Configuring and using Forms Portal Integration Package components

After you have installed and configured Forms Portal Integration Package as described in Setting up Forms Portal Integration Package, the following component categories are visible and ready to use in your AEM sidekick.

Includes Search & Lister and Link components.

Includes Full Text Predicate, Date Predicate, Tags Predicate, and Properties Predicate components. These components are used to configure search in the Search & Lister component.

The Search & Lister component is used to create a portal of forms that are managed using Forms Manager, and to implement search on the forms listed on the portal.

The component is divided in two panes:

• List pane where the forms are listed.
  
• Search pane where you add the search functionality.

The Search & Lister component, when added, looks similar to the following screenshot.

List pane

The List pane is an area where your forms are listed. When you add the Search & Lister component the first time, it lists all the forms from all applications in your Forms Manager. The Search & Lister component provides various configuration options by that you can use to control various aspects of the List pane.

To configure the List pane, click Edit in the Search and Lister component to open the Edit Component dialog. The Edit Component dialog includes several tabs that provide configuration options described in the table below. Click OK to save the configuration, when done.

Search pane

Full Text Predicate

The Full Text Predicate component implements full text search on form data, such as name and description. Users can search any text string to returns forms that contain the text in their name or description..

To configure the Full Text Predicate component:

1. Right-click the component and click Edit.
2. Specify the title in the Main Title field.
   
3. Click OK.

Date Predicate

The Date Predicate component, when added, enables search on the listed forms that were modified during a specified duration.

To configure the Date Predicate component:

1. Right-click the component and click Edit.
2. Specify the following:
   • Type: The only option available is Last Modified Date.
     
   • Text: Label or caption for the Date Predicate component. The default value is Last Modified Date.
     
   • Start Date Label: Label or caption for the start date field.
     
   • End Date Label: Label or caption for the end date field.
3. Click OK.

Properties Predicate

The Properties Predicate component implements searching of forms based on form properties, such as name, title, author, description, and status.

To configure the Properties Predicate component:

1. Right-click the component and click Edit.
2. In the General tab, specify the search label. The default value is Properties.
   
3. In the Options tab, click Add Item.
4. Select a property from the drop-down list and specify a search label for it in the field below the drop-down list.
5. Repeat step 4 to add more properties.
   Tip: You can also specify a default filter value to list forms based on the specified criteria and hide the property for search by end users. Select the Hide checkbox for a property and specify the default filter value. For example, if you want to display forms that contain "Travel" in their names on your portal, select Hide next to the Name property and specify Travel in default filter value text box.
   
6. Click OK.
7. Click Submit in the search pane to refresh the list of forms.

Tags Predicate

The Tags Predicate component implements searching of forms based on tags defined in Forms Manager. For information about tagging forms using Forms Manager, see Adding Tags and custom properties.    

To configure the Tags Predicate component:

1. Right-click the component and click Edit.
2. Click the down-arrow button next to the Tags field. Tags are defined using Forms Manager. For more information, see Adding or modifying form metadata.
   
3. Select appropriate tags.
4. Click OK. 

The selected tags appear in the Search area. Users can now narrow down their search based on the tags.

Link component

The Link component allows you to create a link to a form anywhere on the page. Consider a scenario where you are offering a training program, and you want your users to submit a form to register for the training. On your website, you have posted the program details. Below the details, you want to provide a link to the registration form. The Link component can help you create that link.

To add a link:

1. Drag the Link component onto the page.
2. Right-click the component and click Edit.
3. Specify the following:
   • Link Caption: Link text or caption for the link.
   • Form Path: Repository path where the form is stored.
   • Render Type: Format in which the form is rendered - PDF, HTML, or Auto. The Auto render type detects the user environment and accordingly renders the form in HTML or PDF format. For example, if the form is accessed from a mobile device, the Auto render type will render the form in HTML.
   • Submit URL: URL to the servlet where the form data will be submitted.
   • HTML Profile: Profile for rendering the form in HTML format.
   • PDF Profile: Profile for rendering the form in PDF format.
     
4. Click OK.
   

Link component: Known issues and best practices

• PDF Profile is currently not supported for PDF documents.
• Ensure that you select PDF as the render type if the path specified in Form Path points to a PDF document.
• Ensure that you do not specify a submit URL if the path specified in Form Path points to a PDF document. Instead, the submit URL should be embedded in the PDF document.