auslfe.formonline.pfgadapter 0.4.1

An adapter for PloneFormGen that add to Plone a way for manage online forms submission

Introduction

The Form Online product is a Plone add-on composed by three modules:

• auslfe.formonline.pfgadapter itself

• PloneFormGen (needed dependency)

• auslfe.formonline.content (needed dependency)

It is designed for intranets or web sites. Using this, users of the site can handle on-line some company specific tasks. Some example:

• ask for technical assistance from the IT Department

• plan user vacations with the Administration/Human Resource office

• ask to the administration to buy something expensive

• …

This is designed keeping in mind not-too-large sized companies.

How to use

You can find additional documentation in the project home.

The general structure

This product is heavily based on the PFG features. You can create the form, where you ask for user information, as you want.

The only required field (but you can name/configure it as you want) if an e-mail field the the user will fill with his overseer address (see below).

After that you must use the new PFG adapter: Form Online Adapter

Before being ready to use the form, you need to choose a place (a Folder, or a Large Folder if you think to manage a lot of requests).

If you will use multiple PFG with Form Online Adapter (more than an online form), you can also use multiple storages.

It’s important to know that:

• every user that must be able to use a specific Form Online, need to have the Contributor role on the storage folder (play with the “Restriction” link inside the “Add new” to limit the user power to create other contents).

• the user(s) who finally perform the request dispatch must be Reviewer on that folder.

The actors

There are three main actor in the life-cycle of a form:

• the user that “ask for something” (A)

• his overseer, that must approve the request (B)

• the technical user, that dispatch the request and take care that some action will be taken (C)

When user A ask for something, he always need to receive user B authorization before any other action can be taken.

To simplify the process and not being forced to have a Company Organization Chart, is user A itself that “choose” who is his overseer. This is done by A writing down the B’s e-mail address when filling the form.

When saving, user B will receive special power onto the generated form, so he can go there and edit, reject or approve the form.

When he finally choose to accept the request, the game goes to user C, that is the one who perform some action.

Users receive e-mail address when the request need their attention.

Wait! Is user A that choose user B?!

As said above: this is targeted on small companies. If user A put the e-mail address of someone that isn’t is boss, or simply is own e-mail (so auto-approving), user C is aways the last step of the procedure. He’s responsible to check if user B is really one of the company overseer.

Generated content type

The basic installation of auslfe.formonline.content try to be simple as possible. It provide a required workflow for working with the PFG Adapter, but you are not forced to use a specific content type as generated form.

The simplest way is to use directly the “Form Online” content type, but it isn’t installed automatically with the product: you must run the “Form Online: include FormOnline type” Generis Setup import step. This content type automatically use the provided workflow, but is a weird type (more or less a copy of the Page).

The other (advanced) way is to choose your type when configuring the adapter, from the “Document type to generate” field. The adapter can work with whatever content type you want (it need to behave a text field, like Page and News Items). But in this way you must configure other stuff, like assigning the proper worlflow to the content type (globally, or locally using CMFPlacefulWorkflow).

Alternative configuration

If you want the overseer e-mail address to be (potentially) an external address, you can take a look at auslfe.formonline.tokenaccess.

Dependencies

This product has been tested with:

• Plone 3.3

• PloneFormGen 1.6.5

TODO

• Plone 4 compatibility (probably just works)

• We are planning an integration of the PFG adapter with Easy Template

• Automatically save the overseer e-mail in the user data, so automatically fill future requests

• A shorter workflow, for very simple approvation where we only need A and C actors

Credits

Developed with the support of Azienda USL Ferrara; Azienda USL Ferrara supports the PloneGov initiative.

Authors

This product was developed by RedTurtle Technology team.

Changelog

0.4.1 (2012-01-15)

• FormOnlineAdapter now removed from searchable/navigation types [keul]

• a general approach to the e-mail adapter, simpler for developers to customize it using a browserlayer interface [keul]

0.4.0 (2012-01-11)

• fixed translations [keul]

• added a soft dependency on auslfe.formonline.tokenacces [keul]

0.3.0 (2011-12-13)

First pubic release

• documentation fixes

• light support for “Site Administrator” role (this not mean that we tested this on Plone 4.1 yet) [keul]

• added a new “contentToGenerate” field, for choosing the content type to be generated [keul]

0.2.0 (2011-05-06)

• better i18ndude support [keul]

• mail sending refactoring [keul]

• added an Unauthorized check in the current user can’t write in the storage folder [keul]

• translations changes [keul]

• added documentation and manual [keul]

• egg cleanup and dependencies checks [keul]

0.1.0 (2010-07-19)

• Initial release [fdelia]