Expand my Community achievements bar.

Dive into Adobe Summit 2024! Explore curated list of AEM sessions & labs, register, connect with experts, ask questions, engage, and share insights. Don't miss the excitement.

Form packages

Avatar

Former Community Member
Hello



I've read that it is possible in ES Forms to generate a package of forms:




LiveCycle Forms ES can assemble multiple PDF forms into a PDF form package, making the form completion easier. Customers, partners, and suppliers can access a single PDF form package that contains all the necessary forms for their transaction without having to manually figure out and compile which forms or documents are required for a transaction. A single package of PDF forms can be assembled for a transaction based on data input.

Quoted from: http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/forms/indepth.html



Sadly, I was not able to find any further information about this cool feature. Can anybody give some advises or hints... Which service/component provides this feature?



Thanks!

Nico
9 Replies

Avatar

Level 9
PS You can no longer buy assembler, but it is bundled with Forms, Output, and PDFGenerator.

Avatar

Former Community Member
Hi Howard,



thanks a lot for your help. The "PDF Package" or "Form Package" feature of ES is cool and works fine. One of the major achievements (IMO) is the possibility to assemble multiple forms into one PDF file! That was a weak point of LiveCycle 7.



Actually that's not surprising, because I've written that in the first post and you can also read that in the Adobe product papers. Here again the magic quotation:
"LiveCycle Forms ES can assemble multiple PDF forms into a PDF form package, making the form completion easier."



And now my follow up question:

I'm able to display and fill the form package in ES Workspace (placed process fields in cover and augmented package). But I'm not able to complete the form package (submitting back to the process manager). The completion button does not respond.

According to the quotation it should be manageable. Any gimmick?



Thanks,

Nico

Avatar

Level 9
Hi Nico



Nobody here has tried this, so I'm afraid I can't help.



Personally, I'd be very surprised if this could be made to work.

As I understand it, a package is really just a separate set of PDFs that are actually stored as attachments, but rendered one after another as if they were all part of a single document.



I very much doubt as to whether you would be able to set up a single submit button that would submit all the forms simultaneously, collate all the data from each of them into the correct form variables, etc.



I think that the package feature is more likely to be intended for the case where you have a single form, and then multiple supporting documents (such as terms and conditions, product sheets, etc) that are "attached" to the form, and are displayed immediately following it.



Please do post your findings...



Good luck...



Howard

http://www.avoka.com

Avatar

Former Community Member
I can understand your doubts, Howard.... But for me It would be OK to receive at least the pdf package (as pdf document). The rest of the work could be done programmatically (disassembling, collate data into variables, etc.)



Howard, do I understand you correct: do you think that it isn't possible to submit any pdf package (irrespective of its content)?



Nico

Avatar

Level 9
Hi Nico

No, I'm not implying that. I think it may definitely be possible to submit the data from even multiple forms within the same package.

However...

- I don't believe that Workflow (if you're using Workflow) would handle it.

- I doubt whether you could work it so that all the forms submit "simultaneously" on a single button click.

I should probably actually shut up, because I really am just guessing.

Much better for you to tell us what is and isn't possible based on actual experimentation.

Please let us know...



Regards,

Howard

Avatar

Former Community Member
Yes, I'm using Process Management (former Workflow). And yes, I suspect you are right. The crucial point is that Process Mmgt may not handle multiple forms ("simultaneously").



But it could be even worse if my latest cognitions are true: I've noticed that I can't add the "LC Designer Component"
Adobe LiveCycle Form Bridge to a ArtWork form. Does this implicit mean that ArtWork based forms can never communicate with Process Mmgtm/Workflow? Does this also mean that ArtWork based forms can never be summited back to Process Mmgtm/Workflow?



Nico

Avatar

Former Community Member
This is a endorsement to my previous post ( #8 ), regarding the comments about artwork forms and submit problem. First of all, I wasn't able to submit the form because I forgot to set the target URL in the
renderPDFForm service (default: http://localhost:8080/workspace-server/submit). My fault.



But there seems to be an other problem. The output xml data (received in process management) is empty. Hmmmm?? Is that due to artwork restrictions regarding
LiveCycle Form Bridge (as I've mentioned before)?



Any feedback is welcome!



Nico