Hi everyone... I wanted to let everyone know that the 2.7 release has been in development over the last few months and the finishing touches are currently in development. We will be adding the Dynamic Forms 2.7 beta release to BetaSprings.com within the next week and will be working on the new user guide within the next few weeks.
I wanted to cover some of the specific enhancements directly related to this release. A few of these enhancements are also included in some of the additional patches for the 2.6 release, and there are also a few that are specifically new to 2.7.
Here are a few upcoming features:
Drag Drop Feature -from the main form page (not manage questions/settings) you will now be able to:
- Drag and drop existing fields throughout the form to change the sort order of the current field.
- Drag and drop existing fields to the recycle bin, which will temporarily delete the field until you either restore the field from a new recycle bin area, or you empty the recycle bin
- Drag and drop existing fields to the new / clone field icon, this option will copy the current field (including field properties, options, and settings) and create a copy of that field for the form
- Drag and drop new field icons (there are now new field icons right above the current form) where you can drag each form field either onto the form, or to the new / clone field icon to create the field. If the field is dropped onto the form itself it will be added based on the sort order of where it was dropped
New Recycle Bin
- Now when deleting form fields, form completion events, and form question events, the fields will be added to the recycle bin. The form fields will not be displayed within the form to be available anywhere except the recycle bin.
- From within the recycle bin menu item you will be able to select form fields, events, and question events that you would like to 'restore'. This feature is useful in case you accidentally deleted an object or would like to restore an object you previously used. From within this page you can also empty the recycle bin. This feature works similar to the DNN Core recycle bin, only specific to each form instances objects
Initial Binding Feature / updating SQL events assistance
- New features have now been added within module configuration that allow you to 'bind' fields either all of the time, or based on a querystring variable. This new feature will allow you to retrieve all form fields values initially upon form load from a SQL statement. From within the SQL statement you will simply retrieve table columns that represent the form fields short field names. The binding feature can optionally be executed based on a querystring variable.
- New 'assistance' features have been added to the Dynamic SQL Events section of the form completion events configuration section. These assistance areas provide templates for users wanting to use Dynamic Forms for more workflow and for building more applications using Dynamic Forms. For example, inserting data into a custom table, editing records, deleting records, and maintaining records. With these assistance / wizards you can easily build more complex and dynamic applications using Dynamic Forms. New demonstrations are currently in the works that will showcase this feature and will include full how-to and tutorial's.
Advanced Field Wizard
- The advanced field wizard allows you to maintain specific actions against a number of fields within the module instance.
- Example: Each form field can now be maintained as a 'group' setting. Within the advanced field wizard you can now select 'Required Field' and select 15 fields on the form at one time. This advanced wizard is much quicker as you would not need to go in and edit each individual field to set the required field property. Other examples would include setting multiple fields at a time to be hidden until completion event, help text, default values, example text, or other properties such as passing the field via a querystring or any other property.
New / Update Image Properties (also available in latest 2.6 patch release)
- New image property attributes allow image fields to be relative or fixed thumbnails.
- New image property attributes allow fields to automatically be displayed via a preview option. The preview option can be displayed automatically (after the user selects the file when choosing browse, or based on a link or image button next to the image / browse field).
Updated PayPal Debugging (also available in latest 2.6 patch release)
- Updated release information to post debug information for PayPal IPN responses.
- You can now view each PayPal IPN post received from PayPal under Admin, Event Viewer. You will need to first enable 'Debug Info' from within the Event Viewer module menu before these events appear.
These are just a few of the new enhancements coming along with the 2.7 release. We cannot give an exact release date yet but you should expect this to be released around early late August or early September. Customers who have purchased 2.6 release will receive 70% off (free within 30 days of purchase) and if you have purchased the the most recent collection package you will already receive the latest version.
Have any questions? We would love to hear them!
-Chad