Hi, Is importing a process start form part of normal deployment activ

If you want to reuse the start form this is a good way to do it. No issues doing so. Just make sure you review the final mappings to the acp's and process variables to make sure they point to the ones in the target model.

There are only texts in the start form that I am referring to here. So if the process model doesnt have any acp's and proces variables, can we then definitely consider this as a safer and risk free deployment approach? Also need to know at what places would you dont suggest this activity.

There's no risk this is a good way to reuse existing forms from other models. Is that the purpose? I just want to see if I understand correctly what you mean by Deployment approach, I don't want you to have the impression this is a replacement for Export/Import of models, this is just useful when you want model X to use a similar layout and fields as Model Y

In cases like this, where the process start form is exported to the environment, do we need to have a full system test? Ideally need to know the pros and cons of the process start form import-export so that we can get a better and faster deployment

Well, I have an application with a process start form in Dev environment. I did some minor text changes on the process start form. Now if I want to deploy the changes to the next environment (INT/UAT/PROD- already a version of the process model is in place in all these environments), is it good enough if I export the process start form only and deploy it or is it necessary that I export and zip the whole application and deploy to the other enviornments?

Well in that case it makes more sense to create a simple application like a patch that will contain only the model (no other dependencies) and import it in the other environments this is actually faster since you won't have to remap anything even if it's new.

The import/export of forms is more for re-usability rather than for deployments of changes which is more in the scope of applications export/import.

Thanks. So I assume the take away here is that form import export is for reusability purpose and not a part of faster deployments, even though if they dont have any process variables to be mapped. I took the risk into consideration when deploying a bigger process model compared to the one where I just migrate the process start form alone (esp ones which fonot have pvs and acps) and thought that the 2nd item would be having very minor impact and testing required. Just wanted to confirm the value added way in exceptional scenarios like this.

If there's nothing to remap then this also becomes a convenient way to deploy the minor change, there's no risk in doing so especially if this is just a change in the layout or text content since this doesn't even require to double check the mapping, however it was important to mention that if there are new variables in the start form then importing the form can be error prone since this requires you to manually create the variables.

I completely understand and thank you very much for your time. I have taken note of the key points and happy to suggest form importing when there is no new variable added to the form and specifically good in cases where the start form has now pvs and acps inside it ( a form with just text instructions before the real app starts )