VISIFORM ELECTRONIC FORM DESIGN AND FORM FILLING SOFTWARE
Visiform Electronic Form Design, Form Filling And Form Management Software
Visiform Electronic Form Design, Form Filling And Form Management Software
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VisiForm Standard Electronic Form Design, Form Sharing & Form Filling Software
The Adobe Platform - Facts And Information
By Maggie Biggs, FCW.com
Adobe's e-forms solution is part of the company's Intelligent Document Platform. Under the umbrella of the Adobe solution are a number of products that relate to e-forms. We examined four - Acrobat 7.0 Professional, LiveCycle Designer 7.0, LiveCycle Form Manager 6.0 and LiveCycle Forms 6.0, formerly Form Server.
LiveCycle Designer is included in the nearly ubiquitous Acrobat product, and you can use it to create a number of forms. Developers can create PDF-, HTML- or XML-based forms. We found the Designer tools first-rate, and we were able to quickly and easily create forms from scratch and via several templates. If your agency wants forms with a common look and feel, you might start by creating a Designer template.
Designer's interface will look and feel familiar to developers who have worked in integrated development environments. A tabbed center pane allows users to quickly switch between master and body pages, XML source and a PDF preview of the form.
In the right pane, the library of form elements is easily accessible, as is the properties dialogue box and the integrated help menu. To create forms, we dragged and dropped elements from the library onto several body pages. We especially liked being able to combine a number of form elements such as address, city, state and ZIP code, into one element and save it to the library. Being able to add aggregate elements to the library speeds development.
You can map form fields against a variety of data sources, such as an XML schema, a Web services database or an Object Linking and Embedding database-accessible database. During our tests, we successfully mapped to several XML schemas. Like many of its rivals, Adobe includes support for bar codes.
Designer's layout tools were helpful, including the ability to snap form elements to the grid. You can also set a number of properties for a given field. For example, we were able to set the expected format for the input, add field-level help and specify whether the field was user-entered or calculated.
You can secure forms created with Designer in several ways. For example, you can restrict fields and prevent users from being able to change or print the form. Moreover, digital signatures can be added to forms to secure the contents.
Developers will find integrated support for the JavaScript and FormCalc languages, which you can use to calculate fields or build applications. Support exists for scripting on the client, server or both.
Designer's documentation is detailed, and we had no trouble locating information to complete our tests. Like its competitors, Adobe includes tutorials, which offer a good starting point for agencies to evaluate the Adobe solution from a development perspective.
Adobe Acrobat 7.0 has some nifty additions, too. With this release, you can create PDF documents from multiple files. Various file types can be attached to a PDF file, and if the PDF file is moved, the attachments go with it.
Another useful addition to Acrobat is the ability to review documents. Multiple users can read and comment on a document, and the software tracks comments as the review proceeds. Moreover, the company added support for reading form fields out loud as a user tabs over them. The former is useful for commenting on forms as they go through the development life cycle, while the latter will be useful to users who need additional accessibility to complete forms.
Like the products from Primary Software and PureEdge, Adobe forms can be integrated with other server-side processes, such as a portal or Web site. Adobe has products that provide additional infrastructure services, which are useful in agencies that may not have all their infrastructure components deployed.
For example, we looked at two of Adobe's infrastructure components - Forms and Form Manager. Forms enables agencies to deploy Web and PDF forms outside the firewall. This might be good if you don't have a comprehensive infrastructure with which to securely deploy forms in an extranet or Internet setting. We found the effort to deploy Forms roughly analogous to the time needed to securely deploy forms for external users and business partners using other Web and portal technologies.
Form Manager is a server-side repository best suited to agencies with many forms and form users. The version of Forms Manager we tested uses IBM's WebSphere. We initially had trouble with the role-based security setup, but after a few hours, we were able to deploy Form Manager successfully.
Form Manager can prepopulate fields for users based on their profiles and roles. This is especially useful for organizations that use many forms and other data sources.
Adobe supplies other related products under the Intelligent Document Platform umbrella that may be of interest to agencies. For example, LiveCycle Reader Extensions allows administrators and developers to embed usage rights into documents or forms prior to deploying them. Depending on the rights granted, users might be able to work with specific portions of a document or form or save it online or off-line.
If your agency wants to use bar-coded forms extraction to increase integration with other infrastructure components, LiveCycle Barcoded Forms might be worth considering, compared with Optical Character Recognition or other technologies. In addition, Adobe offers a policy server and a document security product if your agency requires extra tight controls on document and forms content.
The quality of the Adobe solution is great. If you choose to implement all of the infrastructure pieces of this solution, it could get expensive. Moreover, developers may have to do a good bit of scripting work to implement all the automation necessary to yield a positive ROI.
If you choose to use Adobe's products, you can pick among the products under the LiveCycle umbrella. For example, if bar-coded forms are crucial to your organization, you might choose Acrobat, Designer and the LiveCycle Barcoded Forms products.
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VISIFORM STANDARD ELECTRONIC FORM DESIGN & FILLING
SOFTWARE FOR AS LITTLE AS
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VISIFORM STANDARD ELECTRONIC FORM DESIGN & FILLING
SOFTWARE FOR AS LITTLE AS
$199.00
