Get the Most Out of GoAnywhere: Secure Forms

Andrew: All right. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for another edition of our webinar series, Get The Most Out Of GoAnywhere. Today's topic, we're going to focus on Secure Forms, but before I introduce our agenda and our speaker, a few housekeeping notes. We are recording this. We will send a followup email with the slides and the recording. We'll also host it on the GoAnywhere website so that you can go back and review as needed.

We will have time at the end for a little bit of Q&A, but Brian is on throughout, so feel free to drop your questions in the Q&A section there in the lower right-hand corner as they come up, and we'll try to get to as many as possible. If we don't get to your question, we will definitely have someone follow up after the webinar ends. We're going to shoot for about 30 minutes today and get you guys back to your day. We, again, thank you for taking time out of your busy day to join us. At the very end of the webinar, a survey will pop up. We'll use that for feedback, for future topics, feedback on this event and as well if you need any followup information from us to make sure to fill that out when you do have time. With that, let's hop over to the agenda.

Today we're going to, again, cover Secure Forms. We'll first give you a background in what Secure Forms are, reasons to use and a few use cases before jumping into a live demonstration of the software. As I mentioned, we do have time there at the end to answer any other additional questions.

About the Presenter

Today we have Rick Elliot joining us. Rick is the Lead Solutions Consultant here at HelpSystems and he's lucky enough to be joined up from Phoenix, Arizona. He joined Linoma Software back in July of 2012. Previous to that, Rick was actually a GoAnywhere customer working at Discount Tires, so he has a unique perspective being on both sides of the table here. He has a programming and development background utilizing iSeries, Windows, Linux, Unix and AIX OSs.

He was hired here back in Linoma to run the consulting and professional services group and he travels onsite to help configure, build, convert, migrate and train customers. He traveled worldwide to provide vendor training as well for our customer presentations. That's about it on Rick. I am going to hand that over and give Rick control. Rick, are you there?

Rick: I'm here. Can you hear me?

Andrew: We sure can.

Rick: Hello, everyone. Hopefully, everybody's having a great day. I had a good Halloween evening. No major toilet paper in your trees or anything, hopefully, today that you're having to deal with. But we are here to talk about Secure Forms and utilizing them in your systems and taking advantage of things to process data and interactly maintain something that you can control.

Secure Forms Background

To get started, what I'd like to do is basically talk about Secure Forms and give you a little bit of a background about the product and this particular license feature. Secure Forms was added to GoAnywhere back with version 5.3. If you're prior to that, I would strongly suggest uploading or upgrading to version, it's 5.5.10, which is the latest version. We do have 5.6 coming out shortly over the next week or so from what I'm told.

There are a lot of enhancements and upgrades and new features that are being added to the product every time we push something out, so I would strongly suggest moving into the newer versions and taking advantage of Secure Forms if you haven't gotten to that version yet. It is a server-based license, so you basically do just purchase the forms itself, enable the license, then you actually have no limit on the number of forms that you can actually create and take advantage of.

The forms are fully configurable, so you can take advantage of creating forms for multitude of reasons, for any kind of data gathering that you need to do, and in that way you can basically take advantage of getting that information and doing something with that data. The forms themselves can also be embedded into a webpage, so at that point you could take advantage of something like iForms, so that way you could actually embed this in your own webpage if you don't want to utilize the GoAnywhere page.

We will be utilizing the GoAnywhere page today, but that option is there, and I'll show you in a few minutes on how to actually activate that and make that happen. The forms do allow you to handle file transfers, just like SFTP or FTPs, you can actually utilize Secure Forms to transfer files. You can upload request information from a customer or from a trading partner, et cetera. You can basically have them click, drag and drop, put the files on to your form and upload those files securely. That way, you do have that option.

Then the other side of that is, you can use some of that information to generate a response, generate a file that's going to go back to that customer or that trading partner. We're going to show some examples of that here in just a few minutes. Now, after GoAnywhere applied or put Secure Forms into the product under version 5.5, they enhanced it that much more and added RESTful web service submission. So now you can actually consume a service.

This was something that, prior to this version, we couldn't do. So this was one of the things that was a huge step forward with the product and making the product even better in that we allow now the ability to use RESTful web submissions, meaning they can actually connect to us using REST or using SOAP, transfer a file, transfer information, submit that information, even turn right around and automatically download a file through that submission.

That's a little bit of a bonus coming up here. In a little bit, we'll actually take a look at that as well. Now, let's take a look at what exactly is a secure form. A secure form is basically just a way that you can present questions and get answers interactively with your trading partners, your customers, or even remote employees. It allows you to basically to find a form with requesting information. In the example you see on the screen, it's like you're asking for an employee ID, a first name, a last name, a pendant, et cetera.

You have ways of requesting information, and just like any other form, you can make those items required. Meaning, this little asterisk next to the prompt or not. So that way you can basically set that up and define it as needed. We can accept multiple file types. In other words, we can request you to send us just a specific CSV file or PDF, but we can also open that door and say, you're only allowed to send us three files, or you can send us 100 files, you can send us up to a 100 Meg. There's multiple ways to configure and control each one of those particular form items.

We have a full list of different items, from dropdown boxes to radio buttons to check boxes to text fields, et cetera, so you have different ways of getting that data. It's literally just a matter of you picking and choosing how you need to receive the data and what you need to do with the data, because any of that information, once the form is submitted, becomes a parameter that's being passed into a workflow. That gives me the full gambit of over 100-plus tasks that we can utilize that information to do something with, send an email, insert it into a CSV. Update, a database table, et cetera. There's all kinds of things we can do with that data to automate some kind of a workflow.

Last but not least, keep in mind that all of this is across an HTTPS connection. That means the data being transferred to your system is going across a secure connection. That means behind the scenes when we're actually doing something with that data, it's being written to an encrypted folder. So if they upload a file that has sensitive data in it, that data is going to be encrypted at rest with AES 256 encryption. Then, just like any other connection, you can distribute, move it to a secure connection, open it up, read it, insert the data into a database table, call a stored procedure, process it.

There's a multitude of things you can do with that data, but rest assured, it's coming across an HTTPS connection. It is secured data and we can actually take advantage of that to provide that security to the customers and our trading partners knowing that we're actually maintaining the security of the data being transferred.

Reasons to Use Secure Forms

Let's talk about some reasons to use Secure Forms. What would be some things that we need to do to utilize Secure Forms and what to do with them? The first is the common buzz phrase with a lot of companies right now, maybe we want to go paperless. GoAnywhere can help you do that by providing these forms to request information, move data, update data, change data, apply data, whatever we need to do in making that happen. The nice part is that you're actually going to have a digital trail now. There is an audit of someone connecting, signing on, providing that form information, then triggering that log of the job that actually handles the movement of the data.

So at this point you're talking about automating, providing that paperless connection, but also providing a documentation or a trail of information that tells you that someone connected, gave you the information, when it was there and what was done with that particular data. Interactive information gathering. MFT and GoAnywhere is normally a batch processing solution. We're going to monitor something in the background, find a file, pick it up and transfer it. Schedule something to run Thursdays at two o'clock in the afternoon.

There's different things that we're going to actually handle, but we're going to do that in a batch environment. The Secure Forms actually opens that door and allows you to provide that HTTPS communication and request specific information. For instance, customer onboarding, digitizing the employee information, document request, things like this that you can basically put a request out for information interactively across an HTTPS web form and then act on it, call something behind the scenes that allows you to go back and take advantage of that. Automate your file transfers, initiate a file movement.

If you've been an administrator in an MFT environment, you know that you get those phone calls all the time interrupting you saying, "Hey, can we go pick up this file from this customer?" Or, "Can you transfer this file for me to ADP?" It's a one-off thing. There are ways that you can create now a form and a link and put it on your intranet or make it available in an email to send to somebody. I can lock it down to say, "You know what? If you're a web user, you work for my company." You can click on this link and go send the file and you just pick who you want to send it to by a resource ID, upload the file that you're wanting to send them. Then click on, send, and it will just go send it for you behind the scenes.

So now you are automating some things or letting people take care of things in a timely fashion, but on the other hand you don't have to go change something you're doing to do a file transfer real quick because someone has to have it. The REST and SOAP now become consumable. Again, just like you could normally before this connect to UPS or FedEx, send them a SOAP file, you could actually send them a tracking number and then it would return the tracking information of a package. Or maybe connect and get the weather in Barcelona, Spain.

These are now options for you to connect to GoAnywhere and do just that. They can basically, you can define that form, they can submit a job to it, request that information and then we can reply using a REST get and a REST post. So now we can basically do just that as well. Another use that you can use is just to vote. "Hey, the company is going to have a picnic Friday and we want to know if everybody wants pizza or do they want burgers?" So we're just going to put it out there, put a link out there and say, "Hey, let's do a vote and let's see what's going on."

So there's plenty of different things that you can use to define and use Secure Forms for, and that's what we're going to take advantage of here. Some of the features that we're looking at here is that you can actually authenticate users. I can lock this down to a private user, meaning they already have to be a web user before they can use this form, or I can make it public, meaning anyone from the outside, a potential customer, a potential trading partner, can click on this link from anywhere and provide information to me.

I can control the input text, the options, dropdown box, all of that presented to the users with values, tool tips, placeholders. "Hey, I want you to give me a date, but I want to make sure it's in an ISO format with a YYM MDD format." Maybe some people you need to explain to them, "Hey, when I asked for an email, I mean the [email protected]." That type of thing. It just gives you a way to basically show that information. We can actually at this point as well provide optional files for the user to download. So once you actually process the form, we can use that information, like an account number, or a first name and a last name or something to go grab information to create a file and make it available to the form so that at the end they're allowed to download that file, something that you've created on the fly.

So interactively, they could present information and you can provide a reply or a response to that. We can also turn right around and actually customize messages. So yes, we can air check those messages. So if they provide an account number, we can go do a select statement against an SQL database to see if that account number exists that matched the name. If it does, then we'll continue on and generate the file. If it doesn't, then we'll return a message that says, "File name not found." Or, "Account number not found." So we can customize that.

Then once you're getting into the file transfers, you literally can go in and drag and drop files onto the screen, which we'll look at. Then the SOAP and REST, as we've mentioned, you're allowed to basically submit those forms from other applications, so that's something we can definitely take advantage of.

Typical Use Cases

Now, let's take a look at a couple of use cases. Now, what we've talked about here, there's a couple of examples and we're going to go in and show these examples of what you can do. The first one is just a beginner example of just, "Hey, let's go in and set up this little vote and go maintain something to account whether we want pizza or burgers."

The second is going to be to do an intermediate type of a communication where we're requesting customer information to update our contacts, and the third is getting a little bit more advanced where we're basically going to say, "Here, let me ask you for information. I'm going to go generate a file and make it available by download." Then, if we have time at the end, we'll go back and we'll look at the fact of being able to make a call to that same job, but do it by a RESTful connection and take advantage of that.

Live Demo

So let me pull this up real quick so that we can view this. Once you get into GoAnywhere, Secure Forms is a service. So there is an option for Secure Forms, and then you're going to go into the forms manager. This is where you go in and predefine, get information or put the information together for what you're looking at. The first one we're talking about is a voting option. I've created a form here called voting, and that allows me to go in and predefine that particular piece. Now, I'm going to define a project that allows me to basically process this form behind the scenes, and that's what we're going to.

Then once I define the components to this form, then that's going to allow me to pass those parameters to that particular project behind the scenes. So if we go look at the components and look at the actual form configuration, this is where you can go in and actually define your form and what the form is going to look like. So literally in this taste, what we're doing is we're basically asking for two things one is your vote. At that point, we're defining a dropdown box and all we did was pull in a dropdown box. Then we defined the answers as far as options within the dropdown.

We assigned a value of one or two that's going to be passed to the project, and then we did make this a required configuration. Same thing for your email because we don't want people to vote twice or we allow them to vote twice. Whatever you decide you want to do from your logic, but just like we did here and we said earlier that you can go through and give them a placeholder to show them what the email needs to look like. Then we provide access.

At this point, you give the actual form a name. In this case, we're calling it secure voting, and then we're going to allow public access in this case. If I'm not going to allow public access, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go pick and choose what users that have been predefined on my system and give them access to this form. Otherwise, I can pick and choose a group of users and put them into this form and give them access to it. So there's multiple ways that I can go in and basically apply and give access to this form, this is just the way that I chose to do this one.

Now what we're going to do is just access this particular form and pull up the form. This is where you get the information. You'll notice it is an HTTPS connection, and then now we can literally go pick and choose which particular item we want to vote for, pizza or burger, and then I can give them my email address, and then click on submit. In this case, we've actually replied with a successful saying, "Your vote has been counted," and it just is an added bonus. I'm actually giving an update of the current votes, so that way you'll know where we are as you're moving along.

This is a pretty simple form to just basically request information and provide something to make that happen. Now, behind the scenes, what we're doing is we're literally going into a project and then were going into a voting project, and then all we're doing is basically getting those forms, updating the two data from a CSV updating, whether it's one or the other, and then going in and writing it back out. That's really all we're doing. So behind the scenes, if you actually go back and look at that, I have two files over here. One is the results and one is the voters. The results is just a CSV that we can open up and look at, and all it contains is the voting for both options, one and two. So it's just something to maintain data for me as I'm going.

Then the voters is just giving me a list of the voters who actually have voted and which options they actually voted for. Again, just as an auditing trail. Again, it's just giving me ways to basically maintain and keep up with that data. Second, we're going to go look at something a little bit more involved, employee information request. Again, I'm going to have, sorry, I'm looking at the wrong one, the customer information. At this point, again, we're going to go in and request information, like company, first name, last name, phone number, sex, email address, a year for whatever reason and then allow them to upload files.

Just whatever the information is you're wanting to actually update. We go in and actually define that information, give the ability to actually enable it as a web client, enable SOAP or REST, if we're going to enable both of those. Public, if we're going to enable that, including or excluding the branding, meaning the logo that you want to put on the system. Then, as we mentioned before, allow embedding. So if this was something we're doing internal, maybe there's an internal website and you can basically say, "Yes, I want to go in and actually embed this and be able to embed this in mycompany.com." That gives me the ability to do just that.

Then, the other side is, I actually can provide a redirect. Under successful submission, I can say, "Go ahead and redirect this to another website." With that being said, I should be able to go ahead and click on the link here and then go ahead and pull up that particular form. Now, I can fill in the information, pick and choose the year, doesn't really matter which one, it's just going to transfer that information, and then I can say, "I want to go in and attach files." In this case, what I'm looking at is just grabbing some files, whatever they are. In this case, I'm going to grab these and just drag and drop them onto here and upload those files.

Now, I actually have files that I want to upload and I just click on submit. Now if you'll notice, it basically takes me on the redirect because I've completed and successfully processed that particular file. Now if I go back and look at that particular data, then I could actually go into that download and update my information behind the scenes. In that particular project, what we're looking at is the ability to go in and provide customer information. I'm just going to basically write, "Show the information, display my files," and then move on. Update whatever I've got to do.

Again, you're picking and choosing what it is you need to do with the data and then making that happen behind the scenes. Last but not least, we have another form that we want to look at, and that's going to be your employee request. All we're going to do here is we're going to go in and request an employee ID, a first name and a last name, and then basically provide a response. In this case, what we're wanting to do is actually provide that information, pick and choose a first name and a last name, give me your employee ID, and then submit. Now if you'll notice, that particular file is available for me to actually download behind the scenes. So as I'm finished, I'm actually able to download that file.

Clicking on it provides a download. So behind the scenes, again, what we're doing here is we're basically calling a workflow and that particular workflow is allowing me to go back and download and get that particular information. But what I'm going to do as an example, just to kind of show something additional, is that I have something predefined to do a REST get and a REST put. This is going to simulate someone connecting to you using a REST connection and getting that same exact data. So here I can automate that in the fact that I can come in and actually execute this advanced and provide the same exact information and provide an update. Again, this is your customer or trading partner giving you information, giving a number, giving a last name, giving a first name, and then clicking on execute.

This is them submitting that job. Then what happens is, behind the scenes, that gives me that particular file downloaded with my responses to and from so that now I have exactly the same exact file and I've automated that connection through a REST get. Again, I hope you guys can understand there's a lot of functionality that you can take advantage of here using Secure Forms. You can define voting, you can define it for resubmitting workflows. If something errors out, you can actually have it go back prompt for information, and then resubmit a workflow, vote for pizza or burgers, have someone connect to you, transfer you files, get information you wouldn't normally get, especially on the inside, like automating or digitizing employee information.

So there's a lot of options for you here that you can take advantage of. That's about it for today.

Q&A

If there's any other questions or if there's anything that we can answer, absolutely, definitely, let us know and we'll be glad to get you those questions. We should have a few minutes for questions. Andrew, do we have anything that we need to address?

Andrew: Yep. Let's look here. I'm going to flip over one more slide ahead. Well, feel free to put any questions down there. We did have one come in specifically on module licensing, "Are there any other modules required to be licensed if we purchase Secure Forms?"

Rick: Yes, Brian. Were saying there that, yes, you do have to have advanced workflows. Advanced workflows is the engine behind the Secure Forms, so then that way when you actually submit a secure form, it submits a workflow that allows you to act on that particular information or move those particular files.

Andrew: Okay. Then a couple more, "Can the redirect form be another secure form?"

Rick: Yes. A redirect is literally just another HTTPS connection or another URL, so you can actually redirect it like I did to an internet form, a URL public, or you can actually make it another private form and step it through maybe options. If they select something that's going to go to that form and do something else. Absolutely.

Andrew: Then one more here, "Can you embed a secure form into another form?"

Rick: Embed a secure form into another form? I'm not sure how we could do that. My initial answer on that would be no, but I would have to defer that to my development guys or to Bob. I don't know if Bob happens to be on. Maybe he's got an answer. I have never had that question asked me, but I don't believe that's an option.

Andrew: Okay. That one came from Evan. Evan, what we'll do is, we'll have someone follow up and maybe get the specifics on that and do that. I did put a link in to all participants there on the chat on the right-hand side. We do have one more event on December 6th here that we will talk about. How do you usually deploy GoAnywhere MFTA on a cloud server and the types of capabilities available with that integration? That link will take you to register if that's something you're interested in doing. As I mentioned earlier as well, we will send out a copy of the webinar. We had a couple of questions on that, so the recording, the slide deck as well is hosted on our site. Once I close out here in a brief second, we will have a survey.

Feel free to put any more questions in there so we can follow up any feedback you have on the event, any other topics you'd like us to cover. We are planning these events to continue into 2018 as well. They've been pretty successful and we've had pretty positive feedback, so let us know what areas you'd like us to focus on or talk about. With that, I believe that'll conclude our event for today. We will have people follow up on any open-ended questions. Thank you again for joining us. I know you all have busy days, so we appreciate you taking the time out to spend 30 to 40 minutes with us. Thank you, Rick, for hosting. We appreciate all the information and the content.

Rick: Absolutely. I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Thank you.

Andrew: All right, thank you.