Seeking help with Interactive Forms

Published on January 26, 2006 By HC1240 In Personal Computing

I've been trying to figure out the best way to develop fillable forms for the company I work for. We'd like to take all of our forms (now hard copy) and make them interactive online, so that our clients can simply fill the form out at our website, click "submit," and the information will be sent to us without using any paper at all.

I've been working with Adobe Acrobat, and have discovered how to make the forms fillable, but the hassle end users will have submitting the information is way too much. They are instructed to save the file to their computer, then open an email and attach the file. Once the file is received, I have to import the information into Adobe. There has GOT to be an easier way to do this.

If you have any suggestions, please post them. I'm almost to the point of frustration. *s*

Thanks!

Comments

Chaos Manager

on Jan 26, 2006

The simplest way (at least for the enduser) is to use HTML forms that provide input boxes or dropdowns (like for months/days/years in dates, etc). These can then be validated (using what ever validation you require/desire) then either emailed to a point-of-contact or directly added to a database.

For a decent web developer/html writer the creation of the forms, validation, and emailing them is straight forward. Putting them into a database ... espcially if that database doesn't already exist, can be a little trickier.

You can move up from there in the difficulty to a full blown web application that does everything for you and works quicly and is secure.

Bichur

on Jan 27, 2006

with the adobe, if you stick with it, when creating the box you can assign actions such as submit form. I have adobe at work. hadn't had to chance to play with the submit (got nowhere to send them) but if I get some free time tomorrow, now that you sparked my curiosity, i'll create one and see about the submission - offhand i can't remember but i think email was an option for submitting.

Kevin_C

on Jan 27, 2006

How much web development experience do you have in house at your company? Creating and submitting forms using php is really quite easy. What are you wanting to do with the data from the forms once it's submitted? Do you have an intranet site already? If so, what type of server are you running, IIS, Apache? Using php is easy if you have someone that knows HTML and can pickup a few php commands that allow you to submit the form and then process the data and do something with it once it's been submitted.

Good Luck!

HC1240

on Jan 27, 2006

I was able to add a "submit form" button, but the rigamarole the end user had to go through to actually submit it was crazy. When they clicked "submit form," it brought up a list of instructions as to how to save the file to your computer, then open a new email (it wouldn't even automatically address the email for you), attach the file, and send it. It did work... I had the email sent to one of my accounts, and received the information. Then I have to input the data into an adobe form... again, WAY too complicated for what I'm looking for. I want them to be able to click "submit" and have the info sent immediately. I suppose if I have extra work to do on this end, that would be ok, but still... it would be nice to have the information automatically sent to a database.

The other option Adobe gives you is to have it processed by a cgi. I think this will work... if only I can learn enough about it to figure it out.

We do have a server in the office for the info to be sent to.

Unfortunately, as far as in house experience, I'm it. I have a basic working knowledge of html, and actually printed out some notes today with tags for designing forms in html. I've never tried it before, but I think if the instructions are clear enough, I should be able to get a start on it anyway.

We do have a server in the office that's running Windows NT 4. We also have an intranet set up, although it needs much revamping. It's set up by an outside company and seems to work off templates for the most part -- very frustrating.

As for where the information will go, initially they want it sent to an email address. From there it will get entered into a program called Docstar... I'm still trying to figure out if it's better to skip the email altogether and have it sent to a database. I'm leaning that way, but will have to give reasons to the office manager for why that's the best way to do it... and right now I don't have them.

.

Php... is that Perl? I don't think I've ever done anything with that... is it similar to html?

Thanks for all your help, guys!!

Dr Guy

on Jan 27, 2006

Php... is that Perl? I don't think I've ever done anything with that... is it similar to html?

Not quite. More like an ActiveX alternative: http://www.perl.com/

Kevin_C

on Jan 27, 2006

Php... is that Perl? I don't think I've ever done anything with that... is it similar to html

No, PHP stands for Hypertext processor (http://www.php.net), it is similar to ASP, ASP.NET, Coldfusion, JSP and a myriad other web programming languages. HTML does not have the capability to process data server side so these web scripting languages are the solution to that. Basically you install the php server on your website and then whenever there is a request for a php file the php server handles the processing of that file.

If you need some more info just let me know, maybe I can try to help you out.

HC1240

on Jan 27, 2006

If you need some more info just let me know, maybe I can try to help you out.

I'd love any extra info you have, fOr3... thank you! Email bellissima28@yahoo.com

We have a webhosting company. Is that something they would probably have? Guess I'll have to call and check.

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