InformationWeek

E-Forms Designer: Not For Novices

Microsoft's forms package targets programmers

By Andy Feibus
Issue date: June 26, 1995

Microsoft's Electronic Forms Designer version 1.0 provides complete flexibility for your forms applications, and it's easy to use--if you're an experienced Visual Basic programmer who wants to invent a Microsoft Mail-only forms interface from scratch. Otherwise, you'll probably want to avoid E-Forms.

Essentially, E-Forms is a skeleton Visual Basic application. In fact, to create forms, developers will need a copy of Microsoft's Visual Basic Professional Edition ($495). You must create the user interfac e, program the way routing will work for each form, and create the database interface. The one advantage to E-Forms is that it doesn't need any filler applications, so you can distribute your creations without royalty or run-time license costs.

For those who don't want to program from scratch, Microsoft includes two sample applications: a phone message form and a routing slip. The phone message demonstrates how to create forms that can be sent between E-mail users. The routing slip application shows how to route a file sequentially to several users.

To create a new form, you copy a skeleton application into your E-Forms project directory and customize it. A form consists of one or more message composition forms and one or more reader forms. Composition forms are used by the person sending the message; reader forms are used by those receiving the forms.

Programming is accomplished using the Visual Basic language; Microsoft's MAPI (Messaging Applications Programming Interface); and the Microsoft E-F orms programming interface, which lets you package a form and its data, print the form, and attach files to the form's message. MAPI provides the interface to Microsoft Mail.

The product lists for $395, but it comes free with the Office Developer's Kit shipped with copies of Visual Basic Professional 3.0. The kit includes additional E-Forms templates.

This package really doesn't compare well with the other products in this review. It works only with Microsoft Mail, and configuring new forms is an entirely manual endeavor. If you don't want to do the programming, stick with one of the other packages discussed in this review.

Comments on this story?

InformationWeek http://techweb.cmp.com/iwk