SmartForm Factory extends the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (LiveCycle ES). It is comprised of several modules:
SmartForm Composer: Is the SmartForm App (e-Forms) authoring environment within SmartForm Factory
SmartForm Composer provides a simple but very powerful development model, so that anyone can create interactive and intelligent electronic forms that enable customers to transact online. You simply select one of our pre-defined Smart Templates, add your components and business rules and you’ll end up with a SmartForm App that looks great, no matter what your design skills. Best of all a single design creates an optimized SmartForm App for desktop as well as iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry mobile devices.
SmartForm Manager: Is a comprehensive forms management system for SmartForm Apps and serves as a powerful customer-interaction and system integration hub between form transactions and back-end business processes.
- Its integrated change control and release management capability allows authorized users to deploy SmartForm Apps with a ‘click’ and make them immediately accessible to users to transact online through websites, portals, intranets and mobile devices.
- It detects the device in use and delivers an optimized SmartForm App for desktop, tablet and mobile devices including iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry mobile devices.
- It provides hundreds of powerful management, administration and integration features to provide an easy to use yet versatile environment.
- It’s designed to be used either in the cloud (or private cloud) or as an on-premise solution. When deployed as a cloud service it can be configured as a multi-tenanted service making it ideal for very large corporations or Government shared-service offerings.
SmartForm Self-Service Modules: Our Self-Service modules make it easy for users to locate, use, manage, and track their submission so that they can transact completely online. We offer several self-service modules that are designed to be easily integrated into existing Web sites, intranets or simply run as a stand-alone application. These include:
- SmartForm Web Plug-in: SmartForm Web Plug-in is a module which enables content authors to incorporate SmartForm Apps into their website with the minimum amount of effort. By simply adding a few HTML tags to a web page you can enable sophisticated online transactions. For Adobe Web Experience Management (WEM) the Smart Form Web Plug-in provides content authors with drag and drop tools to add SmartForm Apps to pages with a few mouse clicks, without having to write any HTML at all.
- SmartForm Finder: This module provides configurable Wizard-style Guides to help users easily locate SmartForm Apps using a simple 'question and answer' guided interface. It can be embedded into existing Web pages and linked to any online resource.
- SmartForm Self-Service Portal: Enables custom or stand-alone self-service Web applications to be created easily. Provides users the ability to manage profiles, search and locate forms, view submission history and monitor processing on submitted application. Designed to be integrated with customer single sign-on systems or integrated with existing enterprise portals.
- SmartForm Self-Service App: A customisable self-service app designed to run on iPads or Android Tablet devices. Enable users to search and locate SmartForms - complete them online or offline.
SmartForm Integration Agent: A purpose built application that is used to synchronize the form submission data (typically XML Data, PDF receipts, attached documents) between the SmartForm Manager hub and backend systems that are located in a seperate data center. This is specifically designed for cloud or shared service environments where multiple organisations/departments/agencies utilise a centralised SmartForm environment.
From a deployment perspective SmartForm Manager can manage any kind of SmartForm App - PDF, HTML, SmartForm Apps for Apple and Android Tablets and Smart Phones.
The Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (aka LiveCycle ES or ES2) can be used to add many important enterprise capabilities:
- LiveCycle Forms is used to render PDF Forms
- LiveCycle Output is used to generate read-only receipts
- LiveCycle Reader Extensions adds additional capabilities to some PDF forms
- LiveCycle Digital Signatures is used to either certify PDF forms or enable the digital signing of PDF forms
- LiveCycle Process Management creates custom workflows to manage the processing of submissions
- LiveCycle Rights Management to secure sensitive forms once SmartForms have been submitted
The following diagram is a high level workflow showing how customers typically interact with SmartForm Factory.
- User locates appropriate SmartForm App using one of several search or SmartForm App finding tools
- Optional form is pre-populated - several options can be used including using user profile data or custom lookups. Normally no programming is required to configure pre-population.
- User completes form. If the form has been 'reader extended' the form can be saved off-line
- User submits completed SmartForm App back to SmartForm Manager. The XML data is stored temporally along with any additional information while the submission processing is completed. Options during the submission process provided by SmartForm Manager include:
- Payment processing. Credit card payment functionality can be processed during the submission. Integration with several payment services is available.
- Attachment handling. Optional documents can be attached as part of the submission process. These are automatically virus scanned as part of the submission payload.
- Click thru signatures. This enables users to view and then accept a certified read-only version of their submitted form during the submission processes. A server based digital certificate can then be applied to sign the submitted document.
- Once the submission is accepted the user is guided to a "thank you" or "confirmation" page where they can view and download a read only receipt of their submission
- SmartForm Manager delivers the submission payload to the backend business process. This can be as simple as initiating a LiveCycle workflow (business process) but can also extend to using Web Services to push the data to legacy systems in another location. SmartForm Manager acts a a hub - enabling every SmartForm App to be associated with different back end processes
- No matter what the back end workflow is there are normally key "milestone" steps in the process where the applicant can monitor progress
- SmartForm Manager provides API's to enable back end business processes to report on the progress. Users can track this via the self service portal.
For additional information please view the SmartForm Factory Architecture Overview.
