Smart Start: Digital Forms Prep Work

We're excited to help your agency streamline processes and enhance user experience with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Adaptive Forms! 

Planning is essential when creating or modernizing forms with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Adaptive Forms. The prep work outlined below will help you determine the best approach for each form and ensure a smooth implementation.

Review the forms you want to create or modernize. The forms you choose and how they'll be processed will help determine the best approach.

Consider the following for each form:

• How will the form be processed after submission?
• Are there any workflows or backend processes that need to be established or updated?
• What are the form requirements (email notification, database storage, etc.)?

If this is your first time creating an Adaptive Form, have your agency's ATSR submit a service request in ServiceNow for AEM Adaptive Form training. If the forms you selected are already in use, attach them to the request.

Contact the DoIT Web Services team at DoIT.WebServices@illinois.gov with your ServiceNow ticket number.

Review the information below to help determine goals for each form and identify any questions you may have.

If your agency wants to continue using PDF forms for backend processing while making forms available for electronic submission, you can convert existing PDFs to adaptive forms.

Process:

1. Select a maximum of 5-10 PDF forms currently used by your agency
2. Email forms to DoIT.WebServices@illinois.gov or attach to your ServiceNow ticket
3. The Web Services team will run forms through the conversion tool
4. You'll receive the resulting adaptive forms in the Stage environment to adjust, configure, and clean up
5. Once satisfied, we'll package and move forms to Production

Important considerations when selecting forms for conversion:

• Review known issues and limitations with form conversions
• Some forms or fields may not convert well and will need alternative approaches
• Forms may need adjustment in the PDF editor before conversion
• Review PDF accessibility using DoIT's PDF Accessibility Guidelines 

If your agency is using fully electronic backend processing, you'll build new adaptive forms (including those built from existing PDFs). The information below will help with planning.

To help estimate the work effort and timeline, gather the following information before your training session:

• Is there any legislatively mandated timeline for this form to be publicly available?
• Who is the business owner of this form?
• Who is the decision maker for the form (if different from the business owner)?

• What is the destination of the form data?
• Should submissions be sent to an email address only? If so, what email address?
• Should information be saved to a SharePoint list AND sent to an email address? If so, what email address?
• If using SharePoint, what is the location for that list? Do you have an existing TeamSite or SharePoint Online location?

• Where within your public website will the form be located?
• What introductory text will appear before the form?
• What should users see as "Thank you for your submission" text after submitting?
• Should users receive a copy of their submission or a receipt for their records? If so, what information should be included in the email?

For each field in your form, determine:

• Is it required?
• Should it use any validation (e.g., "must be a phone number," "must be a valid date," "must be between 0 and 100")?
• Is it conditionally shown or required (e.g., "only show if answer to 'Are you over 18' is 'yes'")?

If your form collects attachments:

• What file extensions should be allowed?
• Should multiple attachments be allowed in a single submission? If so, how many?
• What is the maximum total size of attachments allowed? Take into consideration backend platform file size limitations when determining maximum allowed file sizes for attachments.

If modernizing an existing form, also consider:

• Is a signature required for the form or document to be legally binding? (If so, an AEM adaptive form is not the appropriate solution)
• Review the backend process—is it still working or should it be adjusted?
• If the process changes, should the form be reworked to align with process updates?
• What is the retention policy for data collected from the form?
• Should any fields be added or removed?

Yes, AEM Forms can collect and process PII data to a holding location. The key question is what that location will be.

Yes, AEM Forms can collect and send data directly to SharePoint Online.

We anticipate AEM's volume capacity is the same or greater than SharePoint 2013's form handling capability. As an example, the forms component currently collects roughly 200 submissions per hour for IDES's supplemental documentation form. At peak times, it processed around 10 times that amount per hour. The submission logic also accepts attachments ranging from 3MB to 50MB in size.

Data management considerations:

• SharePoint does not like individual views of data to exceed 5,000 rows
• You'll need to define views that break data into 5,000 or fewer records each, OR
• Submit to a different repository type such as SQL Server

SQL Server integration:

We can submit information to an SQL Server. For the State Fire Marshal's SQL data-driven application, we accept information via an AEM form, temporarily hold it in a SharePoint list, then use Microsoft Power Automate to execute a stored procedure that inserts records into either a Microsoft Online database or on-premises database. Once successful, the record can be purged from the SharePoint list or kept for a determined period as a backup.

Yes, we can stress test the application using the STAGE environment (which has the same number of nodes and cores as production). This ensures we don't disrupt production if something unexpected happens during testing.

Contact the DoIT Web Services team at DoIT.WebServices@illinois.gov. Once you've submitted your ServiceNow service request, provide the team with your ticket number.