Danger Replacing a Custom Form (Project Object Type)?

[TimBa4]

I've made significant changes to one of our custom forms (request object type). I thought the easiest thing to do would be to just export it as a project object type and replace the older version of that form. But do I lose anything crucial history-wise if I do that? Thanks!

[skyehansen · Accepted solution]

If you add the new form to all your existing projects, and then remove the old form or somehow delete it, then you only lose all the answers that people gave to old fields that were on the old form (that you've chosen not to put on your new form).

Users seem to disagree on whether or not this is crucial (history-wise). On one hand, they are no longer interested in capturing the information. On the other hand, they used to be interested.

We usually keep the old form information around for some length of time (say, a couple of months) but make the visibility admin-only. This way they figure out real quick what they're missing and it's still retrievable. Else we give them the option to download the goodies before we remove the old form.

Good luck!

[TimBa4]

Good insight, Skye. Thank you!

This new custom form is just an enhancement of the old one and is solely additive in terms of fields. I didn't remove any existing fields when modifying the request-side form—I just wanted to avoid the trouble of having to add all those same fields one-by-one on the project-side form. So, I thought, "Why not just delete that old form and export this request form as a project-type?"

Based on your advice, it sounds like as long as those same fields persist in the new form, I don't lose any of their historical entries. Is that right?

Thanks again!

[skyehansen]

it’s true — if you attach the new form and delete the old on your objects, you won’t lose data. I recommend testing in the sandbox for your first time.

it can also be nice leaving the old objects alone just to be able to have that delineation of “here’s when we started collecting the data differently”. 

And, as you accumulate more objects in the system you might find the admin overhead of constant updating becomes prohibitive.

Definitely a lot of pros and cons to consider!