System and method for customizing form elements in a form building application

• US 20050065933A1
• Filed: 09/22/2003
• Published: 03/24/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 09/22/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Goering, Thomas
• Granted Patent: US 7,730,410 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

A method and system for customizing form elements in a form building application. According to one embodiment, a form builder receives an identification of a user of the form building application, the form building application providing a graphical user interface for the manipulation of a set of form elements, and enables access to a subset of the form elements according to authorization rules, and an access manager determines the authorization rules associated with the user.

Claims

1. A computer system for customizing form elements in a form building application, comprising:

a form builder component configured to receive an identification of a user of the form building application, the form building application providing a graphical user interface for the manipulation of a set of form elements, and to enable access to a subset of the form elements according to authorization rules; and

an access manager component configured to determine the authorization rules associated with the user.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the identification of the user is based on login information.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the authorization rules are determined via a lookup table associating the user identification with the authorization rules for the user.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the authorization rules include settings that identify the subset of the form elements which are viewable and/or changeable.

5. A computer-implemented method for customizing form elements in a form building application, comprising:

receiving an identification of a user of the form building application, the form building application providing a graphical user interface for the manipulation of a set of form elements;

determining authorization rules associated with the user; and

enabling access to a subset of the form elements according to the authorization rules.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the identification of the user is based on login information.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein the authorization rules are determined via a lookup table associating the user identification with the authorization rules for the user.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the authorization rules include settings that identify the subset of the form elements which are viewable and/or changeable.

9. A computer-implemented method for customizing an electronic form, comprising:

responsive to a command by a user to change an element of the form, retrieving a permission list from a lookup table, the permission list identifying access rights for a plurality of form elements contained in the form;

comparing an identifier associated with the user to those the access rights for the form element to be changed; and

rejecting the command unless the access rights associated with the user'"'"'s identifier permit the user to change the form element.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the command by the user to change the form element includes selecting in a form building application a node representing the form element.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the access rights are defined for form elements representing a form'"'"'s corporate identity.

12. The method of claim 9, wherein the access rights are defined for form elements representing a form'"'"'s interface to an application program.

13. The method of claim 9, wherein the access rights are defined based on at least one of user id, job title, department code and position in the corporate hierarchy.