Bucket Name option for Amazon S3 connector.
Adding “URL Encoded” option to REST connectors, which allows sending data similarly to cURL based “application/x-www-form-urlencoded” requests.

Fixes and Compatibility Improvements

Improved display of long description text lengths on icons in Icon Board screens
Fixed app crash when Task fails to open
Fixed inline validation on Windows
Fixed altitude display in Form fields
Sort Task Templates filter lists alphabetically in web dashboard