Delete a Proforma Form through automation

[Matt Steadman]

I know that you can create a Proforma Form through automation. Can you delete a form through automation?

We have a workflow step that if entered into, the form is no longer relevant. Is there a way to have that form delete without the user manually having to do so?

Thanks

[Peter Preston · Accepted solution]

Hi Matt,

There isn't a way to automate that right now. We've investigated this with Automation and scripts, but don't have a workaround yet. To my knowledge, there isn't an option for this in the API Documentation via REST API either.

I've added this to our internal product board and let the product manager know. If I have any updates on this I'll holler back at you.

Thanks,

Peter

UPDATE: Something else to consider here is that you may not need the info captured in the form once the issue transitions to a certain status, but would there be any audit concerns? 

[David Stokes]

@Peter Preston - is there an update on this?

BTW - my use case is that I want to replace an existing form to ensure that the issue has the latest version of the form.  So I was going to just delete it then the next time the form is added, it will be the latest version of the form.

[Peter Preston]

Thanks for your question, @David Stokes

I may not fully understand the use case, but would updating the original form work instead of replacing the form entirely? 

Or are you saying that the form template (i.e.: the questions you're asking) itself needs to be updated?

[David Stokes]

Hi @Peter Preston 

My understanding is when a form is added to a Jira record, it's the form as it was at that point in time.  If I go and modify that form, eg: add some more fields, if I go into that same Jira record, the form will not have those extra fields.  So in that case I need to delete the form and add it manually in order to get to those extra fields. 

Thanks
David

[Peter Preston]

Gotcha! Yes, the form is a point-in-time record of the questions asked. If you update the form template to include new questions you will need to update it on each issue where you want users to see the most up-to-date questions.

That automation is not available at the moment. This is on the product backlog, but I'm not able to say if/when it will be developed. 

If you're updating the form template on an issue, are you going back to the requestor to re-fill the form? I'd like to understand your requirement so I can share this back to the product team.

[David Stokes]

The scenario is that we might be partway through a process and something changes in the process meaning that we need to go back and update the data on the form.  I know now how to reopen an existing form on an issue and in most cases that should be fine.  But there will be cases that since the form was originally filled in, we may have modified the form, particularly when the process is still evolving.  It's just creating extra work having to go through them and delete and re-add the form

Happy to provide more details.

[Peter Preston]

Thanks for sharing that, @David Stokes. How would you trigger an automation to replace the older forms? Put differently, would you modify your workflow to trigger this kind of automation? 

[David Stokes]

@Peter Preston there will be somewhere in the workflow and logic that would then kickoff an automation to go back to the previous step.

[Peter Preston]

Thanks @David Stokes 

I'll flag this with the product team. 

[Julian Governale]

@Peter Preston Just wanted to provide a use case for our scenario as well to be considered for the development team.

We have strict privacy requirements we need to adhere to and most are around retention periods of data. Some of our shipping forms used by our facilities department will capture shipping information such as recipient name and address.  We love to use forms for the conditional sections as we ship locally and internationally which requires a lot of different fields to be filled in.  With the forms, we do link them to Jira fields so we capture the information in the fields. 

Using automation, after a period of time we can remove the values of the field or redact them but with the forms, we can't update those forms values and resubmit via automation for example so we would love the ability to delete the forms so we can completely ensure that we have removed the aspects privacy requires us to remove.  

In the area's that we need to redact, we have had to revert to not using forms which isnt the best experience for our customers, so if this functionality becomes available, we would instantly go back to using our forms and build out more. 

[James Park]

Is there a schedule to add the feature to delete a form by automation rule?

[Nathan Panuco]

If you want this feature, here's the open suggestion - vote on it! [JSDCLOUD-12023] Forms Automation: Action to trigger Delete Form (Proforma Forms) - Create and track feature requests for Atlassian products.