SyteLine administrators have all seen the references to FormSync when applying patches or service packs. And I have definitely heard my fair share of grumbling regarding the overhead involved, and will admit to grumbling a time or two myself. So, I thought I’d take a moment and revisit when and why we need to run FormSync. In order to do that – we need to first remember what FormSync is supposed to do for you. Then we’ll evaluate the time it will take to run FormSync versus the time you need to invest NOT to run FormSync.
FormSync is Infor’s solution to pulling your customizations from one version of SyteLine to another version of SyteLine. For example, if you added a button to run the Order Verification report to your Customer Order Form, SyteLine created a copy of that form. You now have two versions of the Customer Order form. If you apply a service pack or a patch that updates the Customer Order form without running FormSync – this would only update the Infor version of the form. Your custom version would be out of date.
So – when do you need to run FormSync? If the Service Pack or APAR updates any form that you have customized – you have two viable options – either run FormSync or remove your customizations. Infor should tell you in the documentation which objects it is updating. You can use the utilities in FormSync to give you a complete list of your custom objects.
If the total cost of setting up a FormSync configuration in a test environment, running FormSync, testing your customizations and then making any required fixes is less than the cost of deleting your customizations and recreating them on the new version, then you need to run FormSync. So, how long it will take to set up a FormSync configuration and run FormSync? This can take anywhere from several hours for the simplest of cases to several days, depending on the number of customizations, the complexity of customizations, the number of Infor fixes, and whether business partner add-on products are involved.
Posted by cbsims 
