How Do I Publish an App?
Until you publish your app and as long as the yellow Draft flag is visible at the top left of the screen within the app, any changes you have made to your app will not be visible to submitters.
To publish your app click on the Publish button at the top right of the page
If this is your first time publishing, more than likely you won't have any errors to correct, and you will see a screen similar to the picture below:
Some notes on this feature
You get one chance - You can only enable document drafts at the first publish of an app. This is a one-shot decision. The reason for this is that we didn't want people to be able to turn this feature on later once drafts are saved without the submitter knowing about it.
Only on Save - A draft is only created when the user clicks "Save." Before that, the document doesn't exist to anyone but the submitter.
The submitter is alerted - When this feature has been enabled for an app, the submitter is notified when they go to save the document. This lets them know that administrators will be able to read their content.
Drafts are not shared - When you share the data from "App A" with "App B", the drafts in App A are not available.
With the addition of this feature, you'll now have a clearer picture of where submitters are in the process. You will no longer wonder if people have started filling out a form or not.
Previously Published
If you have previously published your app and are making changes to it, the Publish page will display a summary of changes you have made to this draft, and it will show any errors that need to be corrected.
Until all errors are resolved, you will be unable to publish your app.
How do I delete my draft without publishing?
If you decide that you don't want to publish the changes you have made to your app while in Draft Mode, you can simply discard the draft and start over without your users ever knowing.
To discard your current draft, go to the Publish screen, and click Discard Draft.
Form URL
Once you publish you can click on the option Share Form to copy the URL for posting to a website.
There are two options depending on whether or not your form is authenticated (requires NetId and password) or anonymous for public use without authentication.
Important Note: This is the only way to get the url for the blank form. You cannot bookmark from a blank form on your browser. That is actually the url for a person’s draft copy of the form, not the url for a new form.
Versioning
Modifications to an already live application will only impact new records from the point of publish forward. Any completed records or in progress records retain the version of the form and workflow at time of submission. Any record in draft mode prior to submitting will be updated to the latest version of the form when the submitter tries to open it from their drafts.
Important Note:
When publishing changes you want to be mindful of fields that are new or removed as they will still be available in the Documents area for the administrator of the form and the workflow approvers would need to distinguish between the different versions of the form. Some tips are to display some text on the form for the approvers to let them know about the change. For example if you initially did not have an automated email on denial and decided to add it later on, the approver would need to know if the version of the form they are reviewing sends the email or not so they can take the appropriate action.
User Tip: Before going live with your application for the first time, it is recommended that you duplicate your application so that any versions (including removed fields) that were used during development/testing are discarded. (Duplication is not required, but note that old, unused fields will be retained unnecessarily.)