SmartForm Composer Features

SmartForm Composer is a powerful and easy to use solution to create LiveCycle PDF Forms. SmartForm 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 LiveCycle PDF forms. This short presentation is an overview of Composer's main features.

Internet access is rapidly shifting from desktop and laptop computers to mobile tablets and smart phones.  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 SmartForm Composer a single SmartForm App design creates an optimized SmartForm App for desktop as well as iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry mobile devices.

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.

Avoka SmartForm Composer now 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.