Expand my Community achievements bar.

Enhance your AEM Assets & Boost Your Development: [AEM Gems | June 19, 2024] Improving the Developer Experience with New APIs and Events

submit form without email client

Avatar

Former Community Member
we have recently acquired Reader Extensions with the main aim of allowing submission of forms by citizens online without the form actually asking the user for an email client on the PC.

Developer uploaded the form and applied rights on the form through the reader extensions, but on returning back the form from the server, the "submit" button on the form stillasks for the email client on the local PC. The 'Submit email' button automatically generates the email client popup. is there any way to go round this, i.e, the public can fill in a form online from anywhere without the form actually asking for an email client on the PC ? Pls help. we were told that Reader Extensions was the solution for this problem.
10 Replies

Avatar

Level 7
If you want to submit a form by e-mail, you will need an e-mail

client. I can't see how else you would have planned to do it.



HOWEVER, it is perfectly possible to submit a form in the usual way,

to a web server. This is strongly recommended, email is not a viable

way of submitting forms for most enterprises (if it was, then web

pages would do it). Reader Extensions is needed only to submit in PDF

format.



Aandi Inston

Avatar

Level 1

If you don't mind me asking what is the "normal" way to submit a form with a submit button and not opening up the email client?

Avatar

Former Community Member
How do you restore the "select email client window" when the "don't show again box" was checked by mistake?

Avatar

Former Community Member
Yes I am also looking for the answer on how to reset the "select email client window" when the "don't show again box" was checked by mistake?

Avatar

Former Community Member
Me too, I have users that accidently selected "Internet Email" and they have also selected Dont show again... Arrggghhhh.....

Avatar

Level 1

me too - I can't believe no one has this answer --

Avatar

Former Community Member

To all,

We have not been able to figure out a way to bypass the Select Email Client window, but we were able to figure out how to reset an option if one had chosen Internet Email by mistake and checked Don't show again. To reset this so that the window will reappear and let the user select Desktop Email Application instead, do the following:

  1. Open Adobe Reader.
  2. Go to Edit -> Preferences... on the top menu
  3. In the Preferences window, look under Categories and select General.
  4. On the right side of this window under Warnings, uncheck Do not show edit warnings and click the Reset All Warnings button.
  5. Click OK.

If the user has Adobe Acrobat Pro, the steps should be identical. This seems to work for us thus far.

Best of luck.

Avatar

Level 1

I just want to be sure about this. So even if you have the Reader Extensions product, users will still need to open up some sort of e-mail client and then attach the PDF to send by e-mail.

I was told that pressing the submit button would just send the form data to the server and then the server would process the data and send out the PDF attachment to the destination.

Avatar

Level 1

Usually the PDF submit by email button when used in Reader will ask whether they want to send it via an email client or save it to use with webmail e.g. Hotmail. The first selection will automatically open the default client on the computer (Outlook, Windows Mail etc) and launch a new message automatically populated with the email address to send to, subject and PDF attachment, as specified by the form author, ready for the user to press send. The webmail option allows the user to just save the PDF form on the desktop and manually log into their webmail account, create a new message, enter the email address to send to and attach the PDF previously saved.

The process isn't ideal and causes email submit to be either unreliable or generates questions from the user who are unsure how to proceed. We have a server-side system that eliminates this standard process and allows the a submit button to be placed on the form that uses http submission to our server, which then automatically dispatches the completed form to your email address as a PDF attachment. Its quick and simple, all the user does is complete the form, press send and then press OK to the thank you pop-up and moments later you get the email.

It was initially intended to be used privately for our own clients however a few weeks ago I started offering it to anybody that needs this facility, it doesn't cost much and I can let you try it out on your form upfront. Just go to www.pdf2email.co.uk for more information. A while ago it took me hours upon hours of research to find a solution and it took quite an investment in time and money to set it up but it has most deffinately been worth it.

Regards,
Ben

Avatar

Level 1

Hi Vir Mulloo,

If you dont want the citizen to send the form as an email, you can submit the form to a backend server. Since you have already purchased LiveCycle Reader Extensions, you can use LiveCycle to grab the form data and process it for further use.

Vamsi Vutukuru

Product Manager

LiveCycle ES