Method and system for cross-platform form creation and deployment

• US 20020194219A1
• Filed: 04/15/2002
• Published: 12/19/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 04/17/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Adobe Inc.
• Original Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: McLellan, Keith Rolland, Dawd, Nasif Hussain, Leyden, Mark Christopher, Bradley, George Wesley, Brooks, Mark Andrew, Foster, Ernest Herscheal James, Rumsey, Anthony Robert, Neilson, Andrew John, Brousseau, Jean Louis, Matassa, Kevin, Rachniowski, Zbigniew
• Granted Patent: US 7,313,757 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/223
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/972 Access to data in other repository systems, e.g. legacy data or dynamic Web page generation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/117 Tagging; Marking up details of markup languages G06F40/143; Designating a block; Setting of attributes style sheets, e.g. eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation [XSLT], G06F40/154
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/151 Transformation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/154 Tree transformation for tree-structured or markup documents, e.g. XSLT, XSL-FO or stylesheets
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/303 Terminal profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/959 Network
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching

Abstract

The present invention is directed to systems and methods of creating and deploying electronic forms for collecting information from a user using a browser, where the browser may be one of a plurality of browser platforms. Characteristics of forms are entered by a human designer using a form designer by using drag-and-drop operations, and stored in XML template files. The form may be previewed by the designer. When a user on the Internet (or an intranet) requests a form by a browser, the characteristics of the browser are sensed and a form appropriate for the browser is deployed to the browser by a form server. Information is then captured from the user. The form may also be saved or printed.

Claims

1. A method for creating a form definition template for collecting information from a user on a browser platform using an electronic form, comprising the steps of:

(a) receiving the characteristics of the electronic form being the electronic form characteristics;

(b) storing electronic form characteristics in the form definition template, the form definition template being in Extensible Markup Language (XML) and the form definition template adapted to be deployable on any one of a plurality of browser platforms.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the form definition template complies with XML Forms Architecture (XFA).

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the electronic form comprises at least two components, the components comprising a page and a form object.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the electronic form further comprises at least one script executable upon the occurrence of an event.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the script is executable by a scripting engine that complies with the definition under Microsoft OLE/COM of an active scripting engine with parsing.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein the form object is one selected from the group comprising a list box, a drop down list, a command button, a radio button, a check box, a line, a circle, an image, static text, and a signature object.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein the script comprises an instruction selected from the group comprising performing validity checking of information entered by the user, a calculation, a database access, enforcing a business rule, and automatic formatting of the form as presented to the user.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of displaying the electronic form for a browser platform, comprising the following steps:

receiving an indication of the characteristics of the browser platform being the browser platform characteristics, and

displaying the electronic form in a wysiwyg representation for the browser platform, wherein the wysiwig representation would be displayed to the user when the electronic form is deployed on the browser platform.

9. The method of any of claims 1, wherein the plurality of browser platforms comprise platforms for rendering at least one of the following formats:

Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML);

Java applet;

Active-X controls;

Wireless Markup Language (WML); and

Cascading Style Sheet.

10. A method for collecting information from a user on a browser platform using an electronic form, the characteristics of the electronic form being electronic form characteristics stored in a form definition template, comprising the steps of:

a) sensing the characteristics of the browser platform being browser platform characteristics;

b) retrieving the form definition template, the form definition template comprising an electronic document in Extensible Markup Language (XML), and the form definition template adapted to be deployable on a plurality of browser platforms;

c) generating the electronic form in a format suitable for presentation on the browser platform from the form definition template using browser platform characteristics; and

d) capturing information input from the user.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the step of capturing information input from the user comprises:

rendering the electronic form on the browser platform; and

accepting input from the user using the electronic form.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein:

the step of sensing the characteristics of the browser platform is performed by either a web server or a form server; and

the steps of retrieving the form definition template and generating the electronic form are performed by the form server in electronic communication with the web server;

wherein the web server acts as an electronic intermediary between the browser platform and the form server

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the step of capturing information input from the user further comprises the step of storing information input from the user to a database.

14. The method of claim 12, the step of storing information input further comprising forwarding information input to a processing engine.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein the electronic form comprises a script executable upon the occurrence of an event.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the script is executed by a scripting engine residing on the form server.

17. The method of claim 10, further comprising the steps of:

(a) receiving from the user an indication whether to print or electronically save the form; and

(b) printing or electronically saving the form in accordance with the user'"'"'s indication.

18. The method of claim 17, the step of printing or saving electronically the form comprises the step of first generating an electronic representation of the electronic form which conforms to Portable Document Format (“

PDF”

).

19. A system for creating a form definition template for collecting information from a user on a browser platform using an electronic form, the electronic form having electronic form characteristics, comprising:

a user interface for collecting electronic form characteristics;

a computer processor in communication with the user interface executing software for collecting electronic form characteristics; and

a computer storage in communication with the computer processor for storing electronic form characteristics in a form definition template;

wherein the form definition template is in Extensible Markup Language (XML) and the form definition template is adapted to be deployable on any one of a plurality of browser platforms.

20. A system for collecting information from a user using an electronic form having electronic form characteristics, comprising:

a browser platform for capturing information from the user, the browser platform having browser platform characteristics;

a web server in communication with the browser platform;

a computer storage for storing electronic form characteristics in a form definition template; and

a form server in communication with the web server, for retrieving the form definition template from the computer storage, and for generating the electronic form in a format suitable for presentation on the browser platform from the form definition template using browser platform characteristics;

wherein the form definition template comprises an electronic document in Extensible Markup Language (XML), and the form definition template is adapted to be deployable on a plurality of browser platforms.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the browser platform is further for:

rendering the electronic form; and

accepting input from the user using the electronic form.

22. The system of any of claims 20 to 21, wherein browser platform characteristics is sensed by either the web server or the form server.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the web server and the form server comprise software programmes executing in the same computer.

24. The system of claim 22, wherein the web server and the form server comprise software programmes executing in distinct and separate computers in a network of computers.

25. The system of claim 21, wherein

the browser is further for receiving from the user an indication whether to print or electronically save the form;

the form server is further for generating an electronic representation of the electronic form which conforms to Portable Document Format (“

PDF”

) in order to print or electronically save the form in accordance with the user'"'"'s indication.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein the step of delivering a form package comprises the steps of:

producing the form package at the form server including data, if any data,

transmitting the form package to the remote system; and

receiving the form package at the remote system.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein:

the step of transmitting the form package comprises the step of compressing the form package; and

the step of receiving the form package comprises the step of decompressing the form package.

29. The method of claim 27, wherein the electronic form is a multi-page form.

30. The method of claim 26, wherein the step of capturing the information from the user comprises the step of saving information entered at the remote system while the remote system is offline.

31. The method of claim 26, wherein the information is saved in XML datasets at the remote system.

32. The method of claim 30, further the step of capturing the information from the user further comprises the step of displaying an electronic form with information already captured from the user.

33. The method of claim 26, wherein the step of delivering a form package comprises storing the data, if any data, in a hidden frame of the at least one page of the electronic form.

34. The method of claim 26, wherein the form definition template is adapted to be deployable on any one of a plurality of browser platforms.

26. A method for remotely collecting information from a user on a browser platform of a remote system using an electronic form, the electronic form having at least one page, comprising the steps of:

sensing the characteristics of the browser platform being browser platform characteristics;

retrieving the characteristics of the electronic form being electronic form characteristics stored in a form definition template at a computer storage;

delivering a form package from a form server electronically connected to the computer storage to the remote system for capturing the information using the electronic form including data, if any data, in a format suitable for presentation on the browser platform using the browser platform characteristics;

generating browser code at the remote system from the form package;

saving the browser code at the remote system; and

capturing the information from the user on the browser platform using the electronic form including data, if any data.

35. A system for remotely collecting information from a user on a browser platform of a remote system using an electronic form, the electronic form having at least one page, comprising:

a web server in communication with the browser platform, the characteristics of the browser platform being browser platform characteristics;

a computer storage for storing the characteristics of the electronic form being electronic form characteristics in a form definition template; and

a form server in communication with the web server and the computer storage for;

retrieving the form definition template from the computer storage,

producing a form package using browser platform characteristics for capturing the information at the remote system using the electronic form in a format suitable for presentation on the browser platform, including data, if any data; and

transmitting the form package to the remote system;

wherein the remote system performing the functions of;

receiving the form package from the form server;

generating browser code from the form package;

saving the browser code at the remote system; and

capturing the information from the user on the browser platform using the electronic form.