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Form Designer |
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Form Designer |
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The Form Designer is a WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) tool that allows rapid and non-technical forms development. A form may consist of multiple pages and the tool enables you to view a layout of each page as you work. It also allows you to set properties, behaviors, and workflow associated with the form, page or objects.
The Form Designer consists of three major areas:
| • | Toolbox and Browser Bar. Located on the left side of the page. |
| • | Canvas. Located in the center of the page. |
| • | Properties Bar. Located on the right side of the page. |
To build a form, you drag and drop the objects from the Toolbox/Browser bar onto the canvas.
Note: Access to the Form Designer is available only to full users.
The Form Designer offers three views:
| • | Layout view |
| • | Behavior view |
| • | Workflow view |
PerfectForms™ provides a robust form layout tool which allows users to drag and drop form elements to create highly intelligent and friendly forms. The screenshot below shows an approval form with several input objects and a Next button.
Behaviors allow you to create highly intelligent forms using an intuitive graphical interface. Typical uses of behaviors include:
| • | Copying data between fields |
| • | Question skipping |
| • | Page skipping |
| • | Jumping from one page to another based on the way the form has been filled in |
| • | Showing, hiding or making fields read-only based upon the completion of the form and the user's access |
| • | Conditional behavior |
| • | Sending form data to other databases and systems |
With behaviors, you will be able to build powerful forms and Web applications. Behaviors allow conditional branching, loops and most of the tools you will require as if you were programming except that these tasks are all accomplished through a graphical interface instead of hard coding.
The image below shows a sample behavior sequence.
One of the most important and powerful features of PerfectForms™ is its ability to manage routing and communications to different people. PerfectForms™ manages this simply by using a workflow diagram.
To view the workflow diagram for the form, click the Workflow area button 
on the toolbar. This diagram shows the logical stages a form can be in. You can add as many stages as you need and by mapping this out you are building and documenting your process at the same time. In fact, using the PerfectForms™ Workflow view requires your documentation to be in sync with the form's workflow.
In addition to defining workflow stages, you also define the roles of users interacting with the form. Use the Roles section of the Workflow Properties bar to add, remove or edit user roles for the form.
The diagram itself contains the logic needed to determine the routing process but it also triggers the notifications sent to users as a form instance changes from one stage to another. All routing and notification logic is located on the paths that join the stages.
The image below shows a sample workflow diagram:
Updated: 06/12/2011
Page url:
http://www.perfectforms.com/Documentation/manual/html/?nav_form_builder.htm
PerfectForms™ -- forms software, workflow software, and business process management