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Introduction |
  
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Introduction |
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Welcome to Enterprise Forms for DotNetnuke®
Enterprise Forms is a suite of DotNetnuke® (DNN) modules designed to allow users to design dynamic web forms for data entry, data collection, content management and of course workflow management. Enterprise Forms contains a workflow designer providing users the flexibility to design and create web forms for use in DotNetnuke® portals with version 4.5.5 or later. Enterprise Forms employs a create once use everywhere philosophy where by form templates are created in a portal environment which then can be exported then imported to other portal and re-use again. Enterprise Forms suite consist of four components: Form Template Designer, Data Collection Manager, Form Workflow Manager and Report Manager. Each component is a DotNetnuke® separate module, each has its own unique functions that form the core functionalities of Enterprise Forms.
Enterprise Forms has been designed to allow developers and business users to create and manage forms and content without knowledge of HTML or DotNetnuke® module development. With its support of drag and drop of form fields (available in Internet Explorer compatible browsers), users can quickly create any type of forms and easily attach to a business workflow for form and content management in conjunction with an approval process. Enterprise Forms has been designed to alleviate the hassle of forms development with its easy to use form template designer which itself also contain a mini-workflow whereby users with assigned authority can create, approve and publish form templates.
Form Template Designer (FTD) is one of the core components in Enterprise Forms and is used creating and maintaining of form templates. A form template is essentially a blue print of the form from which the actual form instances are created when used. Form Template Designer has been designed to provide users simple yet powerful tool to create on-the-fly form templates via a designated form template approval workflow. The form template approval workflow is used for quality and security control before the form template is published and used for collecting and managing of form data. Form Template Designer also allow users to create a dynamic business workflow to manage how data is collected and processed via an user design approval process. Once a form template has been successfully created and published, it can then be used to collect data via the Data Collection Manager and/or Form Workflow Manager modules.
Data Collection Manager (DCM) is another core component in the suite of Enterprise Forms modules. The Data Collection Manager module is designed specifically for creating instances of the form templates created via the Form Template Manager module. A Data Collection Manager module can process a single form template. In other words there is a one-to-one relationship between form templates and the Data Collection Manager module. Thus to manage multiple form templates, multiple instances of the Data Collection Manager module are also required. Once form data have been entered and collected, it will go through a business workflow which is managed by the Form Workflow Manager module.
Form Workflow Manager (FWM) is another core component in the suite of Enterprise Forms modules. The Form Workflow Manager module is designed to process form data via the business workflow created from the form template. Once form data have been entered and collected by the Data Collection Manager, it will go through a business workflow process manage by the Form Workflow Manager module. Similar to the Data Collection Manager module, each instance of the Form Workflow Manager module manages a single form template. Security access of each state in the form workflow is determined by security roles created during the form template creation process.
Report Manager (RM) is a data reporting component in the suite of core Enterprise Forms modules. The Report Manager module a complementary module designed to provide the facility business users to create reports on collected form data. The Report Manager module also provide a mechanism to export collected data based on the fields selected of a report. Similar to the Data Collection Manager, each instance of the Report Manager module is designed to display any report from a published form template.