About Business Data and E-forms

Designer 10.5 | webMethods BPM Task Development Help | Configuring Tasks | Configuring Business Data (Task Inputs and Outputs) | About Business Data and E-forms

Synchronizing E-form Templates and IS Document Types

You can use electronic forms (e-forms) as task business data. Basic e‑form support can be implemented by storing e‑form templates and instances in My webMethods Server or in a file system or web server. For more information and a list of the supported e-form types, see the PDF publication Implementing E-form Support for BPM.

Before you can work with e-forms, you must:

Create a repository for your e-form instances and templates.

Configure a webMethods e-form environment in My webMethods and deploy that environment to the Integration Server host(s) where you will be creating your IS document types.

Ensure that you have network connectivity between all of the host servers.

Review various implementation issues for the supported e-form types.

For additional information and instructions about the use of e-forms in the webMethods product suite, see Implementing E-form Support for BPM.

The first step in using an e-form as business data is to import it into Software AG Designer as an IS document type, making the e-form data available in that format. For information about importing an e-form template as an IS document type, see webMethods Service Development Help.

After the IS document type is created, it can be used just like any other IS document type. For example:

You can add the e-form data contained in the IS document type to a task as described in Adding an Integration Server Document Type as Business Data.

After adding the IS document type to a task, you can add business data fields from the IS document type to a page or view, as described in Adding A Business Data Field with the Editor and Adding Task Business Data Fields to a Page or View.

You can identify any of the individual business data fields in the IS document type as indexed fields, as described in Modifying Task Business Data Fields.

You can create a new task from the IS document type, as described in Creating a New Task from an Integration Server Document Type.

When working with e-form sourced IS document types, keep these points in mind:

After you add an e-form sourced IS document type to a task, you must configure the task for e-form support. For more information about implementing e-form support in a task, see Adding E-form Support to a Task.

Special considerations apply to keeping an e-form template in sync with its resulting IS document type; for more information, see Synchronizing E-form Templates and IS Document Types.