When implementing eForms most organisations base their expectations on simply replicating the current paper, or other electronic format, forms.
There is often limited knowledge, and therefore expectation, of the huge improvements in user experience, speed of form completion and accuracy of data acquisition that can be achieved by using expertly designed 'intelligent' electronic forms.
Based on two decades of automated forms data capture we help our clients to maximise their benefits from implementing eForms technology.
What is different about an 'intelligent' eForm?
Engaging and Helping Users:
Attractive, clean and simple layouts.
Intuitive design that in most cases closely follows the layout of the existing form(s) the users are familiar with.
Automatically and dynamically populate user profile and other information from line of business applications into forms to reduce form completion time and reduce user errors.
Accelerator widgets - popup calendars, drop-lists; and field auto-completion for commonly entered information.
Built-in spell checker.
Assistive technologies - field hover-help, automated prompts or warnings and intelligent 'skip & fill' tabbing to the correct fields for completion.
Accessibility for the visually impaired with helpful and informative field tags and support for all screen reader applications.
Dynamic Layout:
Expandable input fields grow to accommodate user input - no scroll bars or hidden text.
Extra input fields, or sections, can be automatically created to accommodate the number of lines, or answers, the user needs to enter.
Questions, or whole sections, can show or hide relevant to the users input. Fields or sections not requiring completion can be hidden to simplify the form and reduce the number of fields the user needs to read and tab though.
Accurate Data Capture:
Real-time input validation providing instant and helpful feed-back to users as they enter their information.
Validate input against simple or complex internal rules, data entered in other fields, and external data sources or web services.
Automated calculations to speed form completion, and reduce data capture errors.
Pre save, or on submit, form validation to prevent empty required fields and ensure data consistency across the whole form.
Flexible Integration:
Submit form data to any database via ODBC or JDBC, or as a defined schema XML file.
Exchange data with a web service in real time field by field, or as a completed form.
eMail full form, or just the form data, to be parsed into any database or saved as defined schema XML file.
Off-line data can be saved and subsequently uploaded in XML, FDF or CSV formats.
