I'm working on a project where user's submit data and then it is put onto a state form that they can print and submit. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, the form looks similar to an IRS 1040 form (https://www.healthykids.org/_img/document_1040.gif).
We've recently discovered that the form generated by our software isn't close enough to be accepted by some state's OCR process.
We're looking for some way to quickly create stylesheets or something similar so that the data can be overlayed on a scan of the original form and then printed. We've tested to ensure this works, however the lost time of trying to get the positioning right for every version of the form for each state has become a huge problem.
I'm looking for a tool or technique that would help me roll out each form faster.
The web application is based on Code Igniter. Our company prefers open source solutions but if a proven proprietary product exists we would certainly use it due to the critical nature of the issue.
Thank you very much for any help.
First, the obvious. Most web IDE's do this with ease (I know both Microsoft Visual Studio and Adobe Dreamweaver would allow you to visually position the elements above the image without problems).
I take it you are looking for a tool that lets you design the forms as part of the web application itself. One of the related links points to Suggestions for a JavaScript form builder?.
Other than that, if you know your Javascript and jQuery/extjs etc, it should be pretty quick to write a simple "put the textfields above the image" (absolute-positioning + drag and drop) type of web interface.
Related
I am new to dynamics integration and as a learning exercise I have set up a new server and created an IFRAME in my Account form to display a page from another application (there is mapping between the CRM account and the other application).
This all works great and hats off to Microsoft for making this so simple!
My issue is I want to provide a continuous look and feel to the external application so it looks integrated as much as possible.
At the moment, I only have a grid showing a list of records but this will probably grow to having buttons and input fields too.
I toyed with the idea of just replicating all the CSS using the SDK style guide as a reference but wanted to ask if there is a best/recommended practice for doing this before I went ahead with this tedious task.
Have the same question as you. Having looked around it appears that for the moment you should replicate the styles you need from the style guide in your own resources.
Found this that makes it sound like they are working on something in the future: https://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/crmdevelopment/thread/0ef93ddc-afda-40f3-bb86-9e9e60bb0dc0
I have an Administrator that needs a dynamic form generator with layout capabilities on an ASP.NET page so that they can add, edit and change layout of questions that will be filled out by users whose responses will be saved into the database dynamically. The format is very important as there will be an offline piece that will be generated using Adobe Acrobat and both forms need to be very similar in format. The online portion also needs to be fully printable so that the end user can keep a copy for there personal records. Does anyone know of any ASP.NET controls, free or otherwise, that I could use to complete this functionality? Or what would be the best technology to solve this problem?
Not sure I see a question. This is more of my opinion of what you should do:
Im working on something similar. My form generator had a LOT of complicated fields and data to handle and I decided to go with silverlight. I very happy now, despite the learning curve, and the madness async api, because it would have just been hairy to do it with asp.net, pure asp.net with postbacks would just be bad UX and then putting ajax in between would've just been scary.
If you have great Ajax/asp.net experience go with it, but if not, Id suggest silverlight. I got up to speed pretty quick.
Let's say I'm on a list page and I
page to, say, page 10. Then I select
a record on that page and redirect to detail
page. After that, I click on the edit
to redirect to the edit page.
After I update the record I'm redirected back to
the detail page. I, then, press back
to go back list to continue my browsing from
where I left off. The key here is
where I left off in the list which is
page 10.
What is the best way to handle this?
Initially, I put a hidden field called page number in each of the webforms and pass it along with the querystring back and forth. Seemed like a lot or a bit redundant checking the querystring on each page and passing it.
I was wondering if there are some other ways. for instance, I've been reading about a separation between the UI and the presentation layer is a good idea (for larger scale apps). To me I understand it as all click handler events will yield control over to the presentation layer which is just a plain class?
Is this correct? Also, is the presentation layer suppose to implement something particular? I know this could probably be saved in session but could someone humor me and show me how to use a presentation layer to handle this (I know it would be overkill but is it possible?)
I don't think there is THE best way. Everything depends of what you achieve to do, ie. the requirements of the whole project.
After all, according to the description, I don't even understand why are you having three pages to do a single thing. By the way, ASP.NET data controls handle mostly everything for you, so you don't even have to ask yourself how to do this (except if you have serious reasons to avoid ASP.NET controls).
For example, a simple <asp:ListView /> will let you list items page per page and show details when a single item is selected. Edition of an element is also quite easy.
What you are asking for is well... large and could span multiple blog posts to give a complete understanding of UI Design Patterns.
I have a small example of MVP with Asp.Net here: What is the best way to reuse pages from one website in another?
However, it is not exhaustive. If you really want information on this you should do some looking into a framework such as WebForms MVP, or ASP.Net MVC.
Check out ASP.NET MVC. It is a framework which goes on top of ASP.NET to do the separation between the presentation layer and business layer.
For simplicity, what you are describing is a very good example of the perfect place to use Asp.Net Dynamic Data.
It's incredibly easy and powerful, and easy to modify once you dig into it a bit. I'd start with the videos here: http://www.asp.net/dynamicdata
I've been using this more and more on every project, for at least the simple CRUD portion of it. I really can't express how much I love this tool now that I'm used to it.
I've got an asp.net application where each client will have their own data entry forms. I'm a bit tired of reinventing this wheel. Does anyone have any good experience with an "off the shelf" component for rapidly building such forms?
The component will need to fit within an existing asp.net site and support layout of the fields, not just "dumping" the fields on the page. The data needs to go back to a database for querying (but can use it's own schema) and some light level of workflow needs to be supported (mostly around completion status). Infopath is a non-starter due to its requirements for sharepoint etc, but if you're thinking along those lines, you have some idea of what I'm looking for. The system must be open for modification as I'm sure we won't be able to find something that does everything we need.
Doesn't matter if it is OSS or commericial.
Thanks!
We've used FeedBack Server here in the past and it worked out pretty good.
Microsoft lightswitch.
Telerik widgets in a web page.
I am just assigned a project to make a paper based process to be web based. What I need to do is to allow user to fill out an online form and sign it using his/her mouse. The data entered and the signature needs to be later retrieved as a PDF file.
So, I've created a working prototype using ASP.NET webforms and a third party PDF library ( iTextSharp), along with a mouse signature capture tool that I purchased.
The prototype works fine. But my concern is, I may need to extend this application to support many ( maybe hundreds of) forms. Each form has different fields, but they all require a signature. It took me 2 days to build the prototype for one form, including creating the web forms, mark fields in PDF template, hook up web form fields with fields in PDF form, etc...In the future I don't want to spend 2 days to set up each form, is there a better way than building custom form using ASP.NET?
I know of InfoPath, but never used it, has anyone done anything similar before? Is InfoPath with SharePoint a better solution to my problem? Or there is something else? If anyone can give me some advice, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks a lot!
The advantage that infopath has is that it has the ability to take advantage of digital ink (handwriting) out of the box. if your version of Windows includes Microsoft Ink (XP tablet, Vista, Win 7) then Infopath will allow you to capture text and images using various available input devices (mouse, pen etc..) depending on the control that you use. A textbox will using handwriting recognition to convert the writing into text, where as an image box will allow free drawing, ideal for caputring a signature.
I have used Infopath as a standalone disconected client system that used email as the transport system. the forms were attatched to an email and added to the outbox. when the user retrieved their email, the forms were automatically sent. The great thing about infopath is that the data is xml. this gives you enourmous flexabilty with what you can do with the data.
As a side note...
You may want to think about the legal side of things when people are signing (using handwriting) e-forms. As Infopath seperates the presentation and the data, which is great for capturing the data for reporting, workflow etc, it becomes a downside from a legal standpoint as the data can be manipulated and presented very differently from what the signee originally signed. In most cases this is not problem, but if the the form is any form of legal document (invoice, goods receipt) you will need to think about how to keep both the data and presentation together and seperate at the same time.
This will be a problem for any system that seperates the data from the presentation, be it web based forms, infopath, or PDF forms.
Hope this helps...
I have also been tasked with a similar problem to solve. I looked at solutions like Adobe LifeCycle but we wanted to use SharePoint as an ECM. One of the problems with InfoPath is that it requires SharePoint or the InfoPath desktop application to fill out the forms. If you don't already have SharePoint setup or cannot use SharePoint, then InfoPath is not the way to go. I didn't want to duplicate efforts by having to create the entire form using html forms and then have to merge all that data onto a printable version for them to sign... seemed like duplicating efforts so I saw InfoPath as a possible solution. Adobe LifeCycle seemed almost a better way to go because we can just use a fillable PDF to capture, do some validation and submit the data. However, Adobe LifeCycle was very expensive so wasn't a good solution for the project.
So if its not a problem having SharePoint as part of your solution, then by all means go for it. But, if you need people to fill out the InfoPath form and not use the desktop client or be logged into SharePoint, then I don't think it's the right solution.
#sean717: You approach with itextsharp reminds me of the existing tool we use in our company. Check www.pdfsharepoint.com if you want to both highly interactive pdf forms and integration with SharePoint 2010. It works for us.