Form Design Fundamentals

Prerequisites for Form Creation

Prior to any form creation the following must be available within the myosh environment.

• Access to the Advanced Form Editor (only available on Custom tier)
• Access to Groups (refer to System Administrator section)
• Access to a module to store the form
• Hierarchy structure created (refer to System Administrator section)
• Risk Matrix Defined, if required (refer to System Administrator section)

Best Practices to improve performance and speed

The way you design your form can impact loading times. Consider these best practices:

1. Don't make forms too big. Forms with many sections and fields can have poor usability and performance. Avoid nonessential fields and functionality.
2. Don't make forms too processing-intensive. Using many or complex section access control rules and visibility conditions can cause slow performance.
3. Design forms around specific tasks with a sensible workflow and navigation. Break up elements into subforms where appropriate. Present the most-needed information on the parent form and move secondary information to subforms linked via RECORDLINK fields. While subforms use lazy loading, many RECORDLINK fields on a parent form can still affect load times as some subform data is needed for the table display.
4. Be aware that some field types impact performance more than others. Simple fields like TEXTFIELD or LINK are fastest. Fields generating selection lists (MULTISELECT, OPTIONGROUP) are moderately fast, though many options can slow them. Data-intensive fields like RISKRATING, PERSONFIELD, and RECORDLINK are the slowest due to data fetching and security rule processing. PERSONFIELDs have some lazy loading.
5. Forms are currently fully rendered even if sections are hidden, so hidden sections still impact load times. However, streamline initially visible fields using section access control.
6. Restrict user accounts to load less data. Accounts with fewer roles or tighter hierarchy access will load less data (e.g., fewer sections, users in PERSONFIELDs, records in RECORDLINKs), improving performance. Note that "Ignore Hierarchy Access Restriction" on fields like PERSONFIELD can override this for those specific fields.
7. Build prototypes to validate designs. Test forms in OTE with test data and various user accounts, as administrator accounts typically load more data and may be slower.
8. Other causes of slow forms can include geographical location or device/browser issues. Network latency can occur if accessing servers from distant locations. Device issues can stem from inadequate processing power/memory or resource competition from other applications. Browser issues can arise from resource-heavy plug-ins/extensions or too many open tabs. Mitigate by closing unnecessary applications, uninstalling unused browser add-ons, restarting browsers/devices, and keeping software updated.