Reuse Forms

You can reuse forms from the Forms Palette and use them either as reference or as copy in the forms that you build in Process. When you reuse a form as a reference, you can’t change the properties or layout of the controls inside the form. When you reuse a form as a copy, all the controls inside the reused form get converted into single controls. You can modify and update these controls like other controls in your web form.

To reuse forms:

1. Go to the Forms Palette. You can see the forms loaded into it.

   If the form that you want to reuse isn’t available in the Forms Palette, search for it. Click the search icon in the Forms Palette and type the form’s name in the search field. If no forms in your application match the search, you will get a message stating this. Otherwise, the form gets loaded into the Forms Palette.

2. From the Forms Palette, drag and drop the form onto the canvas.

   You can drop the form onto any part of the canvas. The layout of the reused form is preserved but depending on where you drop the form some panels may get added to it to maintain the form’s layout.

3. By default, use the dropped form as a reference.

   The reused form becomes a single control in the canvas and you can’t change the properties of the controls inside the reused form.

   • If Auto Binding is enabled, then a new type will be created in the form data definition. The data definition structure will be same as that of the reused form but it will be bound to the form that is built by you.

   • If Auto Binding is disabled, then a warning icon will be displayed and it will indicate that the control is unbound. Define binding for the referenced form in the Binding field under General tab of the Properties pane. See Bind Form Data with Controls.

4. Optionally, click Detach on top of the referenced form.

   This will convert all the controls of the referenced form into single controls. You can modify and update these controls like other controls in your form.

   This can be helpful when you want only certain parts and don’t want some parts of a reused form. You can delete the unwanted controls and reuse only the controls that you want in building your web form.

Note:

• When you detach an embedded (referenced) form on another form’s UI, the controls corresponding to the embedded form appear as separate entities on the UI, but the data attributes related to these controls continue to be mapped under the data attribute of the embedded form. However, if you add a new control to the detached embedded form’s section, the new control and its data attribute are treated as a part of the referencing form.

• Additionally, once an embedded form is detached on another form’s UI, new controls added at the source of the embedded form aren’t reflected on the referencing form’s UI. However, the data attribute of the embedded form reflects this change in the referencing form’s data definition section. The referencing form and its associated process task use this updated data attribute.