Scenario

Just like the Vehicle Identification Number for your car, your business process needs to uniquely identify the documents in your system. Unique IDs enable opening forms via links from a Web server or email message.

To prevent new forms from overwriting existing ones you'll want to name them on save or submit. Relying on your users to manually enter a name that is both meaningful and unique is not a good idea. Just like email subject lines, some users will have meaningful names and some won't. Consistency will not be kept if it isn't enforced and users may overwrite existing data without paying attention.

Value Proposition

qRules includes commands to support uniquely naming your form. You can access these commands via rules when your form is opened or submitted to automatically create a name. Automating the process of creating a unique name will also speed up the submit process since users won't have to type in a name.

Using rules to automate creating unique names for your forms is a best practice for the following reasons:

• Prevents users from overwriting existing data by mistake
• Enhances comprehension of form content
• Consistent names are easier for humans to parse
• Meaningful names can describe the contents of the form
• Eases migration of data since unique names can travel from server to server
• Better integration with other systems
• Links to open forms show more meaningful information about them
• Forms can be saved to server or database without fear of overwrites

This document will show you how you can uniquely identify your form using two techniques. As a bonus, we also show a related technique of how to randomize entries of a repeating section using Random Numbers.

Requirements

• qRules v2.3