This tutorial shows how to create a simple form in the form editor that may be used to let create a user task from a process that authorized users may fulfill from the Intalio|BPMS Workflow Web User Interface.

Accessing the Form Editor

The Form Editor is automatically launched when creating a new form or opening an existing form. You must have at least one Business Process Project in your Process Explorer before you can create a form and access the form editor (make sure you have a Business Process Project and not just a Simple Project).

 

Go to File > New > Form

This pops up the "New Form" wizard as in the screenshot below.


Select a folder in your project, type a file name and click Finish. In this tutorial, we assume that you create a file 'PA.xform' under the project 'PeopleActivity'.
This opens the Form Editor as in the screenshot below (the panels may be arranged differently but you may arrange them as you like by simply drag-and-dropping them).




Drag-and-drop a Text Input control. We will use it to display some information we want the user to review and comment. Click on the new control in the work area and look at the properties panel.

 

1. Provide a label by editing the "label" property. You may also edit the label inline by double-clicking in the label area of the control.
2. Change the name property to be 'request'. This property defines the name of the element that will be used at the data level to carry the information supported by this control.
3. Change the "Input/Output" property to "in". "Out" means that the information will go "out" of the form into the process. "In" means that the information will go from the process to the form (task input). "in-out" means that the information will go both ways. By default the property is "in-out" but here we want to display some information to the user and we do not want the user to change it.
4. You may also type a value inside the text input. This value defines the "default value" that will display in the form by default. In this tutorial it does not matter whether you provide a default value or not, since we will dynamically feed it with information we have in the process.
   

After all the above changes, your form should look similar to the following screenshot:



Now, drag-and-drop a radio button control. Select it and change the following properties:

name: 'accept' (without quotes)
Input/Output: 'out' (without quotes)

To define the different buttons and their values:

1.In the Properties panel, click in the cell 'Value' for the property 'items'. This should show a button "..." on the right.
2.Click on the button "...". This pops up a dialog box showing the list of label/value. There should be a first label/value set to "undefined" and "undefined_value".
3.Double-click in the cell set as "undefined" in the Label column and replace it with "Yes, I accept the request" (without quotes).
4.Double-click in the cell set to "undefined_value" in the Value column and replace it with "true" (without quotes).
5.Click the New button to add a new label/value (for an additional radio-button).
6.Type "No, I reject the request" (without quotes) for the label.
7.Double-click in the empty cell for the corresponding value and set it to "false" (without quote).
8.Click OK

This should update the radio buttons as in the screenshot below:




Note that if you want to select one radio button by default, you can do so by double-clicking on the control first - so that you can edit its input - and then clicking on the radio button you want to be the default. The above screenshot shows what the form looks like when the answer 'Yes, I accept the request' should be the default.

Finally, let's drag-and-drop a text area control to provide the user the ability to comment his/her decision. Select the text area control and change its properties as follows:

label: 'Comment:' (without quotes)
name: 'comment' (without quotes)
iInput/Output: select 'out'.

Your form should now look like the following.



Save your form. You have created your first People Activity form!

In the Process Explorer, right-click on the folder where you form is saved and click Refresh. If your project is a Business Process Project (there should be a character 'P' on your project icon), you should see that 2 files have been created, including:

PA.xform: the form itself. This is an XForms document. It is the actual code that may be deployed in a runtime! You can double-click on it to automatically open it in the Form Editor.
PA.xform.xsd: this XML Schema represents the input and output information supported by your form. It is also generated by the Form Editor and it is referenced in the PA.xform file. At runtime, it is used to validate the information entered by the user.

The other two files are also created by the Workflow Visual Connector if you were willing to integrate this form for starting a process as a People Initiating Process Activity or a notification.

You may now want to look at the tutorial "Designing processes with People Activities" to learn how to create a process that creates a people activity supported with the form we just created.