Continue Forms Later - Disrupted by the clearance of form cahces?

  • IanFlint
    Asked on January 26, 2017 at 6:37 AM

    We are now finding that in the CMS Internal Form the respondents are unable to revisit the form and submit the information.  All we get through is their contact details.  I have checked the setup of the form and is allowing them to revisit.  Could this have happened when you cleared the form cache so that the forms are refreshed from your servers? 

     

    Original Thread

  • omerorkun JotForm Data Scientist
    Replied on January 26, 2017 at 7:09 AM

    Hi Ian,

    By "revisit" do you mean the feature called "Continue Forms Later" which is enabled on your form? This seems to be working fine. The incomplete submission data you receive should not be related with this. It seems like your users opted to leave rest of the fields on your form empty. 

    You can prevent this by marking your fields as required. As far as I see you do not have any required fields and your form is able to be submitted without filling any of the fields. 

    About the form caches, when they were cleared it is possible that the saved data of your users on their browsers may have lost. However, this does not affect the existing submission data, it only affects the filling process of your form through its link on a browser. I hope this helps. 

    Please contact us again if you need any further assistance.

  • IanFlint
    Replied on January 26, 2017 at 7:23 AM

    Many thanks.  So if the respondent was completing a form when you refreshed the server they might have had the original saved data deleted?  If so, if they revisit now and complete the form they should not have a problem I presume?  Many thanks  Ian

  • liyam
    Replied on January 26, 2017 at 7:29 AM

    Hello Ian,

    The continue forms later option should not be affected by the clearing of the forms cache, unless the fields from the old cache has a different label from a new one or there were changes on the form comparing the old and the new forms cache.

    The continue forms later option stores its data on the browser of the user via cookies, not from the server. So unless there is a change on the question label on the form's end, the information on the field should autofill the form as soon as the form user revisits the page. 

    If you need clarification on this matter, please let us know.

    Thanks.

  • IanFlint
    Replied on January 31, 2017 at 5:30 AM

    Unfortunately, I am still receiving messages from respondents such as the one below:

     

    Morning Ian,

     

     

    I went to update the internal questionnaire but we I click on the link I was taken to a blank form. Can you please advise how to retrieve the data I already input in the form?

    What is happening do you think?  This is the eighth one now.

    Many thanks  Ian

     

  • liyam
    Replied on January 31, 2017 at 5:42 AM

    Hello Ian,

    This may happen with a browser configuration which doe not store cookies. As a result, the cookie information would only store on the browser session. This means that when the browser gets closed, the cookies gets deleted. And so this would mean that there will be no information to retrieve.

    You can ask them for the type of browser that they are using so you will have an idea how to tell them the steps that they need to make to check and change their browser's cookie settings. After which, you can check google for ways how to enable cookies on their browsers.

    Here are quick links how for the common browsers available:

    http://www.wikihow.com/Enable-Cookies-in-Your-Internet-Web-Browser 

    If you have questions, please let us know.

     

  • IanFlint
    Replied on January 31, 2017 at 6:02 AM

    As it is a company computer and setup for them by IT they are not allowed to change anything.  I therefore tried converting to a PDF form and have the same problem reported before - it is not clear, some of the functions do not work etc.  I then tried pressing "View Form" and downloading in the same format but when opened and trying to complete the form, if you press one radial button all are highlighted.  This is really causing me big problems as my client is starting to lose patience.  Is there anything I can do? 

  • Boris
    Replied on January 31, 2017 at 6:20 AM

    There are two things that come to mind, Ian.

    1. One is that your users browser's may be clearing the cookies prematurely. The temporary data is saved within the cookies of the user's browser, and if they clear the cookies, they will also delete their partially filled out data on the form.

    There s no way for us to affect this first issue.

    2. The other thing that comes to mind is that your Auto Fill's Time To live option may be set to a shorter time than your users need to complete the form. Do you have an idea how long it took them to complete the submission, before the data got cleared?

    For this second possible issue, you can increase your Auto Fill's Time To Live option to something like 4 weeks, so that your users will have full 28 days to complete the form - depending of course that they do not clear their browser cookies in the meantime.

    To increase the Time To Live, you will need to access your form over our old interface, and append &old at he end of the URL. So if you usually use this URL to edit the form:

    https://www.jotform.com/index.php?formID=70123169779362

    You would use this link instead to access the old interface:

    https://www.jotform.com/index.php?formID=70123169779362&old

    In the old interface, you can edit the required setting by going to Preferences > Advanced Settings > Edit Auto Fill Settings, and changing Time To Live to 4 weeks:

    Continue Forms Later   Disrupted by the clearance of form cahces? Image 1 Screenshot 20

    Once you are done, please don't forget to save the changes, and after that you can revert back to our current user interface by using &reset instead of &old:

    https://www.jotform.com/index.php?formID=70123169779362&reset

    This will help increase Auto Fill saving time, but only for those cases where your users to don erase their browser cookies. I hope this helps, please let us know how it goes.