Deleting forms the safe way

Normally, FORMS allows users to delete forms (FORMS Help topic) during the verification process. In some cases, it can be dangerous to allow this. Consider:

• Are all users qualified to decide whether a form is to be deleted?

• Are forms being deleted by mistake?

• What are the consequences of deleting forms which should not have been deleted?

A safe solution is to disable all normal ways of deleting forms. One way to do this is by customizing FORMS as follows:

1. Create a user-defined event, for example AppUserDefined3.

2. Write a VBA event handler on AppUserDefined3 which calls

   • Status to set the status of a "deleted" form to Complete

   • Queue to move the form to a particular "Deleted" queue (FORMS Help topic)

   This event handler effectively removes a form from the normal flow of forms and prevents it from appearing again, but the data is not actually deleted from the system.

3. With a call to AddMenuItem, create a user-defined command for your new event.

4. Disable the Delete command on the Form menu using a call to SetMenuItemEnabled. To delete forms, the users must now use the customized delete command you created above.

5. Create a Transfer job description which includes only forms in the "Deleted" queue. You will probably want to make sure that the transaction description includes the date, batch information, etc., which will help you to locate the paper copy of the form, if necessary. You can also include the user’s name.

   If the standard transaction description does not include these items, you can create an archive transaction description (see instructions in FORMS Help) and specify it in the Transfer job description.

6. Run this Transfer job periodically. The result is a log (actually the transfer file) of forms that were deleted from the system.

This concept can also be applied to sets.