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Updating your form records

Last updated on November 22, 2024

Keeping good form records will save you and colleagues time and effort in the future.

On this page:

Why you should keep form records

Aside from the legislated requirement to perform records management, having appropriate records means that you'll:

  • Be able to quickly restore a form if you need to
  • Have supporting files and information on hand for future revisions
  • Be able to provide historical information when requested
  • Make it easier for colleagues to support clients in the future

Keeping good form records will help you save time, allowing you to provide quick and quality service to your clients.

Where you should keep form records

Forms Management records are administrative records and should be maintained wherever your organization keeps them.

These locations could be:

  • A LAN drive
  • A SharePoint document library
  • An electronic records management system

In the Administrative Records Classification System (ARCS):

It's a good idea to keep your form records centrally, under the custodianship of your team.

  • The group that builds and maintains forms should be the office of primary responsbility (OPR)
  • Clients can be provided access to or copies of the records as non-OPR

File structure guidance

If forms records are new to your organization, here's some guidance on setting them up:

  1. Start with your base folder location ({location}/ARCS/285/20/)
  2. Create subfolders for each form, preferably by form number (MV2714)
  3. Within each form folder, create a subfolder for each edition (2024-04-01)

Store your files and records for each edition in the appropriate folder.

When you need to revise a form:

  1. Select the folder of the current (last) edition
  2. Duplicate the folder and contents
  3. Rename the folder with:
    • The new edition date (2025-04-01)
    • The edition revision (2024-04-01 A), or
    • Something like "update" if you don't have a firm date yet

This will give you a copy of all the previous files which you can reference, alter and replace as needed without accidentally overwriting the previous versions.

For additional information on editions see:

What records you should keep

Keep the following records for a form edition, if applicable:

Note that you may not need the request or approval in this file if you use a ticketing, service or project management system.

Depending on the form and your practices, you may also want to keep things like:

  • Intermediate change or refinement requests
  • Test scripts, plan, and results
  • Data model and specifications
  • Design wireframes or mockups
  • Workflow and process maps

Most of these additional records will provide a good reference and starting point for future editions.

How long you should keep them

Forms have an extensive lifespan and continually change, so you can accumulate a lot of records before a form is fully retired. In addition, organizations are occasionally asked for a copy of a form from 5, 10, or even 20 years past. This may have to do with a court case, for example.

Your active records should in include the full records for:

  • The in-progress revision, if there is one
  • The last three released editions

Older edition records can be:

  • Trimmed to the essential items
  • Moved into a compressed "archive" folder

Folders moving into the archive should contain:

  • The form definition XML
  • Digital assets such as images used in the form
  • The fillable PDF template used by the form

This practice should ensure that you have the records you may need in the future, while reducing the total space consumed by retaining them.