FORMCYCLE Features
WebApps, registration forms, insurance applications, administrative forms, reports, protocols, and more. XIMA® FORMCYCLE is the right tool for any kind of data acquisition and further processing. See for yourself!
Forms
Form designer
Web-based form designer to create the forms. It offers the following range of functions (extract):
- Drag & Drop the form elements
- Responsive Design
- multilingualism
- Help texts for each individual element for context-sensitive help
- Definition of repeatable elements
- Declaration of required fields and data types for input validation
- Switch visibility and write protection of elements, depending on element values, states, user groups or the current status
- Use of server-side defined data sources to fill selection elements
- Use of widgets (elements or element blocks with extended functionality and server-side interaction. Example: Captcha)
Legally compliant capture & e-signature
With partner products in the area of signing, such as XiTrust MOXIS, XIMA® FORMCYCLE becomes an out-of-the-box solution for company-wide, legally compliant approval procedures. From the capture on all end devices, to the generation and signing of documents, all the way to archiving.
A large number of processes require a legally valid signature of the data. For this reason, PDFs are automatically generated after the form is submitted, the process is enriched with metadata and transmitted to MOXIS for signature. With the possibility of cell phone signatures, XiTrust MOXIS additionally enables a location-independent, legally compliant signature of contractors. This makes contract management easier, more mobile and free of media discontinuity. After signing, the final document is automatically transmitted to FORMCYCLE and can be made available to other third-party systems, including its metadata.
Access
- Login protection - If activated, the form can only be opened and submitted by registered users. Users from an Active Directory are also supported.
- Password protection - Sets a password protection for the form. This password must only be entered if the user is not logged in to XIMA® FORMCYCLE.
- Edit protection - The form can only be edited by defined users in the designer.
- Data protection - Enables the anonymization of submitted forms. No user-related data of the sender will then be saved.
Export & Copy
Export - Offers the possibility to download the form including the workflow and other settings as a file. This allows the form to be saved locally, e.g. for backup or transfer to another XIMA® FORMCYCLE system.
Copy - When copying a form, all settings are copied and a new form project is created (cloning).
Versions
Each form can have several versions or states. Each version can be edited separately and can have its own workflow. In addition, the version currently available online is determined here.
iOS & Android App
Offline data acquisition for example for:
Service technicians, surveyors, field staff, trade fair personnel
For tablets and smartphones - without expensive app development. The apps are available free of charge in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
Further processing
Workflow
The so-called Workflow controls how to proceed with submitted form data.
Any number of actions, statuses, user-defined events and processing chains can be created per form. The status defines the respective state of an process (submitted form). After the occurrence of an event, processing chains are executed, which contain actions that process form data by reading and writing.
For each status you can define which user groups are allowed to change the status.
Time-controlled processing enables the processing of operations at defined times or after a definable period of time has elapsed.
Actions
Actions execute functions. Examples of this are ...
- Sending emails
- Fill existing PDF forms or Word documents
- Compress existing files (Zip)
- XML export
- Offer files for download
- Write form data to external SQL databases
- Send data to other servers via POST request
- Save resources to file system
- Copy or move form records to mailboxes
Publish
In the "publish" section, various integration options are available, with which the form can be integrated into existing websites:
- Direct link to call up the form
- HTML link (HTML anchor element (<a href="...">)
- QR code to call up the form
- Code to embed the form via iFrame / Script / Ajax
- The form embedded in a HTML page
- Integration into various content management systems of other providers (for certain systems, plug-ins are offered via the portals of the vendors.)
- Personalized invitation
Double opt-In
The double opt-in enables the request of a confirmation of consent for processing the form data. If a user fills in a form and submits it, he or she will receive a confirmation link by e-mail.
The first time after clicking on this link, the form data is processed further in the system. If the user does not confirm, the form data is automatically deleted after a configurable period of time.
- Sender and recipient individually selectable
- Texts for subject and content of the e-mail configurable
- Answer pages (confirmation e-mail, expiry of the confirmation period) configurable
- Expiration time and deletion times configurable
Word / PDF Export
Creates an unfilled Word or PDF document from a form. When exporting to Word format, appropriate placeholders are also generated so that the form can be filled with the entered form data in the workflow and is available as a print receipt. For better control of the export design, Word documents can be used as templates.
Personalised invitations
With this function, processes are automatically created via a data source, filled with data from the data source and sent to the corresponding recipients via a personalised link. Via the inbox you have an overview at any time of which form record is currently in which processing status.
Plugins
XIMA® FORMCYCLE offers a variety of entry points for extending the standard functionalities by plugins. Based on different Plugin types these plugins are executed at different points in time and permit it to provide own functions and/or processing logic.
Here the most important Plugins made available by XIMA®:
PDF-Utils
The "PDF-Utils" plugin provides several functionalities:
PDF-A: Creates a PDF-A document from a given PDF document.
PDF Merge: Merges multiple PDF documents into one PDF document. The order is freely selectable.
PDF-Sign: Signs a PDF document using a p12 or pfx certificate.
PDF-Print
This plugin offers the possibility to print a form directly without having to create a print template with another tool or to configure a corresponding mapping.
The design of the PDF document can be customized via Print CSS (@media print).
IMAP/SMTP Mail Proxy
The "IMAP/SMTP Mail Proxy" plugin is used to provide processes via a standard e-mail client with support for IMAP. For each process, an e-mail is stored in the corresponding mailbox folder, including the attachments.
Amazon AWS and Dropbox
Files can be uploaded in the form or created in processing. These two plugins allow saving such files to the cloud storage "Amazon AWS" and "Dropbox".
SharePoint
This plugin sends received form data to SharePoint and stores them in the configured SharePoint lists. Besides the form data, files can also be transferred.
Data
Files
Additional files and resources can be managed here. These can be Word and PDF documents, for example, which are filled with form data during processing. In addition, files such as images, fonts or CSS and JavaScript files are also available in the form.
Data tables
The data table is used to create a separate table in the database that contains only the data of the selected form elements. This can then be accessed, for example, via a database query from another form or by external applications.
Database connections
Database connections provide a way to centrally maintain connection information for various databases. These database connections can then be further used in the system without having to reconfigure the connection data and the database type each time.
Database queries
Database queries behave similarly to data sources (XML, CSV, JSON), but are not stored statically, but are read dynamically from a database. SQL is used as the "query language". Attention must be paid here to differences of the individual database types.
In addition, there is the possibility to test the database query immediately.
LDAP connections*
Similar to database connections, LDAP connections are the configurations to access the data of an Active Directory or LDAP server. LDAP connections are used for LDAP queries.
LDAP queries*
LDAP queries are somewhat similar to database queries. They are used to dynamically retrieve data from an LDAP server. In addition to filtering via an LDAP query, the return values can also be restricted to specified attributes.
Sources
Data sources are static stored data. Supported are data in CSV, JSON and XML format. Furthermore, the import of Excel documents is also supported.
CSV data sources can be defined in the Designer as selection options of a selection field. JSON and XML data sources can be processed in the Designer via the JavaScript area.
Templates
Files managed here are globally available for all forms and processing. There are the following types of files:
- CSS-Templates
- XSL transformation templates
- HTML templates
- i18n variables
- Email templates
- CSS and JavaScript files
User settings
User settings
User groups, users and roles are managed in the user settings. Depending on the configuration and license, users from an LDAP (Active Directory) can also be used.
In addition to internal user administration, it is also possible to obtain user information (master data and authentication) via LDAP (Active Directory).
The "user settings" module is divided into several sub-modules.
Roles
Each user has exactly one role and can belong to several groups.
The rights of the user are defined via the role. These permissions control which modules and functions the user has access to.
User groups
User groups can be used to manage access to the inbox, access to forms and form elements, and access to form editing and processing.
User groups are used to organize users and manage access rights to forms and form elements, as well as to inboxes and processing. A user can belong to multiple user groups, regardless of the users role.
User
The individual users are created and managed in this submodule.
If the paid LDAP module is available, the users can also be imported or linked directly from LDAP.
Inboxes
All incoming form data is stored in a inbox. Initially, the so-called central mailbox is available for this purpose.
For more flexibility, additional inboxes can be created and managed via the inbox management. User groups are assigned to each inbox. Only users who belong to one of the assigned user groups can see the inbox and the processes it contains in the inbox.
In addition to the standard inbox type "general inbox", a form specific inbox can be created for each form.
In the general mailbox, sent data of different forms is displayed, but only basic data such as title and date of receipt.
In the form specific inbox , on the other hand, it is possible to freely define which form fields and information should be displayed.
LDAP groups*
LDAP groups are a form of user management that uses data from an LDAP server.
An LDAP query can be specified that returns multiple users. Here, in contrast to LDAP users, no individual users are created within FORMCYCLE.
When logging in, a check is made to see if the logon data matches a user from an LDAP group. A virtual user, not stored in the database, is then created. This user then has the role and user groups set in the LDAP group.
This option is used, for example, if there are a lot of users and they should not be created individually.
* Only with licensed LDAP module
System
Client
Various default settings are made for each client when it is created. In this module, these can be adjusted and extended if necessary.
The "Client" module is divided into several sub-modules.
Client settings
Basic settings for e-mail servers, login and other functionalities can be configured here. Such as general settings (name and alias of the client, default language, base URL), e-mail settings (connection data, login data and encryption, e-mail address of the sender), login settings for users (system user, LDAP user, LDAP and system (combination of both variants).
Plugins
Plugins can be uploaded here, which should only be available for a specific client. Plugins extend the system with additional functionalities.
Frontend server
Management of the available frontend servers. Here the system wide frontend servers available for this client are defined. A frontend server enables the delivery and receipt of forms provided by a master server. It does not have its own administration interface.
Protocol
The log provides a clear and complete documentation of executed activities as well as an overview of any errors that may have occurred during processing.
There are also filter options, such as limiting the log to a specific time period or to a specific process.
Statistics
In the statistics, information about sent data and the system is available in an overview.
For forms, the following information is displayed for each day, week or month
- how many forms were opened
- how many forms of those were sent, and
- how many errors occurred during form processing.
