Introduction to authoring adaptive forms

Overview

Adaptive forms let you create forms that are engaging, responsive, dynamic, and adaptive. AEM Forms provides an intuitive user interface and out-of-the-box components for creating and working with adaptive forms. You can choose to create an adaptive form based on a form model or schema or without a form model. It is important to carefully choose the form model that not only suits your requirements but extends your existing infrastructural investments and assets. You get to choose from the following options to create an adaptive form:

• Using a form data model
  Data integration lets you integrate entities and services from disparate data sources in to a form data model that you can use to create adaptive forms. Choose form data model if the adaptive form you are creating involves fetching and write data from and to multiple data source.

• Using an XDP Form Template
  It is an ideal form model if you have investments in XFA-based or XDP forms. It provides a direct way to convert your XFA-based forms into adaptive forms. Any existing XFA rules are retained in the associated adaptive forms. The resulting adaptive forms support XFA constructs, such as validations, events, properties, and patterns.

• Using an XML Schema Definition (XSD) or a JSON Schema
  XML and JSON schemas represent the structure in which data is produced or consumed by the back-end system in your organization. You can associate the schema to an adaptive form and use its elements to add dynamic content to the adaptive form. The elements of the schema will be available for use in the Data Model Objects tab of the Content browser when authoring adaptive forms.

• Using none or without a form model
  Adaptive forms created with this option don’t use any form model. The data XML generated from such forms has flat structure with fields and corresponding values.

For more information about creating an adaptive form, see Creating an adaptive form.

Adaptive form authoring UI

The touch-optimized UI for authoring adaptive forms is intuitive, and provides:

• Drag-and-drop functionality
• Standard form components
• Integrated repository for assets

When you create or edit an existing adaptive form, you use the following UI elements:

• Sidebar
• Page toolbar
• Component toolbar
• Adaptive form page

A. Sidebar B. Page toolbar C. Adaptive form page

Sidebar

The Sidebar lets you

• See form content such as panels, components, fields, and layout.
• Edit component properties.
• Search, view, and use assets in your AEM Digital Asset Management (DAM) repository.
• Add components on your form.

A. Content browser B. Properties browser C. Assets browser D. Components browser

The sidebar comprises the following browsers:

• Content browser
  In the content browser, you can see

  • Form Objects
    Shows object hierarchy of the Form. Author can navigate to specific form component by tapping that element in Form Object Tree. Author can search objects and rearrange them from this tree.

  • Data Model Objects
    Lets you see the form model hierarchy.
    It lets you drag and drop form-model elements on the adaptive form. The added elements automatically get converted into form components while retaining their original properties. You can see data model objects when your form uses XML schema, JSON schema, or XDP template.

• Properties browser

  Lets you edit the properties of a component. Properties change according to a component. To see properties of the adaptive form container:

  Select a component, then tap > Adaptive Form Container, and then tap .

• Assets browser

  Segregates different types content such as images, documents, pages, movies, and so on.

• Components browser

  Includes components that you can use to build an adaptive form. You can drag components from onto the adaptive form to add form elements, and configure added element as per the requirements. The following table describes the components listed in components browser.

Best practices for working with components

Some best practices and key points to remember when working with adaptive form components are as follows:

• Each component has associated properties that control its appearance and functionality. To configure the properties of a component, tap the component and tap to open the component properties in the Properties browser.

• A component is identified with its element name. When you tap , you can change the name of the component by changing the Element Name field value in the properties browser. The Element Name field accepts letters, numbers, hyphens (-), and underscores (_) only. Other special characters are not allowed, and element name should begin with a letter.

• You can modify the Title property of an adaptive form component inline in the form editor without opening the Properties browser as long as the title is visible on the form. To do so:

  1. Tap to select a component that has a Title property and whose Hide title property is disabled.

  2. Tap to make the title editable.

  3. Modify the title and tap the Return key or tap anywhere outside the component to save the changes. Tap the Esc key to discard the changes.

• Some adaptive form components like Email and Telephone include out-of-the-box validation patterns. However, you can specify custom validation by updating the Validation Pattern field under the Patterns accordion in the component properties. See component descriptions in the table above for more information about default validations.

• Adaptive forms fields, such as Numeric Box and Email can be configured to include specialized HTML5 input types. When these fields are in focus on mobile devices and tablets, the keypad displays specific alphabet, numbers, and characters upfront that are commonly used to input information in the fields. It helps users enter information quickly without having to toggle between characters sets on the keypad. To allow specialized input for a component, enable the Use HTML Type Number check box in its component properties.

• You can enable a Text Box component to accept Rich Text. To enable rich text for a text box, enable the Allow Rich Text check box in the component properties.

• You can enable Text Box, Email, and Telephone components to autofill values for fields like name, address, credit card, telephone, and email from the information stored in browser’s autofill settings. To enable this feature, select Enable Autofill in the component properties and select an Autofill Attribute. When a user fills an adaptive form, the values are suggested from the autofill profile in the browser or based on the values earlier filled by the user. Note that autofill works if autofill settings in user’s browser are turned on.

• Specify values for Radio Button and Check Box items in {value}={text} format in component properties.

• The File attachment component, by default, allows a user to attach only one file. However, you can configure the component properties to support multiple attachments. In addition, if a user attaches multiple files with the same filename, the attachments can cause some issues. Therefore, it is recommended to associate a unique identifier for each submitted attachment at form submission. To do so:

  1. On your AEM Forms server, navigate to Adobe Experience Manager > Tools > Operations > Web Console.
  2. Find and tap Adaptive Forms Configuration Service.
  3. In the Adaptive Forms Configuration Service dialog, enable Make File Names Unique. By default, it is disabled.

• To enable users to attach a PDF using Safari browser, ensure that application/pdf is added to the Supported File Types property of the File attachment component. Adaptive forms created with previous AEM Forms version may contain .pdf instead of application/pdf in the Supported File Types property.

For more best practices around adaptive forms, see Best practices for working with adaptive forms.

Page toolbar

The page toolbar on the top provides options that let you preview the form, change form properties, and edit form layout. You can preview the form when you author it, and make changes accordingly. In the page toolbar, you see:

• Toggle Side Panel : Lets you show or hide Sidebar.

• Page information : Lets you view page properties, publish/unpublish a form, start a form workflow, and open the form in classic UI.

• Emulator : Lets you emulate the look of your form for different display sizes such as tablets and phones.

• Edit: Lets you select other modes such as: Edit, Style, Developer, and Design.

  • Edit: Lets you edit the properties of the form and its components. For example, adding a component, dropping an image, and specifying mandatory fields.

  • Style: Lets you style the appearance of components of your form. For example, in style mode, you can select a panel and specify its background color.

  • Developer: Lets a developer to:

    • Discover what forms are composed of.
    • Debug what is happening where and when, which in turn helps to resolve issues.

  • Design. Lets you enable or disable custom components, or out-of-the-box components that are not listed in the Sidebar.

• Preview: Lets you preview how the form looks when you publish it.

Component toolbar

When you select a component, you see a toolbar that lets you work it. You get options to cut, paste, move, and specify properties of the components. Your options are:

A.Configure: When you tap Configure, component properties are visible in the sidebar. Configuring these properties let you customize the data capturing experience. You can change the element name of the component, specify the label text in the Title field of the component. Element name lets you capture values users enter using the component. In the component properties, you specify the behavior of the component, and manage user input. Configure properties in the sidebar to capture user data and use it for further processing. Properties for adaptive form container let you specify Client libraries, Layouts, Themes, Document of Record settings, save settings, submission settings, and metadata settings.

B.Copy: You can use the copy option to copy a component and paste it in other places in the form. When you paste a component, the pasted component gets a new element name but retains the properties of the copied component.

C.Cut: You can use the cut option to move a component from one place to another in the adaptive form.

D. Delete: Lets you delete the component from the form.

E. Insert: Lets you insert a component above the selected component.

F. Paste: Lets you paste the component you cut or copied using the options described above.

G. Edit rules: Lets you open the rule editor. For more information, see Rule Editor.

H. Group: Lets you select multiple components if you want to cut, copy, or paste more than one component together.

I. Parent: Lets you select the parent of a component. For example, a text field lies within a sub-section, which resides in a section. The section resides in the guide root panel, and the adaptive form container is the parent of a guide root panel. For a component, you can see all the options with the hierarchy sorted bottoms-up.

For example, if you tap Parent for a text box, you can see:

• Sub-section
• Section
• guideRootPanel
• Adaptive Form container

J. Others: Provides more options to work with the selected component.

• View SOM expression
• Save a panel as fragment (for panels only)
• Add child panel (for panels only)
• Add panel toolbar (for panels only)
• Replace (not for panels)

Adaptive form page

The adaptive form page is the actual form. It is like any other WCM page modeled as the WCM cq:Page component. The following image shows the content structure of a typical adaptive form.

The content structure typically contains the following primary components:

• guideContainer: The root of an adaptive form, which is marked as Start of adaptive form in the adaptive form UI. In this component, you can specify:

  • Mobile Layout of the adaptive form: Defines the appearance of the form on mobile devices.
  • Thank You page: Defines the page where the user is redirected after submitting the form.
  • Submit Action: Defines how the form is processed on the server once the user submits the form.
  • Styling: Specifies the path to the CSS file used to customize the appearance of the form.

• rootPanel: The root panel of an adaptive form. It can contain subpanels under the items node. Each panel including the root panel can have a layout associated with it. The layout of the panel dictates how the form is laid out. For example, in the Accordion layout, its items are laid out as Accordion steps.

• toolbar: An adaptive form container has an associated global toolbar, which is global to the form. This toolbar can be added using the Add Toolbar action in the edit bar, which allows authors to add actions, such as Submit, Save, Reset, and so on.

• assets: This node contains additional information used for form authoring. For example, form model details, localization details, and so on).