Electronic Forms Automate Data Flow

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

Electronic Forms Automate Data Flow

By Andy Feibus
Issue date: June 26, 1995

E nterprisewide electronic mail and desktop access to remote databases have changed the face of electronic-forms packages. Supplanting DOS-based tools that let users fill in the blanks for output on preprinted forms, today's forms packages not only automate the flow of data throughout an organization, but the forms themselves can also act as database front ends.

What's more, forms can be routed through E-mail to other users or customers who fill them out and send them on. The entered data can be stored on a network server database. With electronic-forms packages, you may never need to print a form.

This week, InformationWeek's OpenLabs looks at four products:

These packages come in two parts: a designer application that creates the forms, and a filler application that is used to electronically fill them out. To create forms, users must have a copy of both parts, which is why all designer packages come with at least one filler license.

Designer packages let users lay out forms by inserting fields such as combo boxes, lookup tables, command buttons, check boxes, radio buttons, tables similar to mini-spreadsheets, graphics, and text. Some packages also support bar-code fields, which are useful for putting zip codes on mailing labels or tracking information for parts or packages. Others have an auto-increment field that creates a unique key every time a record is added to a database. It's useful for assigning invoice or order numbers. To create forms that are pleasing to the eye, all packages have rulers and grids so objects can be aligned and sized within a form.

Fields can be linked to external database fields to store data for later access by other forms, query tools, or applications. Creating these links was simple in some of the products reviewed here, difficult in others. Some packages accept special queries to limit what can be viewed in a form. Others permit creation and editing of database table structures from within the designer application, making it easier for nondatabase administrators to create database tables and flat files.

But if you want to create slick and easy-to-use front ends for your databases, you're better off buying a true database applications builder like Microsoft 's Access or Borland's dBase for Windows. Tools like Access are easier to use and don't require run-time licenses for every user.

If your electronic forms are linked to databases, you have three E-mail strategy options:

If the user has direct access to the database and you don't need to route the data to someone else for approval before it is loaded into the database, you can simply mail the user a copy of the form.

If the user does not have access to the linked database, you can mail a copy of the form with an embedded database that has the same structure as the linked database. When the form is returned, new data is transferred from the embedded database into the actual database. This is especially useful for remote users.

For remote users who already have a copy of the form, you also have the option of simply mailing an empty embedded database.

The four packages vary in their level of support for these strategies. They also vary with regard to their ability to direct a form along a defined route. For example, some packages will define the path of a capital requisition form, which may require multiple signatures before it can be acted on.

These products also deploy different strategies for managing user security and providing digital signatures that indicate who really sent a given form. Each package requires you to either maintain another security database or purchase a companion product to manage security.

Every product also includes a high-level coding language for performing common actions, such as opening another form from within the current form. These packages also let users create a formula to compute field information. For example, you could use a formula to generate prices on orders and maintain a running total for the whole order.

InForms 4.1
InForms 4.1 from Novell in Orem, Utah, provides good database and mobile-user support. It is tightly integrated with Novell's other applications.

The user interface is similar to that in Novell's PerfectOffice suite. It includes several PerfectOffice tools, among them a spellchecker, thesaurus, file indexer, program scheduler, and desktop applications launcher. These tools consume more than 9 Mbytes of disk space unless your site has standardized on Novell applications. If so, you most likely already have these tools loaded.

InForms supports Novell's GroupWise E-mail software, as well as any E-mail system that complies with Microsoft's MAPI (Messaging Applications Programming Interface) or standard Vendor Independent Messaging (VIM) interfaces. These include Lotus cc:Mail, Microsoft Mail, and Windows for Workgroups. However, unless you use Novell's GroupWise 4.1 as your mailing system, you cannot pre-specify a routing path for a form; each user must manually route the form to its next destination, or the designer must add routing code to the form. Either option is quite tedious. Form tracking is also available only through GroupWise.

InForms suppo rts a wide range of PC databases. However, if you plan to link a form to a database using the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) interface, you will need version 2.0 of the ODBC drivers; InForms fails with some ODBC 1.x drivers.

When creating forms, you can import and create objects in a view-only "backdrop" area, then place objects into the active form "foreground." This is handy for creating forms that resemble existing printed forms.

Just scan the printed form into the computer, and use it as the backdrop. Then create the electronic form by overlaying form objects in the foreground.

InForms supports object libraries for storing objects for later reuse. For example, you could store your company's logo and address in a library for easy retrieval and reuse them in future forms.

But these object libraries do not support inheritance, so if you edit the object in the library, the changes will not ripple through to the forms in which the object appears.

To c reate data links with InForms, you specify the database source--for example, the dBase file or ODBC data source and table name--and then use a dialog box to match table fields with form objects.

Since InForms' default object names (F-1, F-2, etc.) are non-mnemonic, linking forms to databases is easier if you rename the form fields to the same names as the database fields.

How you distribute a form depends on whether the form's recipients have direct access to the database. With InForms, all

E-mail strategies mentioned earlier are possible, which makes it a good choice for remote users. You can easily create and edit databases from within InForms. It also lets you create queries for viewing form data.

InForms includes a module for controlling security and providing for digital signatures. InForms security consists of assigning users to "approval groups." Each user gets an ID and password. To permit electronic signatures on forms, the designer inserts a signature field into which users enter the ir appropriate ID and password. Once a signature is validated, a stored signature image can be placed automatically into the form for viewing and printing.

Simple programming tasks can be performed using a formula language that looks a lot like a spreadsheet macro language and has about as many capabilities. For more complex tasks, InForms supports Novell's PerfectScript scripting language. However, no PerfectScript documentation is included with InForms.

Lotus Forms 1.0
Lotus Forms 1.0 from Lotus Development in Cambridge, Mass., delivers in some areas and disappoints in others. It offers sophisticated role-based routing and seamless integration between MAPI and VIM E-mail systems. But it lacks features such as an object library and spellchecker. What's more, its filler package works only with Windows, while the other products reviewed provide fillers on several computing platforms.

Lotus Forms supports both MAPI and VIM-based E-mail systems, but it incorrectly iden tified OpenLabs' Windows for Workgroups mailing system as VIM-based. MAPI E-mail systems need a VIM-to-MAPI converter library that's available on the Lotus bulletin board service or on CompuServe. Using this converter, you can route forms between VIM and MAPI systems without worry.

n then right-click the mouse to pop up a window from which to edit the object's properties, such as color, style, and font.

Lotus Forms will link fields to any database for which you have an ODBC driver. The package includes drivers for Borland's dBase and Paradox; Microsoft's FoxPro, Access, and SQL Server; ASCII files; and Lotus Notes Field Exchange.

I found the user interface for creating these links confusing and cluttered. You first select the table names, then the fields from these tables are displayed graphically on top of the form. Then you drag each database field to a form field to create the link. This appears as a line connecting the database field to the form field. With multiple fields, you may end up with lines drawn every which way, making it difficult to see how the forms and database fields match up. Happily, once you define the links, you can turn off the database link view.

Lotus Forms provides no easy way to handle mobile or remote users on a common database. Each user of a form that is linked to a database must be set up with the same ODBC drivers and data sources. You can provide support for temporary databases, but this requires extensive LotusScript programming. In contrast, this function is standard in Novell InForms and Delrina

FormFlow
Lotus Forms lets you create routing lists. These are a series of E-mail locations, either a specific person or a defined "role," to which the form must travel. A role is a person identified by title and related via a database. For example, if you create a capital requisition form that needs to be routed to the originator's manager, you don't need to know the manager's name; you just create a role called "manager," which defines the code needed to locate the originator's manager in the database.

To implement digital signatures, a field type is provided for users to fill in their Lotus Notes password and ID. Every Forms user must also be a Lotus Notes client.

Lotus does provide a thic k language reference manual for LotusScript, which is a Basic-like language used with Lotus applications. Otherwise, the documentation is insufficient. The product comes with a brief forms designer guide that covers the basics but not much more.

FormFlow 1.1
FormFlow from Delrina in San Jose, Calif., was the most feature-filled and flexible of the packages reviewed. The $399 FormFlow 1.1 Starter Kit includes a designer module, filler module with a two-user license, Crystal Reports 3.0, a security administration module, 100 form templates, a vast number of manuals, and a training videotape. Delrina notes that the next product revision may require a handle on the box.

database links is under the Fill pull-down menu. This caused only temporary confusion, because I soon realized that the Fill menu is used for anything dealing with form or field properties.

FormFlow includes all standard fields except the combo box, which is implemented as a lookup table. Lookup tables can either be predefined sets of choices or the values in a database table column.

FormFlow supports form database fields that are bar codes and graphics. A graphics field is a database or data-entry field, which in the designer is really just a text field holding the name of a graphics file. When the filler sees this field, it displays the specified file as a graphic.

You can place any form object into a library for easy access in later forms, although object inheritance is not supported.

With FormFlow, you can automatically create a form from a database table, as well as create a database table from the fields in the form. FormFlow lets you define the master/detail relationship between tables , then enforce cascading deletes between them--that is, if you delete the master, all detail records related to the master are deleted automatically. This is useful if you're using a database, like dBase, that doesn't provide this feature.

FormFlow works with MAPI, VIM, and Novell's Message Handling System. Delrina also has created the Forms Data Interchange protocol for routing forms using its WinFax product. Using the Binary File Transfer protocol to bundle a form and data, WinFax routes the form to another WinFax FDI site, which unpacks it.

Forms can either be broadcast to multiple users or sequentially routed to a list of users. You can E-mail just the form if the users have access to the linked databases, or you can package both the form and the data for mobile users. When the form has completed its specified journey, it can be automatically routed back to the form's originator.

The Security Administrator lets you define users and their passwords. Once the security database is defined, users may be given a way to "unlock" fields within forms. Locked fields can be hidden or X'ed out until an authorized user "signs" the form. For example, a form could be used to route absence excuses from an employee to a manager to the person who tracks vacation time. The reason for absence might be confidential, so you would lock the field and allow only the manager to unlock it.

For creating complex form applications, FormFlow provides its Intelligent Forms Language. Programming is less of an issue with FormFlow, since most desired features are provided. But if you want to include custom pull-down menus, you'll need to program. Delrina sells a $249 forms software developer's kit for adding form capabilities to applications you create.

JetForm Designer 4.0
JetForm Designer from JetForm in Waltham, Mass., is very versatile, but complicated to use.

as. Standard form objects are supported, as well as bar-code and signature fields, and field spellchecking. Once a form is completed, it can be compiled, which protects the form from further changes when you distribute it.

Any form object can be copied into an object library if the user has been granted permission. Unlike the other packages, JetForm's object libraries support inheritance. If the library object is subsequently changed, forms using that object are updated when the form is recompiled. Forms also can be kept in this library for controlling form maintenance (since extracting or changing these forms requires permission), revisions, and distribution.

Databases are accessed via Intersolv's QELib 2.0, which includes ODBC drivers for 15 data sources. JetForm also works with most third-party ODBC drivers. With JetForm, you can create dBase, Paradox, and ASCII tables, but not ODBC-based tables.

In the OpenLabs, I had problems creating links to ODBC databases because the installation program h ad not added the JetForm directory to my directory search path. The manual does not mention this needed change.

Nor does JetForm let you quickly generate a form from a database table. You must add database fields to a form one at a time.

You not only can route a form along a sequential path, but also specify multiple recipients at each step. JetForm works with both MAPI and VIM-based E-mail systems. However, from the designer, you cannot access the MAPI or VIM address books to select the users to receive a form. Users are permitted to access the E-mail address book from the filler if a destination route was not specified by the form's designer. So the creator of the form must either manually enter the E-mail addresses or leave them blank for the user to enter from the address book.

Data can be routed with a form, but JetForm supplies no automated way to merge or upload that data into a database. The designer must write the SQL code to upload the data and leave a way, such as a command button, on t he form for the uploading user to manually access this code.

The JetForm filler can perform simple form auditing. Each time a form is forwarded to the next person on a route, a designated user can be sent an E-mail message. However, to track more than a few forms at a time, you need to purchase two additional packages: JetForm Server, priced at $895 to $1,795, depending on hardware platform; and Tracking Director, which costs $520. This feature is overpriced, since it comes free with other packages.

In fact, I found JetForm's overall pricing policy to be very consumer-unfriendly. The price list JetForm sent was marked "Company Confidential." Publicly available products should have openly published prices.

Summary
Which package did I like best? The best of the bunch was Delrina's FormFlow. Novell's InForms really should remove the need for GroupWise to provide form routing. Lotus Forms needs to eliminate the requirement for a Lotus Notes client to provide signature support. And JetForm D esign needs to improve its interaction with real databases.

Andy Feibus is VP of technology at Process Systems and Integration Inc., an industrial information systems consulting firm in Atlanta. He can be reached at amf@psi2.com

Comments on this story?

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

CAREER CENTER

Ready to take that job and shove it?
Open | Close