Create, Send, Solicit and Fill Forms

TMail revolutionizes Business Form processing by allowing custom forms to be created in minutes by any user and then be sent to be filled in by one or more recipients. The forms are filled in right ‘inline’. To understand what makes TMail Forms revolutionary, let’s look at some alternative approaches.

• Web Forms: Web Forms typically require I.T. support to build, host on websites or embed into Apps. Furthermore, they are further restricted to use-cases where the form-filler self-identifies (unless further extensive coding is done to embed them into appropriate apps to hook in identity from the app). Finally, they only work with the single-submit paradigm, making them quite limiting (what if a mistake was made that needed to be corrected)
• EMail Forms: EMail does not support forms per-se. However, one could go the route of creating a form in a technology like Adobe Acrobat (which once again will need to be done by I.T.) and then mailing that out as an attachment. Now, the user-experience is that the user has to download the attachment, fill it in, save with a new name, and send the response back in reply email or in a new email. To make matters worse if a user needs to update their response, the typical email problem of inadvertent branching will rear its ugly head. See the Smart Sections overview to learn more about this.
• Survey Forms: Survey forms can be created by users like TMail forms. But their purpose is entirely different. While TMail forms can be used for surveys, their main use is to support business processes. Business Process Forms have a different set of requirements and features compared to survey forms.

Let’s look at the features of TMail Forms that make them revolutionary for business processes.

• Users can create them in minutes: Users can create form definitions in minutes by using the drag and drop form designer. No coding or I.T. support needed.
• Users can easily modify Form Definitions (in minutes): Users can easily modify form definitions. When they do this the previous Form Definitions are retained (as an older version), so that Form TMails created against them are not invalidated.
• Inline Filling-in: Forms are filled-in right inline in the mail. No need to jump into another app.
• Support for multiple Form Workflows: Multiple form workflows are supported beyond the traditional Form Submission workflow.
  • Traditional Form Submission: In this flow the user (the form submitter) fills in the form and sends it to another user (the form processor).
  • Form-Entry Solicitation: In this flow the user (the form processor) sends an empty form to another user (the form submitter) for filling in. The form submitter fills it in and sends it back to the form processor.
  • Personalized Form Workflow: In this flow the user (the form processor) takes a generic form and personalizes it for a user. For example, a School might send an admission form to a prospective student, but first fill in the deadline for applying (which is an unfilled field in the generic form
• Form Updates: A filled-in form may be updated by either the Form submitter or the Form processor. The reasons to want to update a form are many. One possibility is to correct mistakes. Another possibility is to submit a form with some information missing which is filled in at a later date. A third possibility is that there is an inherent back-and-forth to the Form-based process. For example an Order Form may be sent with what the buyer wants. The seller responds with what they can do and the buyer either agrees to this or modifies their request and so on. When a Form is updated, the previous version of the Form is not overwritten. Instead a new version is created. Furthermore, a user can see certified differences between the various filled-in versions.
• Certified Forms: Forms are sent as Certified TMails. Furthermore any updates are executed as Certified Updates.
• Form Data Searching: Form Data is fully-indexed and is searchable from the main search form.
• Form Cloning: Forms can be quickly cloned and modified instead of always filling them in from scratch
• Form Forwarding: Like any TMail, Forms can be forwarded to other users. For example, once a Form Processor can forward the Form to another user for further processing once it has been validated. Forms can also be certified forwarded.
• Template Store: Form Definitions can be posted to the template store. Form Definitions may be either public (instantiable by anyone) or users-org-only (instantiable only by users in user’s org).