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User guide · v1.5.4

Cordex-Forms User Guide

Everything from your first submission form to designed record pages, the environment map and SharePoint document storage. Each task ends with a way to prove it worked. Covers Free, Pro, Business and Enterprise.

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Contents

1 · Key concepts 2 · Plans & comparison 3 · Getting started 4 · Building forms 5 · Showing records on your site 6 · SharePoint documents 7 · Operating Cordex-Forms 8 · Troubleshooting & FAQ
Section 1

Key concepts

Five ideas explain almost everything in the admin.

Environment

A single Dataverse / Dynamics 365 CE instance you write to. Hold up to five and switch the active one in a click; all submissions go to the active environment.

Service principal

A Microsoft Entra app registration added to Dataverse as an Application User. Cordex-Forms authenticates as this identity, not a signed-in person. The secret is encrypted and write-only.

Shortcode

Everything you place on a page is a shortcode: a form [cordex_form], a list [dataverse_list], or a record page [cordex_record].

The delivery queue

If Dataverse is briefly unreachable, an accepted submission is encrypted and retried with backoff. The visitor still sees success; a retry can never create a duplicate.

Consent & privacy

An optional required consent checkbox carries your wording; every edit creates a new immutable version, and each submission records the version and UTC timestamp it consented under. IP addresses are stored full, truncated, hashed, or not at all, your choice.

Section 2

Plans & comparison

The tier is decided by the licence key, nothing is hidden. The free plugin carries the complete submission-to-Dataverse pipeline with no site, form or feature limits; paid plans add scale and premium capability.

Capability Free Pro
$149/yr		 Business
$399/yr		 Enterprise
$899/yr

All prices in USD per year. The free plugin is fully functional with no site, form or feature limits and no licence checks in its code; per-site counts on paid plans are licence terms of the Cordex-Forms Pro add-on. The standard tiers licence Cordex-Forms for your own organisation's use; reselling, hosting or white-labelling for third-party customers needs a separate OEM / Reseller / Partner agreement.

Section 3

Getting started

Install Cordex-Forms Free

  1. Install and activate the free Cordex-Forms plugin first, Plugins → Add New, search “Cordex-Forms”, or download from WordPress.org.
  2. For premium features, upload and activate Cordex-Forms Pro. Pro requires the free base plugin to be active.
Test it

A Cordex-Forms menu appears with Environments, Shortcodes and Queue, plus Licence, WPForms mapping, Audit log and Guide with Pro.

Activate your licence Pro

  1. Go to Cordex-Forms → Licence, paste the licence key, and click Verify. Customers never paste a signing key, just the licence token.
  2. The unlocked tier shows at the top with every included capability listed.
Licence screen showing an active Enterprise licence
The Licence screen, an active Enterprise licence lists every capability the tier includes.

Connect your Microsoft environment Free

  1. In Microsoft Entra, register an application and create a client secret. Note the Tenant ID, Client ID and secret.
  2. In the Power Platform admin center, add that application as an Application User with create privileges on the tables you'll write to.
  3. Open Cordex-Forms → Environments, enter the Environment URL, Tenant ID, Client ID and secret, then Save. The secret is encrypted at rest and write-only.
Test it

Click Test connection, it must show Connected. If it fails, re-check the URL has no trailing path, the secret was pasted whole, and the Application User exists on this environment.

Environments screen with a connected environment
The Environments screen. Client secrets are sealed with libsodium and never returned to the browser.
Section 4

Building forms

Put a submission form on your site Free

  1. Open Cordex-Forms → Shortcodes and choose “A submission form”.
  2. Name it, pick the Dataverse table, and tick the fields by display name. Required columns are included automatically.
  3. Arrange fields into titled section cards under Layout, choose styling, and set consent wording.
  4. Save, copy the [cordex_form] shortcode, and paste it into any page.
Form builder table chooser
Choose the table.
Ticking fields and arranging section cards
Tick fields (mandatory ones flagged), arrange section cards.
Test it

Submit the published form, you should see the success message and a new record in Dataverse within seconds. If Dataverse was unreachable, it's on Queue, encrypted and retrying.

Rendered form in the site theme
Rendered live in your theme.
Resulting Lead record in Dynamics 365
The payoff, a new Lead in Dynamics 365.

Map an existing WPForms form to Dataverse Pro

  1. Edit the form in the WPForms builder. Under Settings → Dataverse, enable posting and pick the target table.
  2. On every field, choose its “Dataverse column” in Field Options, only compatible types are offered.
  3. Optionally set de-duplication and default column values.
Dataverse settings panel in WPForms
Settings → Dataverse: table, de-dup, defaults.
Field Dataverse column selector
Each field's Dataverse column selector.
Section 5

Showing records on your site

Show a list of records on a page Pro

  1. Open Shortcodes and choose “A list of records”. Pick the table and a saved view, the view decides the columns.
  2. Set rows per page and who may view it; optionally give each row an Open link.
  3. Save and paste the [dataverse_list] shortcode.
Test it

Search for a value on a record not on the first page, it's still found, because search runs in Dataverse, not just the loaded rows.

Rendered data grid on the front end
The rendered grid: server-side search, click-to-sort, per-row Open links, Load more.

Design your own record page Business

  1. In Shortcodes, choose “A record page, designed by you”: pick the table, tick fields, arrange section cards.
  2. Optionally add a subgrid, the Files & images card, and, on Enterprise only, the SharePoint documents card.
  3. Use Rename labels to show any field under a label of your choosing; Dataverse is untouched. Custom labels are a Business capability.
  4. Place [cordex_record] on a page; your list's “Rows open in” link opens it.
Record-page designer
The designer, tick fields, arrange section cards.
Rendered designed record page
The rendered page, section cards, Edit button, Files & images, SharePoint card (Enterprise).

Edit records on your site Business

  1. Administrators edit out of the box; grant others the cordex_edit_records capability.
  2. Map the user to a Dataverse user (matching email or explicit mapping). All edits run as that Dataverse user, Dataverse security decides what they may change.
  3. Open a record page while signed in and click Edit.
Test it

Save a change, the record shows it was modified by the mapped user, not the service principal. Signed out, the page is read-only with no Edit button.

Section 6

SharePoint documents Enterprise

On Enterprise, file and image uploads can land in the record's own SharePoint folder, in a structure you define, with per-form paths created automatically, instead of a Dataverse column.

Send uploads to SharePoint Enterprise

  1. In Dataverse, confirm Document Management is enabled for the table with an active SharePoint site.
  2. Map a File Upload field's Dataverse column to “SharePoint documents (record folder)”.
  3. Set a Folder pattern per form, e.g. Main/Support Docs; every folder is created on first upload.

Make it work, exact permissions Enterprise

  1. Dataverse: document management on for your tables, an active SharePoint site (your out-of-the-box Files tab working proves this).
  2. App-user role: Read on “SharePoint Site”; Read + Create + Append/AppendTo on “SharePoint Document Location”.
  3. Inline listing: the documents card reads through Microsoft Graph with the same app registration, add Sites.Read.All (or, for production, Sites.Selected granted to the specific site), then grant admin consent.
Test it

Wait 2–3 minutes, reload a record page with the documents card: files listed with Download links means all three layers are correct. Add a document through the card and confirm it appears in the record's Files tab in Dynamics too.

Section 7

Operating Cordex-Forms

Fix submissions that did not reach Dataverse Free

  1. Open Cordex-Forms → Queue. Pending items retry with backoff; parked items need a human, the last error names the cause.
  2. Fix the cause and click Retry now, or Discard. Delivered rows are deleted, the queue is a buffer, not a log.
  3. Each row shows its captured metadata, landing page, referrer, UTM, browser and IP, governed by your privacy setting. Payloads are encrypted and never displayed.
Delivery queue with a pending submission and metadata
The Delivery queue, consent version, attempts, next-try, last error and captured metadata, with a privacy banner.

See every connection on one map Business

  1. Open Cordex-Forms → Environment map. Every form, grid and record page is drawn as a live source-to-target diagram, the Dataverse table it touches and the environment it targets, down to field-level column mapping.
  2. Connectors are colour-coded by direction, writes to Dataverse in indigo, reads in teal. Any component a required premium column would block is flagged inline with the reason.
  3. Each environment carries a live health check, Connected or Unreachable, probed under its own credentials. On Business, the picker at the top shows all five environments (dev → prod) side by side.
Test it

Point a form at a different environment on the Environments screen, reopen the map, and the form's target table and connector move with it, no page edits or shortcode changes.

Promote across environments Business

  1. Configure up to five instances; flip the Active radio to promote. Submissions follow the active environment; shortcodes don't change.

White-label the admin Enterprise

  1. On the Licence screen, set your brand name, logo, tagline and support link, they replace the product mark across the admin.

Watch the audit trail Enterprise

  1. Every submission, delivery, retry and config change lands in a tamper-evident, append-only table with a retention period you set.
Audit log screen
The Audit log, when, who, action and summary.

Scan uploads for malware Enterprise

  1. Every uploaded file is virus-scanned before it is stored, through the built-in ClamAV adapter (point CORDEX_CLAMAV_SOCKET at your clamd) or your own scanner via the cordex_scan_upload filter. Infected files are refused, and uploads fail closed if a configured scanner is unreachable.

Back up & uninstall cleanly Free

  1. Environments → Backup exports the whole config as JSON (secrets and licence key excluded, store them separately). Uninstalling removes everything unless you set retain-on-uninstall.
Section 8

Troubleshooting & FAQ

A submission didn't appear in Dynamics 365

Cordex-Forms never drops data. Check Queue for pending or retrying items, if Dataverse was briefly unavailable, the record delivers on its own once the connection recovers.

Do I need Zapier, Make or Power Automate?

No. Cordex-Forms talks to Dataverse directly, no automation subscription in the middle and no per-record charge.

How is this different from Power Pages?

Power Pages is a separate portal product with its own per-login licensing. Cordex-Forms turns the WordPress site you already run into the front end for Dataverse, capture, display and (on Business) edit records on your existing pages.

Where do my Dynamics credentials live?

On your server, encrypted with libsodium. They obtain a token server-side and are never sent to the browser or stored in plain text.

Need a hand?

Questions about setup, licensing or a Business / Enterprise rollout? The full task-by-task Guide also ships inside the plugin at Cordex-Forms → Guide.

cordex-forms@myitandapps.com.au Back to product overview →