| General Questions |
| Question |
Does SmartForm Composer replace Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES? |
| Answer |
No. Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES can create any PDF electronic form. SmartForm Composer utilizes Smart Templates (patent pending) to produce standard forms. Its design focuses on simplicity and productivity so that we can grow the number of people who can create electronic PDF forms. To make this possible we have encapsulated a number of commonplace form patterns, behaviors and styles into Smart Templates that can be easily customized within SmartForm Composer. Smart Templates will fit many, but not all, form creation needs. Our goal is 80/20 - that is enable SmartForm Composer to meet 80% of your PDF form needs. |
| Question |
What does Designer do that Composer doesn't? |
| Answer |
Designer is a much more powerful tool than Composer. A full discussion of the differences would take several days. However, Composer does the vast majority of the common things that you're likely to want in your forms. We suggest that the best way to decide is to pick one of your own complex forms, and then have a discussion about it with the Composer team - we'll be happy to tell you which features of your form can or cannot be implemented in Composer. Remember also that many more complex features can be accommodated in Composer by implementing the feature in Designer, turning it into a fragment, and uploading it into Composer. |
| Question |
How is SmartForm Composer packaged? |
| Answer |
Initially SmartForm Composer will be released as an online cloud service. It is a Rich Internet Application (Adobe Flex) that runs in your browser - there is nothing to install. A server version will be also available for large Corporate and Government clients. |
| Question |
How is SmartForm Composer priced? |
| Answer |
Pricing is still being developed, contact Avoka if you have a specific need to discuss pricing. |
| Question |
When will SmartForm Composer be generally available? |
| Answer |
Avoka SmartForm Composer v1.0 is available right now. You can go to the Avoka SmartForm Composer home page to request a trial, or to sign up to stay informed. |
| Question |
Why should I use Avoka SmartForm Composer? |
| Answer |
SmartForm Composer is all about improving productivity within the SmartForm creation process. As such it is proven to:- Accelerate PDF SmartForm creation
- Expand the number of people who can create PDF SmartForms
- Reduce the costs, time, and risks of SmartForm creation
- Ensure that forms comply with standards and regulations.
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| Question |
Are there Partnership opportunities available for SmartForm Composer? |
| Answer |
Yes - please register your interest in our partnership program in the Beta registration form. The partnership program will be available in 2010. |
| Question |
Will SmartForm Composer work with SAP Interactive Forms? |
| Answer |
We plan to create a version of SmartForm Composer that targets SAP Interactive Forms after the initial release. |
| Question |
Does SmartForm Composer work with Form Guides? |
| Answer |
Not yet! |
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| Compatibility |
| Question |
What standards does SmartForm Composer support? |
| Answer |
SmartForm Composer produces forms that are completely compliant with the Adobe XFA specification for PDF forms. SmartForm Composer also automatically creates XML schemas for underlying data storage that are complaint with the XML Schema specification, which enables easy integration with back end systems. |
| Question |
What versions of Acrobat/Reader can my forms be used with? |
| Answer |
Most forms can be used with Acrobat/Reader 7.0.5 or later, including versions 8 and 9. This may vary based on specific Smart Template functionality. |
| Question |
Are my forms compatible with Adobe LiveCycle Process Management ES? |
| Answer |
Yes. SmartForm Composer embeds the necessary XML schema to allow Workbench to browse all your form fields with the XPath expression editor – with no extra effort. |
| Question |
Will the forms I build run on any platform? |
| Answer |
SmartForm Composer uses the same PDF technology used by Designer. The forms you build will run on any device that has the Adobe Reader installed, including both PC and Mac. |
| Question |
Will my SmartForm Composer forms work with non-Adobe PDF viewer? |
| Answer |
Please refer to official Adobe positioning |
| Question |
Will my SmartForm Composer forms work with Mobile devices |
| Answer |
Please refer to official Adobe positioning |
| Question |
How do I make sure that users always use the latest version of my form? |
| Answer |
SmartForm Composer forms provide a variety of features to assist with this. For example, any form can specify an expiry date after which users get redirected to a nominated URL. SmartForm Composer forms are also compatible with Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management, which allows forms to be explicitly expired at any point in time. Finally, there are a large number of version management capabilities available with Avoka FormCenter, SmartForm Composer's companion product. For example, you can embed a "Check for Updates" button in a form that will check back with Form Center to see if there is a later version of the current form. |
| Question |
What happens if a user tries to open one of my forms in an older unsupported version of Reader? |
| Answer |
All forms built with SmartForm Composer have automatic Reader Version checking. The form will immediately pop up a message indicating that an upgrade of Reader is required, and assisting the user to perform the upgrade. |
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| Smart Templates |
| Question: |
What is a Smart Template? |
| Answer: |
Smart Templates are like a blue-print for a form. They define the paper size (A4 or Letter, etc), the orientation (landscape or portrait), the header and footer, the number of columns, and many other features of the overall form. Importantly, they also define a set of form objects that are customized to work within this particular template. |
| Question |
What is a Style Sheet? |
| Answer |
A style sheet provides additional styling information for your form, such as colors, fonts, margin widths, caption orientation, and more. SmartForm Composer style sheets are very similar to CSS style sheets implemented in HTML. Each template defines one or more style sheets. SmartForm Composer provides a style sheet editor to enable you to easily modify or create new styles. |
| Question |
What is the difference between a template and a style sheet? |
| Answer |
A template defines page size, columns, headers and footers, while a style sheet defines colors, fonts, alignment and padding, etc. The template also defines the set of widgets that can be used in the form. |
| Question |
Can I build any PDF form with SmartForm Composer? |
| Answer |
Almost. We have designed SmartForm Composer to be able to create the vast majority of standard data collection forms. There are certain complex forms that SmartForm Composer will not be able to build – in this case, Adobe LiveCycle Designer can be used. If in doubt, please contact our sales staff. |
| Question |
Can I create my own Smart Templates? |
| Answer |
Not yet. Avoka provides a number of standard Smart Templates, and you can either use one of these “as-is”, or customize by changing the style sheet. Smart Templates require advanced skills in Forms development and we will provide support for developing and customizing templates in future releases. In the initial release Avoka (or our partners) can create customized Smart Template to meet your specific requirements. |
| Question |
What sort of form objects can I use in a SmartForm Composer form? |
| Answer |
SmartForm Composer generates fully compliant Adobe XFA/PDF forms, and can therefore create any objects defined by the XFA specification. In addition, you can create “smart” objects that encapsulate a particular behavior or look, and “composite” objects that are collections of the base objects. The set of objects that you have available to you within a particular form is defined by the Template designer – so you can be sure that you’re only using objects that have been approved and tested for use in your organization. |
| Question |
If I change a block or field does it update in all forms that use it? |
| Answer |
Yes. SmartForm Composer uses true object-orientation to make sure that any changes to base objects will be automatically reflected in all forms that use them. |
| Question |
Can I import existing XDP/PDF file built using LiveCycle Designer into SmartForm Composer? |
| Answer |
No. However, you can extract fragments and other elements of an existing form from LiveCycle Designer, and import them into SmartForm Composer for easy re-use. |
| Question |
Can I edit the form that I create with SmartForm Composer within LiveCycle Designer? |
| Answer |
In theory you can, since SmartForm Composer creates XFA-compliant forms. However, we strongly discourage this for two reasons: Firstly, there is no way to incorporate any changes you make back into SmartForm Composer – so the form that has been modified manually is now “orphaned”. Secondly, SmartForm Composer generates highly specialized and optimized code, and there is a possibility that you will break the functionality if you start modifying it in Designer. We strongly advise that you should do your work in either SmartForm Composer or Designer, and not mix and match. Once you’ve used SmartForm Composer, it will be very obvious which forms are suitable for SmartForm Composer vs Designer. |
| Question |
What if there is some functionality that I need that SmartForm Composer doesn’t provide? |
| Answer |
No problem. Simply use Designer to create the functionality as a standard Designer Fragment, and upload it to SmartForm Composer, where you will be able to drop it into any form. Or contact Avoka to do this for you. |
| Question |
Can I create re-usable components in SmartForm Composer? |
| Answer |
Yes, that's one of SmartForm Composer's most powerful features. You can create a field that customizes an existing field, or a block consisting of a collection of fields. |
| Question |
Can I create my own style-sheets? |
| Answer |
Yes. You can either save one of the existing style sheets and modify it, or create one from scratch. SmartForm Composer provides an integrated Style Sheet Editor. |
| Question |
Can I brand my forms with my own logo and other corporate details? |
| Answer |
Of course! |
| Question |
What sort of logic can I embed in my forms? |
| Answer |
Pretty much anything. SmartForm Composer provides two ways of embedding logic: Rules are simple point-and-click expressions that can be used for calculations, validations and visibility/mandatory rules. If you need more power than this, you can use SmartForm Composer’s scripting environment, that provides the full power of JavaScript in a simplified environment. |
| Question |
I have a form that needs to look and behave differently at different steps within an Adobe LiveCycle Process – can SmartForm Composer help? |
| Answer |
Not yet, but we’re working on a feature called “Variants”, that allows you to have a different variation of the form at different steps of a workflow – automatically, with no scripting. |
| Question |
Can I create tables within my form? |
| Answer |
Of course. All of the logic associated with dynamically adding and removing rows is baked in automatically – no scripting required. |
| Question |
I have a specific organizational style that I want for my forms. How does this work? |
| Answer |
Please contact Avoka sales team. We’ll have a conversation with you about your requirements, and usually we can build a customized template for you quite quickly based on one of our existing templates. This can then be used for all your subsequent forms. |
| Question |
Can I add digital signatures to my form? |
| Answer |
Yes, you can use any of the standard Adobe form fields within SmartForm Composer. |
| Question |
What if my form is just too complicated for SmartForm Composer? |
| Answer |
We have intentionally kept SmartForm Composer's user interface and capabilities simple. SmartForm Composer is specifically built to make it extremely easy and quick to build 80% of the most common types of forms. If your form falls into the 20% that SmartForm Composer can't handle directly, you have a number of options:
- Use LiveCycle Designer to build the form.
- Design the "tricky" parts of your form in LiveCycle Designer, turn into fragments, and upload to SmartForm Composer, where you can embed the fragment in any form.
- Contact Avoka - our form development experts can advise you on the appropriate approach.
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| Question |
What will my form look like when printed? |
| Answer |
Most of Avoka's standard SmartForm Templates automatically "morph" into print-friendly versions when printed. For example, colors are transformed to black and white and all interactive elements such as buttons are hidden. |
| Forms Management |
| Question |
How do I publish my forms? |
| Answer |
You can generate PDF SmartForms directly from SmartForm Composer, either individually, or an entire project in one click. You can then publish directly to your web site or your form hosting application. Avoka’s companion product, FormCenter, will tightly integrate with SmartForm Composer, so you can publish your forms directly from SmartForm Composer to FormCenter. |
| Question |
How does SmartForm Composer work with Adobe LiveCycle's Repository? |
| Answer |
SmartForm Composer will provide capabilities to publish forms directly to the LiveCycle repository. |
| Question |
How does SmartForm Composer handle versioning? |
| Answer |
In the current implementation, there is only a single version of each form. However, we plan to put full versioning capabilities into SmartForm Composer for the public release. You will be able to store multiple versions within the SmartForm Composer repository, revert to previous versions, and even view the changes that have occurred between versions. |
| Question |
What happens if two people try to edit the same form at the same time? |
| Answer |
SmartForm Composer is fully multi-user enabled. Whenever one user starts editing a form, the form is locked to that user, and other users will be prevented from making changes. Once the form has been saved and closed, other users will have access again. |
| Question |
How does SmartForm Composer manage testing and approval cycles? |
| Answer |
Approvals are an important part of the overall life-cycle of your forms. There are a number of different ways you can manage approvals:
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Using a manual process, such as email or face-to-face meetings.
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You can use Avoka's companion product, FormCenter, to manage the full form life-cycle. We will be building tighter integration between SmartForm Composer and FormCenter in the near future.
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You will be able to manage approvals using Adobe LiveCycle Process Management, which has strong support for custom approval processes.
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Approval comments will be pushed back into Composer where they can be viewed by the developers
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| Question |
Once someone has filled in my form, how do I get at the data? |
| Answer |
Adobe LiveCycle ES Process Management enables you to create powerful business processes that can automate the processing of your data including integration with other systems. You can also write your own data collection web application, or you can publish your form to SmartForm Composer's companion product, FormCenter, which provides a sophisticated Web Self Service solution "out of the box". |
| Question |
Do different people have different roles within SmartForm Composer? |
| Answer |
Yes, SmartForm Composer is built with sophisticated role-based permissions. Every single operation within SmartForm Composer is controlled via a permission, and you can only perform actions which you are authorized to perform. Team members can be allocated to projects and perform specific roles within each project. |
| Question |
Why does Composer produce password-protected PDFs? |
| Answer |
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To help ensure that any intellectual property or sensitive information you have embedded into the form is protected. (For example, a proprietary discounting algorithm)
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To help ensure that your Composer form isn't accidentally or intentionally modified using LiveCycle Designer. Remember that any changes you make in Designer cannot be re-imported into Composer. We recommend that you make a decision based on a form's complexity to either use Composer, or Designer, but not to try to use both.
We will provide the password used to encrypt your forms if you request this. This means that you will be able to open Composer-generated forms directly in Designer.
Please note that the encryption we use is simple password-based encryption - if you require strong encryption, please contact our sales department to discuss Adobe solutions such as Digital Signatures and Digital Rights Management. |
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| Productivity |
| Question |
Can a business person use SmartForm Composer? |
| Answer |
Yes, anyone with basic computer skills can use SmartForm Composer. If you can use Excel or PowerPoint, you should have no difficulty using SmartForm Composer. We also have a special mode for non-technical users to be able to bulk-edit information such as tool tips, error messages, labels, and mandatory fields in a very familiar spreadsheet-like environment. |
| Question |
How much faster is SmartForm Composer than other ways of building forms? |
| Answer |
SmartForm Composer is anywhere from 5 to 50 times faster to build and maintain a form compared to using conventional form design tools. |
| Question |
How does SmartForm Composer achieve these productivity gains? |
| Answer |
The entire design of SmartForm Composer is focused on productivity. The main way we do this is by taking care of 90% of the overall form design within the Smart Templates. This allows you to focus on the business data that your form needs to capture, and let our expertise ensure that your form looks and functions perfectly every time. |
| Question |
Can I create print forms with Composer? |
| Answer |
Of course. Print forms are actually much simpler than interactive forms, because all you really need to worry about is the look and layout of the fields, which Composer does extremely well. You may decide to define a slightly different template and set of widgets for your print forms. For example, radio buttons may be rendered with a more traditional box rather than the interactive round radio buttons. It's even possible to create a Composer form that can be used as both a print and an interactive form, by using special purpose widgets and style sheets. |
| Question |
How does SmartForm Composer make it easier to maintain forms? |
| Answer |
Maintenance in SmartForm Composer is where you really reap the benefits.
- If the corporate style guide changes, simply modify the SmartForm Composer style sheet, and click the “Publish All” button.
- If a particular field or block changes, simply change the base-field or base block, and click the “Publish All” button.
All the forms inherit the changes in a true object-oriented fashion. |
| Question |
How do I install SmartForm Composer? |
| Answer |
There are two ways of using SmartForm Composer:
- Use Avoka's "cloud-based" hosted service. There is nothing to install, simply point your web browser at the SmartForm Composer URL, and create an account. Avoka take care of server management, backups, upgrades, and everything else.
- Use the "on-premise" server installation. We will provide you an installer that allows you to install your own private copy of SmartForm Composer on your own hardware. Avoka will provide regular updates and maintenance."
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SmartForm Composer Frequently Asked Questions