- Overview
Avoka Transact Composer is the electronic forms authoring environment within Avoka Transact. It gives organizations speed, agility, and flexibility to create powerful data collection applications for iOS, Android®, and Windows® desktops, tablets, and smartphones. It empowers non-technical business users to create and deploy digital form-based transactions without requiring them to know HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, XML schemas, or the technical details in building device- and browser-agnostic applications. Review the overview section or features and demos for more on how Composer introduces agility into the design of forms-based applications.
Agile – Aimed at Business Analysts, Not Developers
You don’t need to understand HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, XML schemas, legacy browsers, responsive web design, error handling, or the browser event model. Composer takes care of it all by leveraging the best practices of form building expertise.
Smart – Design Once, Run Everywhere
A single design can be rendered as an HTML5 or interactive PDF for desktop (with graceful fall-back for legacy browsers), as well as a responsive, touch-oriented HTML5 for iOS, Android, or Windows tablets and smartphones.
Fast – Sophistication without Perspiration
Composer provides built-in features and capabilities that allow you to easily create sophisticated wizard or scrolling-style forms with accessibility features, dynamic data lookups, and error-handling strategies.
Easy – Styling Made Simple and Consistent
Style-sheets are designed once and used across all your forms, so you can focus on the data-collection experience, rather than meeting organizational style requirements. If your style guide changes, you simply modify and regenerate the style sheet.
Comprehensive – Designed for Large Organizations
Composer is designed for the demanding needs of larger organizations. This doesn’t mean that it’s unsuitable for smaller organizations, but it provides many higher-end features that transform complex paper forms into great, intelligent electronic forms to be used in data capture applications.
- Features & Demos
Introduction
Composer is a powerful and easy to use solution to create HTML/HTML5 or PDF Forms. Composer puts the power of an expert form developer into the hands of business analysts, forms designers and others, making it possible for more people to rapidly create high quality HTML/HTML5 or PDF data capture applications. This short presentation is an overview of Composer’s main features.
Design Once, Deploy Everywhere
Internet access is rapidly shifting from desktop and laptop computers to mobile tablets and smartphones. Every organization is investigating how to support mobile devices with multiple screen sizes, and new interaction models that focus on touch rather than a mouse and keyboard. With Composer a single SmartForm design creates an optimized data collection application for desktop as well as iPhone, iPad, and Android mobile devices.
Data Dictionary Manager
It’s important to apply rigor and structure to the way in which the data entered into the form is collected and represented. In particular it is important to ensure the consistency of data across forms. In order to achieve this, you need some way to define and organize the data being collected, across your entire organization, and use this to drive and inform the design of your forms. This can be achieved using a Data Dictionary.
Multi-Language Support
Composer has multi-language support as a key capability. A single copy of the form is maintained, with multiple versions of the text stored separately, and linked into the form. The same form can then be easily output in many different languages. Sophisticated tooling is also provided to help manage the translations.
Business Rules
One of the key benefits of SmartForms is that they can guide your users through the process of filling out the form by embedding “smarts” or business rules into the form itself. See how easy it is to create a “show/hide” business rule without coding. Or drop into the simplified scripting editor if you need more sophistication.
Smart Templates and Style Sheets
Smart Templates and Style Sheets allow you to easily and quickly adjust the look of an entire form in a few clicks. See how easy it is to switch styles or modify existing ones – for one form, or for every form in your portfolio.
Automated Layouts
It can sometimes be very tedious to layout out a form in an elegant and consistent way. Composer takes all the pain away by providing a number of automated layout managers, that do all the hard work for you.
Data Integration
Many forms integrate into backend systems or databases. Composer provides a simple yet powerful way of defining an intelligent XML schema for your form, without you having to know anything about XML. The IT department will love you.
Bulk Editing
Some aspects of a form can be tedious to change one field at a time – such as labels, tooltips, messages, and data binding. Composer allows you to edit these easily and quickly in a spreadsheet-like user interface.
Form Error Handling
SmartForms allow you to specify mandatory fields and validations to ensure that the data entered is complete and correct. But this is wasted unless you have an effective way of communicating errors to users. Composer’s built-in form error handling has been designed by usability experts to make it intuitive for your users.
Standard Form Styles
This presentation is a short overview of some of the different styles of SmartForms that Avoka has created over the years. These are being used as inspiration for a standard library of Composer smart templates and styles.
