Enterprise Server

Deploying the primary Self-Hosted product of Form.io. The Enterprise Server.

We will start our deployment with the Form.io Enterprise Server, which can be found on Docker Hub at the following URL.

formio/formio-enterprise

A Docker Compose can be found here to set up the API Server Container (formio-enterprise) only, without the PDF Server Container:

https://github.com/formio/deploy/blob/main/deployments/compose/api-server.zip

The Enterprise Server can be deployed as follows:

docker run -d \
  -e "LICENSE_KEY=abcdefghi1234567890" \
  ...
  ...
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --network formio \
  --name formio-server \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  formio/formio-enterprise

Where the environment variables would be replaced with the following.

Environment Variables

Within the tabs below are all of the variables that are available for the formio/formio-enterprise deployments. Some of these variables are required to deploy the Enterprise servers while others are recommended.

Required Configurations

It's recommended to change the Admin email and password to something secure before deploying.

Environment Variable	Description	Example
MONGO	The MongoDB connection string to connect to your remote database.	mongodb://<credentials>@aws-us-east-1-portal.234.dblayer.com:23423/formio?ssl=true
LICENSE_KEY	A valid license obtained from form.io.	abcdefghi1234567890
DB_SECRET	The database encryption secret	CHANGEME
PORTAL_ENABLED	Used if you wish to enable the portal in this environment making this a Portal Environment	true
ADMIN_EMAIL	If PORTAL_ENABLED is set to "true" this is used to determine the default root user email login	[e-mail]
ADMIN_PASS	If PORTAL_ENABLED is set to "true", this is used to determine the password of the default root user login	CHANGEME
PORTAL_SECRET	If PORTAL_ENABLED is not set (as in an API Environment), then this secret is used to connect another portal to this environment	CHANGEME
JWT_SECRET	The secret password for JWT token encryption.	CHANGEME
PDF_SERVER	The deployed PDF Server URL	http://pdf-server:4005

License Environment Variable

These variables are required to deploy within your environment.

Environment Variable	Description	Example
LICENSE_KEY	A valid license obtained from form.io.	abcdefghi1234567890
LICENSE (Legacy Server Only)	The license environment variable used for legacy 6.x server versions only.	A long JWT token

Other Configuration Variables

Environment Variable	Description	Example
DEBUG	Adding debugging messages to the server. Use ‘formio.’ for all Form.io messages and ‘.*’ for all debug messages.
MONGO	The MongoDB connection string to connect to your remote database.	mongodb://:@aws-us-east-1-portal.234.dblayer.com:23423/formio?ssl=true
MONGO_CA	The file path to a custom SSL certificate authority file. This is usually a file ending with ".pem"	/src/certs/rds-combined-ca-bundle.pem
MONGO_SSL_VALIDATE	Enables (true) or disables (false) the ssl domain validation when connecting to the database. This is useful when connecting to a database through an SSH proxy that requires a ssl certificate that validates domain names.	false
MONGO_CONFIG	Provides a way to pass custom MongoDB configurations into the MongoDB connection string. This should be a JSON string, and all the configurations are documented at https://mongoosejs.com/docs/connections.html#options
JWT_EXPIRE_TIME	Configures the expiration time for the JWT token that is generated for authentication. Value is in minutes, so 240 would be 4 hours.	240
ADMIN_KEY	An optional key that gives full access to the server including listing all projects. Send in a header with x-admin-key	[ADMIN KEY]
PORTAL_ENABLED	Used if you wish to enable the portal in this environment making this a Portal Environment
ADMIN_EMAIL	The default email of the super admin account. Only on initial startup when PORTAL_ENABLED is set to "true".	[email]
ADMIN_PASS	The default password of the super admin account. Only on initial startup when PORTAL_ENABLED is set to "true".	[password]
PORTAL_SECRET	The secret used to connect the portal to your environment	[PORTAL SECRET]
ONLY_PRIMARY_WRITE_ACCESS	Authenticated Form.io Users can no longer create a Project or Team within the deployed environment. The Create Project and Team buttons will no longer be visible to authenticated users within the Portal. Any attempt to create a project or team via API using the Authenticated role will result in an Unauthorized response	true
PDF_SERVER	This is the URL of the PDF server, which is set within the API server so that it can download Submission PDF’s pointed to the PDF Server	http://pdf-server:4005
DB_SECRET	The database encryption secret	[DB SECRET]
DB_SECRET_OLD	If you need to change the DB_SECRET, set the old value here and it will decrypt with the old and encrypt with the new the next time the server is started. Once changed, you can remove the DB_SECRET_OLD.	[OLD DB SECRET]
EMAIL_OVERRIDE	Provides a way to point all Email traffic to a server. Should not be used in Production.	{“transport”:”smtp”,”settings”:{“port”:2525,”host”:”smtp.mailtrap.io”,”auth”:{“user”:”23esdffd53ac”,”pass”:”324csdfsdf989a”}}}
JWT_SECRET	The secret password for JWT token encryption.	[TOKEN SECRET]
JWT_EXPIRE_TIME	The expiration for the JWT Tokens	240
MAX_BODY_SIZE	Sets the Maximum POST body size.	16mb
DOCKER_SECRETS	Enable the use of Docker Secrets	1
DOCKER_SECRETS_PATH	The path to the Docker Secrets folder	/run/secrets
PORTAL_SSO	Enables the portal to automatically authenticate with SSO through the Portal Base authentication provider configurations.	false
PORTAL_SSO_LOGOUT	The url to redirect the users when they click the logout button when you have Portal SSO enabled.
SSO_TEAMS	Allows you to authenticate into portal with an Authentication provider and map Group names to Form.io Teams. This is enabled by default when you have Portal SSO enabled.	false
BASE_URL	An accessible url of this server. This is necessary when attaching submission pdfs to an email in an Email Action.
HTTP_PROXY	Allows all communications to be sent through an http proxy. See https://github.com/request/request#controlling-proxy-behaviour-using-environment-variables
HTTPS_PROXY	Allows all communications to be sent through an http proxy. See https://github.com/request/request#controlling-proxy-behaviour-using-environment-variables
NO_PROXY	Allows all communications to be sent through an http proxy. See https://github.com/request/request#controlling-proxy-behaviour-using-environment-variables
PORT	The port which the server should run on. Default 80
LICENSE_REMOTE	A boolean to determine if this environment is going to use an "offline" license, which is a special type of license that removes the requirement for a ping to https://license.form.io when starting the container.	true
DROPBOX_CLIENTID	If you are using Dropbox file uploads for your remote deployment, you will need to place your API client ID.
DROPBOX_CLIENTSECRET	If you are using Dropbox file uploads for your remote environment, you will need to place your API client secret.
SENDGRID_USERNAME	If you would like to provide a default SendGrid account for your deployment, then this is the account name in SendGrid to use.
SENDGRID_PASSWORD	If you would like to provide a default SendGrid account for your full deployment, then this is the SendGrid API Key.
ESIGN_PRIVATE_KEY	RSA2048 private key that will be used by default for form.io eSignature cryptographic operations
FORMIO_VM_TIMEOUT	Form.io uses a secure VM to execute custom logic Define the maximum execution time (in milliseconds) for scripts running in a sandboxed virtual machine (VM) environment.	500
HSTS_MAX_AGE	The time, in seconds, that the browser should remember that a site is only to be accessed using HTTPS. Set to 0 to remove HSTS header	31536000
HSTS_INCLUDE_SUB_DOMAINS	If this optional parameter is specified, this rule applies to all of the site's subdomains as well.	true
HSTS_PRELOAD	Google maintains an HSTS preload service. By following the guidelines and successfully submitting your domain, you can ensure that browsers will connect to your domain only via secure connections. While the service is hosted by Google, all browsers are using this preload list. However, it is not part of the HSTS specification and should not be treated as official.	true

Using Docker Secrets As Environment Variables

For more documentation on this feature, please go to https://help.form.io/userguide/actions#template-service

You can also provide Environment Variables through the use of Docker Secrets. To utilize Docker Secrets, all of the configuration variables are the same as environment variables. Simply use the same name in docker secrets and the server will use the value. In order to use them, set DOCKER_SECRETS=1 in your environment variables. You can also set DOCKER_SECRETS_PATH to use a path other than /run/secrets.

Using Environment Variables with Node.js

For the Node.js deployments, we use a Node.js utility called dotenv to configure the environment variables of the running node application. This can be configured by creating a .env file at the root of the Node.js application, that is similar to the following.

LICENSE_KEY=abcdefghijk1234567890
MONGO=mongodb://admin:[e-mail]:234234,aws-us-east-1-portal.26.dblayer.com:234234/formio?ssl=true
PORTAL_SECRET=CHANGEME
DB_SECRET=CHANGEME
JWT_SECRET=CHANGEME

Database Connection String

When connecting to your database, it is important that you provide the name of the database within the Database connection string. By default, many of the platform providers such as Azure, AWS, and others do not provide the database name in the connection string. This causes a problem because the default name that MongoDB picks if it isn't provided is test which is different from the default database name of the Form.io platform, which is formio. Because of this, we recommend changing all database connections string to change the following

Incorrect:

mongodb://:@aws-us-east-1-portal.234.dblayer.com:23423/?ssl=true

Correct:

mongodb://:@aws-us-east-1-portal.234.dblayer.com:23423/formio?ssl=true

Form.io Enterprise API Server Environment

Portal Enabled Environment

Prior to deploying your environment, it is important to review the necessary environmental variables for your deployment. Ensure that variables such as the Database secret are properly configured, and consider enabling the Portal functionality as described below. Taking these steps will help ensure a successful and secure deployment of your environment.

It is recommended to enable the Portal during the initial environment creation, as it serves as the connecting mechanism to other environments. Given that the environment is usually restricted due to its connection with the production application, and additional may experience intermittent availability based on the development team's activities, it is advisable for this to be positioned between the and .

By enabling this non-production environment (referred to as the Test stage) amidst your other environments, your Form Builders will be able to work on their Forms within a stable Portal application environment. This setup eliminates the risk of altering the environment while alleviating the instability that may arise from working in other .

Run the following command to spin up your Portal Enabled API server environment.

docker run -d \
  -e "LICENSE_KEY=YOURLICENSE" \
  -e "MONGO=mongodb://mongo:27017/formio" \
  -e "PORT=3000" \
  -e "PORTAL_ENABLED=true" \
  -e "ADMIN_EMAIL=[e-mail]" \
  -e "ADMIN_PASS=CHANGEME" \
  -e "DB_SECRET=CHANGEME" \
  -e "JWT_SECRET=CHANGEME" \
  -e "PDF_SERVER=http://pdf-server:4005" \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --network formio \
  --link pdf-server:pdf-server \
  --link formio-mongo:mongo \
  --name formio-server \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  formio/formio-enterprise

Once this is done, the server will go through the initialization process and will install the Portal Base project as well as create the initial admin account for the deployment.

The Portal Base project is a special project that is used to control the portal application. Any users that can log into the portal are added to the User resource within this project, and anyone with an Authenticated role within this project will have the ability to log in and create new projects.

After the portal has been enabled, you can now login to the portal, by navigating to the root URL of the deployed API. The Admin email and password within the environment variables will authenticate you into the Portal.

Stand-Alone API Environment

Prior to creating additional environments, it is crucial to establish Stages within the Project of the Portal Enabled environment as a means to connect and provide a user interface between the additional environments we will be creating. These stages will be referred to as Developer, Test, and Live, aligning with the provided documentation. It is unnecessary to assign a specific name to the Live stage since it serves as the default production stage once a Project has been created.

Stages provide a way to isolate your Project forms and resources to enable Form Management between different environments.

Click Here for more information

Keep in mind, the Portal Application created within the Portal Enabled Test environment step simply serves as an API pathway and User Interface to create, modify, and save JSON for your other environments.

Now that our Stages have been set up, we can proceed to create our additional production and non-production environment(s) by executing the following command:

docker run -d \
  -e "LICENSE_KEY=YOURLICENSE" \
  -e "MONGO=mongodb://mongo:27017/formio" \
  -e "PORT=3000" \
  -e "PORTAL_SECRET=CHANGEME" \
  -e "DB_SECRET=CHANGEME" \
  -e "JWT_SECRET=CHANGEME" \
  -e "PDF_SERVER=http://pdf-server:4005" \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --network formio \
  --name formio-server \
  --link pdf-server:pdf-server \
  --link formio-mongo:mongo \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  formio/formio-enterprise

Next, we need to establish Remote Connections to our stages. Within each independent stage, navigate to the Stages settings and access the Connected Environment tab. Enter the environment URL and Portal Secret that was established during the environment creation process.

With these steps completed, you will have independent environments with their respective databases, all conveniently accessible within a unified Portal Application UI.