Custom Tab

This area stores controls you’ve already created and customized so you can re-use them. Maybe you’ve created a dropdown list with your ten branch offices, for example. To add a customized control to this area, drag it from the form you’re working on and drop it over the shaded area that says “Custom.” (You can’t drag the control into the area beneath this.) The name you see in the Custom Area will be the control’s label; if you can't see the entire label, hover over the control to see the full name.

To use a control from the Custom Palette, click on it and drag it into your form. Once the control is in your form, you can modify any of its properties or simply leave it as it was. To delete any control from the Custom Area, simply click the  icon.

To publish a control into the Custom Palette either drag/drop the control from an existing form onto the Custom tab header or click the publish link in the control's properties. See publishing a control template for complete details. 

Properties Tab

This is where you define values in a dropdown box, set the max length for an input field, create tooltips, and additional control customization. When you click on a control in your form, the Properties area displays the control’s properties so you can view and edit them. There are also form properties; click the toolbar at the top of the forms work area to access these.

Data Sources

This area displays the list of XML schemas added to the current application. You may add to your form one or more elements from any schema listed here by clicking Add from Schema, but you first must upload the schema into your application from the Schemas tab. Please see Data Sources.

If you do not see the Data Sources tab it may be hidden via the form server's configuration. See Installation Task Show/Hide Data Sources.

Form Outline

This area is only visible when you are in the Rules view. The form outline list all of the controls in this form and all of the properties applicable to particular controls. The form outline is very helpful when writing business rules. You can copy/paste control names from the form outline to your rule to avoid typos and case issues.

Form Canvas

The right side of the Form Designer is the work area where you'll drag and drop controls from the palette to design your form. At the top of this area is the toolbar. Initially the canvas is empty except for a submit and cancel button and possibly a save icon. The form canvas area is highlighted below in the red border

Toolbar

The toolbar at the top of the forms work area is visible when you are designing your forms but it is not visible to you when you test your forms or when your users access your forms. The toolbar includes the following buttons:

• Click Preview to see the form as it will appear to users. You cannot enter data or click buttons in Preview mode (but ' Test feature lets you do this).
• Click Controls when you are finished working in Rules mode. If your form has no rules, you don’t need to use this button
• Click Rules to display your form’s existing rules, edit the rules, delete them, or create new ones. When you click this button, the left-hand portion of the Forms Designer becomes disabled until you click the Controls button. Rules are discussed in detail below
• Click Form Action to configure what users will see when they submit your form
• Click Doc Action to configure what happens to the data when they submit your form
• Click Finish to save the changes to your form
• Click Cancel to discard changes you’ve made to your form
• Hover the mouse over the left or right corners of the Toolbar to see the version number of your form. When you create your form, the version number will be zero. It will increase each time the form is saved by clicking on the Finish button. This feature can help designers ensure they are working with the latest version of the form.

Submit and Cancel Buttons

At the bottom of the forms work area are a Submit button and a Cancel button. They are part of every form you create and are both disabled while you are designing your form. When you test your form or users access it, the Submit button will be enabled dynamically only after valid data has been supplied in all required controls. To turn off this feature uncheck the Enable if Valid property.

Both buttons have properties that you can customize, so you are free to change the names of these buttons by editing their labels. Additional Submit Controls can be added to the form by dragging/dropping the submit control from the palette.

There is a special template Uri variable named {_frevvo_submit_name}. This template gets converted to the name of the submit button the user clicked when they submitted the form. This feature makes it possible to pass to the back-end system which submit button was clicked (if the form contains multiple submit buttons), so the back end can switch the functionality based on which button the user chose.

An example use of this feature is to have one submit button labeled "Submit," and drop another onto the form and label it "Save". For the Save button, uncheck Enable if Valid. The back end system can then control a save/load feature.

It is also possible to hide one or both of these buttons by unchecking the visible property. It is common to hide the Cancel button and less common to hide the Submit. One example is if the outer application, a JSP for example, takes over the function of handling a submit and then programmatically submits the form.

The behavior of the Cancel button has changed in  version 5.1.1.  In previous versions, the Cancel button performed a reset function simply reloading the form. Clicking Cancel in versions 5.1.1+ will display a confirmation message that the submission was cancelled. You can internationalize this message - it will be part of the form/flow strings even though there is no Cancel button for flows.