Developing forms covers a variety of topics that are designed
to help you build your forms more efficiently.
Getting started
The Designer is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) form creation tool. Adding items to a form is done by dragging-and-dropping items from the Palette onto the form.
Creating pages
When you create a new form, by default it consists of one page. This section describes how to add pages to your form, as well as how to set page properties.
Laying out pages
The topics in this section describe how to insert items onto the design canvas to create forms. Design tools such as grids and rulers are also described.
Templates
Templates provide a structure for your forms, allowing for faster and easier form creation. Templates can be chosen from samples provided within the Forms Designer or can be custom-made.
Form Wizard Creator overview
The Form Wizard Creator lets you build easy-to-use wizard forms from existing forms. If you have a large form, wizard forms let you organize forms into more manageable sections by presenting content in sequential form pages.
Adding interactive features
The Designer gives you the ability to take advantage of the interactive features that XForms and XFDL provide.
Adding signatures to forms
Signature buttons initiate signing ceremonies that apply a user's electronic signature to all or part of a form. The most typical use of signatures is to identify the person who signed a form (or portions of a form in a workflow), but signatures are also important for locking down form content so that it cannot be changed. This provides greater security, increases the level of trust for the form data, and ensures that the form content cannot be repudiated.
Setting up data models Designer manages the relationship between the XForms data model and the items on the form.
Creating submissions
You can collect data from the form by creating a submission. A submission is initiated when the user has completed the form and is ready to submit it for processing.
Integrating with other systems
You can design IBM® forms to integrate with other data systems, such as FileNet®. This section details how to create forms for integration with FileNet®, as well as how to create custom items for integration with other systems.
Creating localized forms
This section is intended to assist form designers to create localized forms for use with the Viewer and Webform Server.
Locking forms
Once you have created a form in the IBM® Forms Designer, it can be exported as a locked form.
Compressing forms
Most forms do not require compression. Uncompressed forms result in higher data transfers, however you can set your form to compress when the user saves the form or submits the form.