Overview:
The features and fixes are available for solutions based on both CMS versions 12 and 10 and are functionally equivalent. As such if you are using Umbraco Forms for an Umbraco 12 project, you can update to Forms 12.1. If your project is running Umbraco 10, version 10.5 of Forms is available.
All new Umbraco Cloud projects will be running the latest versions of Umbraco Forms, and one-click upgrades are available for existing projects.
What’s new in Umbraco Forms 12.1 and 10.5?
This release is focused on improving the overall experience and stability of Umbraco Forms, primarily resolving issues raised and addressed over the last few months. This means you get quite a few bug fixes, and some new features, all to help address recent issues and requests.
New caching options
The Prevalue Source feature in Umbraco Forms allows you to add, reuse, and manage values across multiple forms. Whether it's for dropdown lists or multiple-choice fields, this feature allows you to efficiently manage values/options, coming from a text file, content in Umbraco, a database, or other sources (See the Prevalue Source documentation for more information).
With this release, you now have more control over how the Prevalues Sources are cached. Two additional options have been added to customize the caching behavior.
You can now disable the caching entirely, or set a specified time to refresh the cache. The new options are in addition to the default cache without expiry. The added options are to help ensure a good balance between updated sources and performance.
Automated scroll for multi-page Forms
A small but really useful feature has been added to enhance the usability of multi-page forms.
If you are working with a multi-page form, going to the next page (or back for that matter), will now automatically scroll to the form.
This ensures a better user experience by allowing the user to keep focus on filling out the form.
Accessibility Improvements
Based on your feedback, we've made important accessibility enhancements to the default theme of Umbraco Forms. Notably, we've introduced an alternative markup for checkbox and radio button lists, making the user experience more accessible.
This is an opt-in feature for now, as the changes do present potential breaking changes to the theme. In the next major the accessibility improvements will be implemented by default so everyone can benefit from them going forward.
You can find details on how to use the feature in 12.1 in the Umbraco Forms configuration documentation.
And there’s more…
The release contains a number of other fixes and improvements, and we even managed to add a few additional updates during the release candidate phase:
- Removed the unnecessary set of global JavaScript variables that could trigger a console error under certain conditions #1056
- Ensured that files in form submissions are accessible without the "Manage Forms" permission #1058
- Further updated the dependency on aspnet-client-validation to correct an issue with validating mandatory dropdown questions, #1059
- Fixed an issue where a race condition in creating a user security record on first access could lead to a one-off exception.
The full list of what’s included in the release can be found in the release notes.
How to get your hands on the new Umbraco Forms release
Umbraco Forms comes preinstalled on all Umbraco Cloud projects and as of today, all new projects will be running the latest version of Forms. For all existing Umbraco Cloud projects, all the new features and fixes are just 2 minutes away with the upgrade minor version feature.
We’ve wrapped it all up for you, so all you have to do now is follow these steps:
- Add a Development Environment to your project if you do not already have one (Add a Development environment by clicking “Manage Environments” in the project view)
- Make sure you also restore the content to the Development Environment from your Live.
- When the Development Environment is all set up and you’ve made sure you don’t have any pending changes on the Development Environment - you are now ready to upgrade to the latest version of Umbraco Forms!
- It's as easy as clicking a button, literally. The "Upgrade Available" button on the Development Environment will start the automatic upgrade and we’ll take care of everything from here! 🚀
- Once it's done, check the Development Environment to make sure everything is looking right.
- When that's confirmed, you are ready to deploy the upgrade to the next environment - Live or Staging - and take full advantage of all the new features.
And remember, you can always spin up a new project on Umbraco Cloud to try the latest versions of Umbraco CMS, Forms, and Deploy, either from your existing Umbraco Cloud account or by taking a free Umbraco Cloud trial.
For self-hosted projects installation options can be found on the Umbraco Forms package page on marketplace.umbraco.com and more details are available in the documentation.
Thanks to everyone testing out the release candidates 🙏 All issues reported have been addressed and listed in the release notes. For general feedback, you’re always welcome to contact us at product@umbraco.com and specific issues on the Umbraco Forms GitHub issue tracker.