Forms
Edge Delivery Services for AEM Forms is a composable set of services that enables a rapid development environment where authors can update, publish, and launch new forms rapidly. These services deliver exceptional and high impact forms experiences that drive engagement and conversions. These forms experiences are easy to author and develop.
These services enable you to:
- Create forms with tools of your choice: Increase authoring efficiency by decoupling content sources. Out of the box you can use Document-based Authoring (Microsoft SharePoint or Google Drive), WYSIWYG Authoring (Universal Editor). You can work with multiple content sources on the same forms site and use your preferred authoring tools, such as Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Universal Editor to create a variety of forms, including Contact Us forms, Marketing forms, Enrollment forms, Business Process forms, and more.
- Create forms optimized for speed, performance, and higher conversions: Deliver forms experiences that load and render quickly and continuously monitor your forms performance through real use monitoring (RUM). These forms offer perfect core web vitals which results in faster loading times and optimized user experience that contributes to higher form completion and conversion rates.
- Use developer friendly toolset: Edge Delivery Services for AEM Forms uses plain HTML, modern CSS, and vanilla JavaScript to create exceptional forms experiences, avoiding the steep learning curve of a specific framework. A developer with basic web development skills can customize and easily build form components and forms experiences. There is no need to wait for a pipeline to run, just check-in your code into GitHub and your changes are live.
- Use Forms Submission Service: The Forms Submission Service lets you save form submissions directly to spreadsheets like OneDrive, SharePoint, or Google Sheets, even if the spreadsheet isn’t managed by Edge Delivery Services.
Note: To use form-related capabilities on your Edge Delivery Services Site, a valid AEM Forms license is required. Refer to the Product Description for licensing details.
Edge Delivery Services for AEM Forms allows for a high degree of flexibility in how you author forms on your website. You can author content and forms with WYSIWYG Authoring as well as Document-based Authoring. Edge Delivery Services for AEM Forms provide a forms block, known as Adaptive Forms Block to add a form to your Edge Delivery Services site.
For example, you author forms directly in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets and these spreadsheets are transformed into forms for your website. Any new form or form content, such as a new form field, is instantly available on your website without requiring a rebuild process.
The following diagram illustrates how you can edit forms in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets (Document-based Authoring) and publish to Edge Delivery Services. It also shows the AEM publishing method using the WYSIWYG Authoring (Universal Editor)
Edge Delivery Services for AEM Forms uses GitHub so customers can manage and deploy code directly from their GitHub repository. For example, you can write forms in either Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel and the components of your forms can be developed by using CSS and JavaScript in a GitHub repository.
When your forms are ready, you can use the AEM Sidekick, a chrome browser extension, to preview and publish content updates.
The choice between Document-based Authoring and WYSIWYG Authoring depends on your needs: Use Document-based Authoring for simple, spreadsheet-like forms with basic fields and quick data connectivity, while WYSIWYG Authoring is ideal for complex forms requiring multiple panels, business logic, data integration, and AEM workflows.
Key Features of Document-based Authoring and WYSIWYG Authoring
Document-based Authoring offers a basic set of features and WYSIWYG Authoring unlocks additional capabilities beyond the Document-based Authoring, empowering you to build more complex and interactive forms. The key features of both Document-based Authoring and WYSIWYG Authoring are:
Document-based Authoring features
Document-based Authoring allows you to create forms using familiar tools like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. These forms offer the following functionalities:
- Accessible components for a user-friendly experience.
- Standardized HTML structure for consistent rendering.
- Rules and validations to ensure data accuracy.
- File attachment options for collecting additional information.
- Ability to create custom form components for specific needs.
- Submit form data directly to Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets or email addresses.
- Monitor your forms performance through real use monitoring (RUM).
WYSIWYG Authoring features
WYSIWYG Authoring provides WYSIWYG interfaces (Universal Editor) for building forms and offers all the capabilities of Document-based Authoring, plus a wide range of additional features:
- Advanced rules editor for creating complex logic.
- Server-side extensibility for custom functionalities.
- WYSIWYG editing experience for easy form creation and visualization.
- Document of record functionality to create tamper-proof archives of submitted data.
- Google reCAPTCHA integration for spam protection.
- Integration with Adobe Workfront Fusion to triggering Adobe Workfront Fusion scenarios upon form submission.
- Integration with various data sources for pre-populating forms and submitting data.
- Form Data Model (FDM) for defining data structure and interactions with various data sources.
- Ability to choose from multiple submit actions for handling form submissions, including submitting data to Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft OneDrive, Adobe Workfront Fusion, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, many more data sources.
In essence, WYSIWYG Authoring builds upon the foundation of Document-based Authoring, providing a more advanced toolkit for creating and managing complex forms.