Form Building Capability

[jwhill]

Hi,

Apologies if this finds itself in the wrong area. I'm in the process of evaluating Alfresco as a potential CMS solution, however there are some key pieces of functionality which would (I assume) need to be custom-built and bolted on.

Essentially, for the main piece I'm trying to deliver a capability which allows users to build web forms via a UI, and to have the forms themselves stored in the CMS. These forms need to be put into a cycle of "edit - review - publish" provided by a workflow engine. The published forms then need to be able to hook up to a web application which will process the data/forward the user to the appropriate resource.

Does/COULD this functionality exist in Alfresco? (or any other CMS  ? :wink

In addition, ideally I'd be able to point to 2 databases for this purpose - 1 "review database" for forms being edited/reviewed and the other being the "published database ". Again - does any functionality exist for this?

Thanks in advance,

Jonny

[kvc]

Jonny:


Our new WCM module which shipped with 2.0.0 provided support for this type of scenario.  With our WCM module, you have the ability to register XMLSchema within the Data Dictionary (Create Web Form Wizard).  These schemas in turn are used to generate an XForms 1.0-compliant Web Form that can be accessed by an end-user (Create Content Wizard) to create structured XML assets that can be (a) bound to one or more templates to auto-generate various output files and (b) bound to workflow to enforce and edit - review cycle (with support for timed launch and expiration upcoming end of June with our 2.1.0 Community release).

If you haven't taken a look at our WCM module, please do.  Also, please forward any follow-up questions.  Look forward to hearing how this goes for you.


Kevin

[jwhill]

Hi,

Thanks for this.

How about functionality to create the XML Schema in the first place (rather than just uploading)? What I need to create is essentially a WYSIWYG editor which will allow a user to create web forms containing HTML form elements (and text) - which I'm assuming would be saved as XSDs.  Once rendered (having been put through the edit - review - publish workflow) the form data should be processed by a bespoke web application independent of Alfresco.

I'm assuming this piece would also need to be bespoke, but can you point me in the direction of the modules within the Java API I'd need to make use of?

Also, would it be possible to store such XSDs in a database so that they themselves could be managed by workflow?

Finally (think I asked this previously) - is it possible to have separate databases for data that is under review and data that has been published (i.e. live)?

Thanks for all your help so far,

Jonny

[ewwhitley]

Hi -

I saw your note here:

Our new WCM module which shipped with 2.0.0 provided support for this type of scenario. With our WCM module, you have the ability to register XMLSchema within the Data Dictionary (Create Web Form Wizard). These schemas in turn are used to generate an XForms 1.0-compliant Web Form that can be accessed by an end-user (Create Content Wizard) to create structured XML assets that can be (a) bound to one or more templates to auto-generate various output files and (b) bound to workflow to enforce and edit - review cycle (with support for timed launch and expiration upcoming end of June with our 2.1.0 Community release).

I'd really love to know if there's a simple example of how to provide a form interface into a JBPM-defined workflow.

I've just found the WCM evaluation guide for 2.1 and am going through that at the moment, so I'm still trying to grasp the concepts on this

Thanks,
Eric