Custom Forms

Your VPAM server enables you to create custom field patterns to generate custom forms that you can later place in your vendor connection forms. With this feature you can gather the specific information behind a connection. This page contains the steps to generate custom field patters, custom forms, and custom vendor connection forms.

Field Patterns

Field Patterns are used in multiple areas of the system including Custom Fields and Connection Forms. Field patterns consist of four pieces of information.

The name is used to distinguish between other Field Patterns. This human-readable name appears in drop-down selections.

Regular expressions are the most important piece of information. Regular Expressions are very powerful ways of matching (or not matching) strings of text based off of defined patterns.

Example Pattern Example Error Message
^\d+$ This field can only contain numbers.
^[€\$]\d+\.*\d{0,2}$ Please enter a price in either USD or EUR, like €3 or $5.02.
^\d{4}$ This field must be a four-digit code.
(?=.{7})(?:.*?[a-zA-Z]){3}.* At least 7 characters, 3 of which must be letters A-Z.
^\d{3}-[A-Z]+$ Customer IDs are 3 numbers, a dash, then some uppercase letters.

The text displayed to the user when the pattern does not match.

Pattern Flags are not commonly used.

NOTE:

For more information, see the official Oracle Java documentation site.

Custom User Fields

Custom Fields are created and edited by System Admins to allow additional data to be kept about Users and Hosts.

To create a new Custom Field, click New in the User Fields, Gatekeeper Fields, or Host Fields settings. Complete the form and Save your custom field.

NOTE: The fields you create for users, gatekeepers, or hosts do not appear in all the menus. If you want to have the same field in two of the menus, you have to create it in all menus.

The New Custom Field form has the following configurations:

  • Label: The value that is displayed to the user who is editing or viewing the Gatekeeper information.

  • Type: The field type to render:

    • Drop-down: A list of pre-defined options.

    • Radio: A list of options from which the user must select one.

    • Text: A field where the user inputs text.

    • Multi-Select: A list of options from which the user might select more than one.

    • Check Box: A boolean option.

  • Required: This field required.

Additionally, the New Custom Field has advanced configuration options:

  • Sort Priority: This numeric value is required (default: 10) and is used to order the values on the View and Edit pages. Items are sorted first by this value and then in alphabetic order by the Label value.

    TIP:

    The system works best if you use two digit values with intervals of ten: 10, 20, 30, 40, etc.

  • Minimum Length: The user input must have at least this many characters in their input. Spaces count as characters.

  • Maximum Length: The user input must not be longer than this many characters. Spaces count as characters.

  • Regex Pattern: The system administrator may select a Regular Expression Field Pattern from the defined values.

    See Field Patterns for more information.

Click Edit from the list of Custom Fields to edit an existing Custom Field.

If you click Test this Regex, a separate page opens where you can enter in some test text and validate that your Regular Expression works. From this page, click Save new Field Pattern to return to Add New Field Pattern page.

Vendor Connection Forms

Vendor Connection Forms are customizable formats that you create to obtain information from the VPAM user that initiates a connection to an Application and starts a session through the Connection Manager. The format helps you and your customer to track all the connections and sessions between your VPAM server, your VPAM users, and your customers.

To create a connection form, click New and provide a unique name and description for your connection form. After your connection form is created, you can click View to add fields that may or may not have a Field Pattern.

After you finish editing your connection form, navigate to the System Settings to set is as default.