Form Template Details is the main maintenance facility for creating and modifying form templates. The facility allows users with appropriate security access links to other maintenance facilities that include form security roles, state editor, workflow editor and form template state maintenance.
There are two types of form templates: Parent and child template. A parent form template is the main form such as a job application form or any other forms. A child form template is a sub form that can be attached to a state of a workflow. For example, a job application that is required to progress through several stages in an organization. For each state of the workflow you can attach a child form template or a sub form template to these states for adding additional comments of the job application.
A parent or main form template can have a workflow attached whereas a child or sub form template can not. A child form template is purely used for supplementing the parent form by collecting additional information as it progressed though a form workflow, if one exists.
To create a main form template the following additional details are required:
- Form custom roles - these custom roles are used to described security access the form allows. After the form custom roles are created, they are required to be mapped to portal security roles before they can be used.
- Workflow states - these are custom states used to describe how a form should be processed within a business requirement.
- Workflow - this is the actual workflow that connects all the available custom form states together to comprise a single workflow.
When a form template is created, users assigned with creator access have write access to the form template (i.e. all users with Form Template Manager Creator role access can make changes to the form template). In order for a creator to have exclusive right to edit the form layout (the actual form), the form template needs to be locked for editing. This prevents multiple users from making changes to the actual form. However, other creators can make changes to other form template attributes such as custom roles, and workflow states and the actual workflow. Changes to the form template are tracked and changes are also displayed on the form template details maintenance screen.
When a form template is created it is automatically assigned a unique identifier. This identifier is used to distinguish the uniqueness of the form template in the system. When importing form templates, the form template identifier can not be retained due to differences in portals and environments.
How to create/edit form template details
- Select the form template type
- Enter a name for the for the form template
- Provide an optional description
- Click on the Update link button to apply the changes
How to lock/unlock a form template for editing
- A form template can only be locked for editing when it is not locked by other users
- To lock a form template foe editing, simply click on the available Lock link button to lock the form template for editing
- Go to the Form Designer to amend the form layout
How to validate a form template
A valid form template must meet a number of requirements:
- It must contain custom security roles and these custom security roles need to map to a portal security role
- It must contain workflow states and these states must participate in a workflow
- It can not have more than 1 workflow state flagged a starting state. A stating state is the initial state of a form workflow.
- To validate a form template, simply click on the Validate link button to check if the form template is a valid form.
From here you can:
- Go to Form Designer - WYSIWYG editor to edit the form layout
- Go to Custom Form Roles - facility to create/edit custom form roles and map with the portal roles
- Go to Form States editor - facility to create/edit workflow states for the form template
- Go to Workflow editor - facility to associate states to create a workflow
- Go to Change State - facility to progress the form template to the next available state
- Go to Preview - Preview the look and feel of the form layout for the form template