This chapter walks you through the steps of creating a simple form. See Creating an Application.

On this page:

Add/Edit a Form

• Start by clicking New  in the applications home page to add your first application. Then click the name of the application or the Edit  icon and click New  in the forms home page to create your first form.
• Or, to work on a form you’ve already started, click the name of an existing form or click the Edit  icon below the form name.

Here is where you design your form by dropping and laying out controls such as input text boxes, phone number, dates, radios, dropdowns, etc. controls from 's palette or from your own schema.

First, modify the name and description of your form. At the top of the Forms Work Area click the toolbar (where you see the Finish and Cancel buttons) to access the form's properties , which are shown in the lower-left portion of the Forms Designer. Give your form a new name and description.

Add Controls

Initially, a form is created with no controls except for a Submit and Cancel button. You must add controls  to the form in order to make it useful. Controls can be dropped from the palette or generated from a schema.

Controls are added from the  control palette by clicking a control button, like text or number or phone, and dragging them onto the form's canvas area. Drag a few text controls and a money control onto your form canvas now.

Editing Controls

Each control is given a random label indicative of the control’s type. Click once on a control to select it. Click again on it's default label to edit it. Controls have many properties in addition to the label property. The Form Designer's Properties area will display all of the control's properties, so you can edit them.

Arranging Controls

You can organize and rearrange the controls in your form by dragging controls and dropping them in the appropriate place. Click on the control to drag it to another location on the form. As you drag your controls you will see visual indicators helping you place your control where you want it. When you 1st start working with  it can be helpful to grab the control towards the upper right corner as that's where the visual drop indicators appear. Read the section on Drag and Drop for helpful details.

Preview your form

The Form Designer toolbar at the top of the form canvas area, contains several buttons. The preview  button displays your form as it will look when deployed for use. In Preview, notice that any panel grouping elements you may have added to your form are not displayed visually. This is because panels are for multi-column layout only.

Saving your Form

To save any changes to your form, click on the  toolbar button.

Using a Form

Once your form is created, it’s time to try using it. From the forms page, click on the test  icon below your form. This brings up your form on ' web server. Go ahead and enter values into your form. Notice how each time you tab to another field  immediately validates the data in the prior field and immediately displays an error message and color indication when there is a problem. For instance, try to enter a text string in an input that is a numeric control. See the Validation section for details on validation rules

 prevents submisson of incomplete forms by keeping your form's submit button grey'd until all required fields are filled in. As soon as all required fields contains values and all of those values have valid data (eg: phone fields contain aaa-bbb-cccc format) the submit button will become clickable.

Submitting your Form

Where does the form data go when the user clicks the submit button? This is controlled by your form's Doc Action . What does the user see when they click the submit button? This is controlled by your form's Form Action . Let’s go back into the  form designer for one of your forms to use the  Form Action and Doc Action  buttons.

Click the Form Action button in the form designer's toolbar and click the Forward user to a web page of your choice. This launches a wizard. Enter the ''URL'' http://www.google.com. Click finish in the wizard panel to return to the form designer canvas. Next click the Doc Action button in the form designer's toolbar and click the Email data to a specified address. This launches a wizard. Enter your email address in the To field. Click finish in the wizard panel to return to the form designer canvas. Click the  button on the form designer to save your changes and exit the form designer. This returns you to the forms home page. Click the test  button to use your form. Now when you click the submit button rather than navigating to a page with a default message "Thank You! Your submission has been received", you navigate to www.google.com. The form's data will be emailed to you. This is your first simple usage of setting form and doc actions.

Making Forms Public

By default your forms are private and only accessible when you are logged into  as the form designer. While developing your form, you can test it in use mode by clicking on the test  icon to the right of the form's name. Once you are satisfied with your form you can make it public by clicking the  icon on the Form page to the right of your form's name. Forms have three states:

•  Private - for use only by the form designer
•  Public in tenant - accessible to users with a  user account
•  Public anonymous - accessible to anyone who knows the form's url.

Click the icon twice so you see the  icon which means your form is public anonymous.

Using Your Own Schemas

 can quickly and easily create forms from your own XSD schemas. First, upload your .xsd into your  applications. From within your application, click on the ''schemas'' tab. Next click on the  icon on the Schemas tab. You can add as many schemas as you want. Each time you will enter an upload dialog window where you can browse to your schemas on disk and give them a meaningful name and description. You can delete schemas you no longer need by clicking the  icon next to each schemas name.

See the form designer Schemas section for details on adding controls from schema types into your form.

Styling Forms

Forms can be custom styled to fit the look & feel of your existing web site. See Themes.