Orbeon is a powerful tool. In the hands of specialists, it can be highly effective.

Forms design

One powerful feature of Orbeon that speaks to the imagination is the Form Builder. You can compose a form relatively quickly in this near-wysiwyg environment. Adding the nitty-gritty details and doing some wiring may take a little longer, but still the Form Builder will support most of your needs while composing a form. 

Orbeon is based on the XForms standard. This means a form is basically a self-contained XML document that can be deployed cut-and-paste. 

If you have a standard Orbeon installation, your starting point for development of a new form would be the summary page: /orbeon/fr/orbeon/builder/summary.

Displaying forms

Embedding the composed form in your website, so that is appears neatly integrated with the rest of your online environment, takes some thinking though. 

Some of the things to consider are:

  • The look and feel of the form should match the look and feel of its surroundings; the user should enjoy one single user experience
  • Prefilling known information; we should make it as easy as possible for a visitor to complete a transaction. This means, among other things, not asking any unnecessary questions - and already inserting known answers to questions. If the visitor is logged in on your website, don't bother him with questions about personal details or his address - you already have that information.

PDF generation

Orbeon offers the possibility to generate a PDF of a completed form. This may help both the visitor and the owner of the website to document the request or application in a reliable way. PDFs can also be generated at a later point in time. This enables us to offer a PDF of the request or application in a customer portal environment.

Searching through posted forms

Once a form has been submitted, it is stored in the Orbeon posted forms repository. Orbeon offers several ways to display and search through the collection of submitted forms.