What's new in IBM Forms Experience Builder 8.6.4

NEW - The following features and enhancements are available in Forms Experience Builder 8.6.4.

Support for the following versions:

Oracle 12c and 11g
DB2® 10.5 and 11.x
WebSphere® Application Server 8.5.5 and 9
Java™ 7
Derby 10.10.2
ICU 55.1

New features include:

An updated Styles tab to enable easy customization of an application's appearance through changes to colors, fonts and other style attributes. Use the provided Customize action to customized your theme and then use the theme export and import functionality to style other applications with the same theme. Previously available styling features, like the ability to add additional custom CSS are still available and contribute to the overall look of an application, but are not edited or modified as part of the new theme customization feature. For more information, see Styling your application with a custom theme.
Application owners can now import a set of data from a spreadsheet into an application. An Import Data button for each application is provided in View Responses. Data can be imported from recent versions of xls and xlsx and the data must conform to specific application constraints and setup requirements. For more information, see Importing data in view responses.
Application designers will now have the choice to store filled PDF documents as an attachment as part of a submitted record, rather than simply returning the filled PDF to the user. For more information, see Mapping form items to PDF fields and storing the filled PDF.
General and security fixes.

The following features are available in Forms Experience Builder 8.6.3:

Support for the following versions:

Oracle 12c and 11g
DB2 10.5
WebSphere Application Server 8.5.5
Java 7
Derby 10.10.2
ICU 55.1

New features include:

An easy-to-use Format feature. Line of Business users can enter simple expressions samples of the required format to set format parameters. More advanced users can enter regular expressions. A customizable error message is also available for this feature.
Post deployment window containing all the details that are required to start using your application. After you deploy an application, the window opens and describes the “Next Steps” available. Send the launch URL to your users so they can access the application. URLs for viewing responses, charts, and other options are also displayed. The post deployment dialog is also displayed when you import and deploy an application.
When you import an existing application, you can choose to remove users from the Access page. Clearing the previously added users ensures only the people you add to the application have access. After importing an application, use the Access page to review and modify the existing permissions.
The editor for adding rich text to your application was updated.
The Data Access Rest API contains additional filtering parameters to allow more specific refinement of the response data.
The following API usability enhancements were added:
- Simplified JSON requests and response structures.
- New metadata option
Automatic generation of swagger files for applications.
A new Service Configuration window where you can quickly set up your application to make JSON service calls. For more information, see Adding and configuring a service.
The addition of a new configuration flag that disables the embedding of your application into other web sites.
General usability enhancements include:
- Carbon Copy and Blind Carbon Copy fields for Stage Action emails.
- New Welcome text on the Manage page.
- On the Manage page, you can access the Summary Charts URL. This link takes a user with the appropriate permission settings to the stand-alone Summary Chart page.
Security fixes.
General bug fixes.

The following features are available in Forms Experience Builder 8.6.2:

Support for the following versions:

Oracle 12c and 11g
DB2 10.5
WebSphere Application Server 8.5.5
Java 7
Derby 10.10.2
ICU 55.1

New features include:

A new Events tab for easier management of custom JavaScript™ within an application. The Events tab displays all JavaScript used within an application.
A new Alterntative text tag for Image and Media form items. To increase the accessibility of your form, you can now add alternative text to the Image and Media form items.
You can now import a list of choices from a spreadsheet into Select One, Select Many, and Dropdown form items. The lists can be comma separated, or space separated. If you copy two columns of choices from a spreadsheet, the first column is set as the Displayed Value, and the second column set as the Saved Value.
In the Settings tab, under Files, you can now download any previously uploaded file.
A Java 2 Connector (J2C) provider is now supported for use in the HTTP Service Transport with WebSphere Application Server.
A new openURL query parameter so you can dynamically set a Forms Experience Builder application to open at run time.
The Media form item is supported in Google Chrome via HTML5.
Two new JavaScript functions were added to the User Interface Objects: setTabTitle and setTabTitleList.
The amount of Stage Action data an application can have has been increased.
General and security fixes.

The following features were new in Forms Experience Builder 8.6.1.

Support for the following versions:

Oracle 11g
DB2 10.5
WebSphere Application Server 8.5.5
Java 7
Derby 10.10.2

New features include:

Document Integration: Where compliance or regulatory requirements mandate it, integrating Forms Experience Builder captured data with existing documents can be an important part of the overall Forms Experience Builder solution. These output documents can be provided for precise printing, document signing or archiving. Using a Service Configuration, you can map Forms Experience Builder form items to PDF items. When the user clicks a button, the PDF is populated. For more information, see Forms Experience Builder document integration.

WebSphere Portal integration features
- Render parameters: Two public render parameters were added to provide additional portlet-to-portlet communication. For more information, see Public render parameters
- Page refresh setting: A new page refresh setting is available in the WebSphere Portal Shared Settings. This property lets you set whether the portal page is refreshed when the form is submitted. For more information, see Selecting an application using Edit Shared Setting.
- Support for non-default portal context root: The Forms Experience Portlet now supports portal with a non-default context root, or an empty context root.
- Script Portlet and DDC samples: Two new samples are available for using Forms Experience Builder with WebSphere Portal. Both samples are available on the developerWorks® Forms Experience Builder wiki:
  - DDC integration
  - Script Portlet integration
Additional in-product help: If you're new to Forms Experience Builder, blue help bubbles describe the basic function of each page or section, as well as provide additional help resources. Additional hover help, and context sensitive help were added throughout the application.
JSON is now supported in the:
- HTTP Transport
- JavaScript Data Access Rest API
New JavaScript functionality: New JavaScript functions were added to the User Interface Objects.
Forms Tab:
- Moving items in an application: You can now move form items between pages of a form. For more information, see Moving items on a form.
- Order of forms in a application: You can change the order of the forms within an application by dragging and dropping them in the Outline view. When the application is deployed and launched, the first form in the application becomes the default form seen by the user.
- Warning message on Save: Forms Experience Builder does not support multiple people editing the same application. If you and another user edit the same application, and the other user saves changes while you are still editing, a warning message is now displayed asking if you want to overwrite the changes made by the other user.
- Date item loads current date: A new property is available for the Date field. When selected, if the user leaves the Date field empty, the current date is loaded upon form submission. If the user fills in the date field, the date supplied by the user is used.
- Single and Multi-Line entries uppercase: This new feature, located in the Basic tab of the Properties window lets you automatically change the user's entered text into upper case letters.
- Hiding Table buttons for Add, Edit, and Delete: In the Advanced tab for a Table, you can now set that no buttons are displayed with your table. The buttons can be enabled using JavaScript, if required.
Manage Tab:
- Default sort order: Default sort order was changed so the most recently changed applications are listed at the top. Now you can quickly find recently modified applications. Alphabetical sorting is still available, but no longer the default.
- Redeploy after saving: When you edit an application, and save the changes you must redeploy the application for the changes to be implemented. A visual indicator is now displayed as a reminder when an application has changes that have not been deployed.
- Adding tags to an application: When you create a new application, you can add tags at the same time. Tags are used to search for applications in the Manage screen. Previously, you could only add tags to your application after it was created and listed in the Manage tab. Tags are separated by spaces, so if you need to make a multiple-word tag, use an underscore between the words.
Access Tab: The "All Authenticated Users" group cannot be added to any role that has Edit permissions. Users can still be assigned individually, or as groups, to roles with edit permissions. This prevents your application from showing up in the Manage Tab for all authenticated users, and from their applications appearing on your Manage tab. You see only the applications you created, or those to which you have edit permissions.
Rules:
- Naming Rules: You can now name and rename rules. Providing unique, descriptive names to rules makes them easier to find when building your application.
- See which item is used in a Rule: When a form item has a rule enabled, the Rules icon for the item contains a check mark. The check mark lets you quickly see which form items are involved in a rule.
Stages:
- Stage Description: When you create a new Stage, you can add a detailed description. Adding descriptions is useful if you will have several similarly named stages that perform slightly different portions of the workflow.
- Rich Text Action Completion Message: The Action Completion Message is now a rich text field.
- Success message after submission: When a user completes and submits a form, the new default is to take the user away from the form and display the Action Completion Message. This reduces user confusion as they no longer see an empty, reloaded form on the screen. The existing options for the action taken upon form submission are still available in the Edit Form Properties window.
View Responses:
- Individual Print, Email, and Delete buttons added: Print, email and delete buttons were added to each record row, so you can access them without opening each individual record.
- Email option contains the link to the record: The email operation emails the link to both print and launch the record.
- New fields added to Responses screen: “Created on”and “Last Updated By” were added to the table so you can see additional information on each submitted form.
- Selected results open in a new window: When you click on a submitted record, it opens in a window, rather than in a side pane.
- Default view changed: When you click the View Responses link, the default view is now Responses, rather than Summary.
A number of upgrade routine fixes, accessibility, and usability changes were implemented.
Values entered into the password item are not stored in your Forms Experience Builder application. Since the password is never stored, it is never exported or shown in any field. The password field is empty when the form is rendered in its next stage. Using the password for calling server-side services during stage transitions still work as the value is included as part of the submitted data and not stored as part of the application record.