progressive capture custom form skipping

[Ralf Peters]

Hi,

Just wanted to check if there is an ETA  for fixing the progressive capture problem when using custom forms, the problem were when used through the live.. portal  it skips all custom forms until it stops at the last one.

It works ( step-by-step)  when triggered through the service....  portal.

we were told during the switch-on that this was a known issue,  just wanted to know if there has been some progress ?

Thanks

Ralf

 

 

 

[Hornbill Staff DR]

Hi Ralf,

 there have been a couple of defect fixes released recently which have addressed some small aspects of this behaviour. We are aware that this is a key piece of functionality for many of our customers and are working on an alternative design to eliminate the skipping and ensure a better experience for all. This is being looked at with urgency.

Whether the recent minor fixes will improve your experience is dependent on how you have configured your Progressive Captures. To have better control of the form skipping, a workaround can be to mark the Standard (Blue) forms as being mandatory. This is done on a per-form basis via the Progressive capture design canvas.
With regards to the Custom (Purple) Pro Cap forms, where possible we advise including at least one mandatory field on the form which is set in the field configuration. 

I appreciate that there are a few forms where it may not be relevant to enforce a value, but at present this is the best solution until we deliver an improved design.

I hope that is some help for now.
Dan

[Martyn Houghton]

We are also experiencing the issue with Progressive Capture skipping custom forms where there is no mandatory field present on the custom form.

Is there any further update on this?

We are on Service Manager  2.27.17

Cheers

Martyn

 

[Kelvin]

Just to let you know we are experiencing the same issue.

[Gerry]

All,

We have been looking at improving the way this works and should have a good progress update early next week for you, its on our priority list and being actioned. 

Gerry

[Steven Boardman]

All,

Following on from Gerry's post, in order to address the skipping forms and a few related issues we need to make a few changes to progressive capture and how it handles the transition from one progressive capture to another.  This work is in progress and ongoing so please be assured this is a high priority and is being treated as such.  

The required changes include introducing new configuration options in the progressive capture designer, and as such we need to ensure the wider progressive capture behaviour is maintained whilst also providing a solution to this specific issue.  We appreciate this could be causing some inconvenience. 

We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible, and updates with will be posted here as we make progress on getting these changes completed and released. 

Regards

Steven

[Ralf Peters]

Hi ,

is there any progress with this  as it is still happening  ?

 

Thanks

Ralf

[Guest Chaz]

@Ralf Peters we'll be doing some more extensive testing next week and hope to have the changes included in one of the next couple of releases.

[Melissa Gurney]

I would just like to add that this is an issue that we are also experiencing and have had to use the mandatory fields as a workaround.

Any update on progress with this is appreciated.

Thanks,

Melissa

[Lyonel]

Same here. Also have the problem and used the workaround for the time being, but it is not ideal.

[Steven Boardman]

Hi @Lyonel @Melissa Gurney @Ralf Peters @Kelvin @Martyn Houghton

To Update you on this topic there have been a couple of changes now which will improve the behaviour of Progressive Capture and issues like the skipping of forms. 

1. On custom forms there is now a Never Skip option which can be set to True, this will ensure the custom form is not skipped when progressive through the Progressive Capture flow or when switching from one progressive capture to another (typically when using the Services Details Form, and selecting a Catalog Item and switching to the Progressive Capture linked to that item). 

The behaviour here was to evaluate which forms where used in the original progressive capture, and needed to be loaded again, and where the progressive capture should stop in the second progressive capture flow.  Contributing factors to the skipping issues included the marking of custom questions as mandatory, but the use of a default value, or using a date type question, and setting the date to 'Today'.  Both of these resulted in the progressive capture assuming that an answer  had been provided and skipping the form (this was not the only cause).

2. The Above behaviour came about due to the need to evaluate and calculate which forms to skip typically when moving from or replacing one progressive capture form with another (when choosing a request catalog  item typically).  To remove the skipping issue, we have introduced a new Switch Process node into the Progressive Capture designer. 

When configured and used, this will now not replace one progressive capture with another, and have to calculate which forms to skip, but instead it will continue from the initial progressive capture smoothly into the next progressive capture, typically when choosing a request catalog item from the Service Details PC form.  

* There is no form of evaluation requried when continuing from one PC to the next to decide if forms need to be skipped (so the new Never Skip flag on custom forms is not needed in this case).

* When moving from one PC to the next PC, any PC forms already used in the first PC will simply be ignored in the PC you move too.

* There is no need to have the same PC form in both PC's - for example the Customer Search PC form, however if it does exist in both it will simply be ignored

* Because with this approach you will not be replacing one PC with another PC, the right hand side UI in progressive capture will not be jumpy

* It will be possible to return to the Services Details PC form once a Catalog item has been chosen, and for the user to change which catalog item they wish to use (this was not possible with the previous behaviour and swapping Progressive Capture's).

* Using the new Switch Process node will require the analysts to click Next when choosing a catalog item from the Service Details form. 

I have created a short video to better show some of the existing challenges, and how the new Never Skip option and the Switch Process nodes can be used, how they are configured and the improvements they will bring. 

In addition there is more information on the wiki here about both new features.  https://wiki.hornbill.com/index.php/Progressive_Capture_Workflow#Switch_Process

Finally we have one additional change we will be looking to introduce soon which will allow you to choose if you wish to enforce the selection of a catalog item from the Services Details PC from rather than allowing the selection of the parent service.  This will be an optional setting and once this change is available we will update this post.

I hope this information is useful and addresses the issues you have reported. 

Thanks

Steve

 

[Kelvin]

@steven boardmanPerfect exactly what we were looking for.