Umbraco Contour not inheriting workflow step

Question

I'm running a paid-for and properly licensed version of Umbraco Contour on Umbraco 4.7.1 and I'm trying to build a base form that will have a hidden field that is populated using an algorithm when the form is submitted.

I can create the base form with the hidden field and a workflow attached to the 'Approved' event - and it all works. With the correct value appearing on the form entries.

I then export the form into a UCL and copy it into the /templates folder with the comment and contact base forms and I can now use the form as a base form. Unfortunately although the hidden field survived the export to UCL format, the workflow step was lost.

Is there a way to extend the UCL XML to include a workflow step? Or is there another way to generate a base template that other templates can inherit both fields and workflow from?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Form xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="UmbracoContour">
  <Name>Base Form</Name>
  <Created>2012-03-21T11:02:10.107</Created>
  <FieldIndicationType>NoIndicator</FieldIndicationType>
  <Indicator />
  <ShowValidationSummary>false</ShowValidationSummary>
  <HideFieldValidation>false</HideFieldValidation>
  <RequiredErrorMessage>{0} is mandatory</RequiredErrorMessage>
  <InvalidErrorMessage>{0} is not valid</InvalidErrorMessage>
  <MessageOnSubmit>Thank you</MessageOnSubmit>
  <GoToPageOnSubmit>0</GoToPageOnSubmit>
  <ManualApproval>false</ManualApproval>
  <Archived>false</Archived>
  <StoreRecordsLocally>true</StoreRecordsLocally>
  <DisableDefaultStylesheet>false</DisableDefaultStylesheet>
  <Pages>
    <Page>
      <FieldSets>
        <FieldSet>
          <Fields>
            <Field>
              <PreValues />
              <Caption>HiddenField</Caption>
              <ToolTip />
              <SortOrder>0</SortOrder>
              <PageIndex>0</PageIndex>
              <FieldsetIndex>0</FieldsetIndex>
              <Id>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</Id>
              <FieldSet>9a7d22f1-338a-4a1a-9cc1-36e3f06553a7</FieldSet>
              <Form>fe6e2199-a654-48c5-b750-ff51f5a1dbf4</Form>
              <FieldTypeId>da206cae-1c52-434e-b21a-4a7c198af877</FieldTypeId>
              <Mandatory>false</Mandatory>
              <RegEx />
              <RequiredErrorMessage />
              <InvalidErrorMessage />
              <PreValueSourceId>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</PreValueSourceId>
              <Settings>
                <SettingOfStringString>
                  <Key>DefaultValue</Key>
                  <Value />
                </SettingOfStringString>
              </Settings>
            </Field>
          </Fields>
          <Caption>Base Form</Caption>
          <SortOrder>0</SortOrder>
          <Id>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</Id>
          <Page>7b79cdb4-fc67-4976-9845-aa466a5b66a5</Page>
        </FieldSet>
      </FieldSets>
      <Caption>Base Form</Caption>
      <SortOrder>0</SortOrder>
      <Id>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</Id>
      <Form>fe6e2199-a654-48c5-b750-ff51f5a1dbf4</Form>
    </Page>
  </Pages>
  <DataSource>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</DataSource>
  <Id>fe6e2199-a654-48c5-b750-ff51f5a1dbf4</Id>
</Form>

Answer 1

At the moment you can't export workflows with Contour, just the actual form itself. If you want to add the Workflow to a new form, you'll have to do it manually. You could try posting a feature request in the our.umbraco forums, or you could sumbit a feature request using the support form for Contour on the main Umbraco site and see if they'll add it as a feature. I know people have requested this in the past.

Another option to get round this might be to create a custom field type, inheriting from the hidden field one, and perform the code to populate the value as it loads (obviously this won't work if the algorithm depends on the values submitted by the form).