frevvoblog

Web forms gallery

frevvoblog — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:15:40 +0000

frevvo customers have created so many interesting, useful and just cool forms. We thought it’d be great to showcase some of them especially since our partners have asked about them. Check out some of the cool examples in our new Web Forms Gallery.

Let us know if there are any that you particularly like or if there are any features you’d like to see demonstrated there.

Why do you allow role assignment on both the Form and Flow in the first place?

ashishdeshpande — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:18:10 +0000

One of our customers asked the question above. Roles are available both in forms (for Sections and Tabs) and in flows (for any activity). What’s the difference and when would you use one vs the other?

Roles in a Form

As the image shows, you can select one or more roles in the Security Tab in the Properties panel for a Section or a Tab. When a role is assigned to a Section/Tab, the controls therein are only visible to logged in users who have that role. This allows you to create forms that look different depending on who is using them. For example, I’m sure you’ve come across a paper form with an “Office Use Only” or “To be filled by HR” section. On a Leave Approval form, there’s probably a Section for manager approval. Why show it if you’re not a manager?

Roles in a Flow

In a workflow, roles play a different part. They control who performs a step (activity) in the workflow. In the Leave Approval workflow above, if you are logged in as a user with role ‘Employee’, you will see the first step in the workflow. When you click to continue, frevvo notices that the second step has roles ‘HR’ and ‘Manager’. If you do not belong to one of those roles, the workflow will be forwarded to users in those roles and you will not be able to continue. It’s like an employee filling out a Leave Application either on paper or a Word document and then walking it over or e-mailing the Word doc to the manager.

Combine the two

Take a look at the Leave Approval workflow tutorial. As explained above the steps in the workflow have roles which control who performs the step. But the form used in the workflow also uses the same roles for a different purpose. In the first step (logged in as Employee), I will only see the Employee section. In the second step (logged in as a Manager), I will also see the Manager Approval section even though it’s the same form and the same workflow.

So, put the two together and you have something that’s flexible and powerful enough to provide the functionality you need yet easy to maintain since there’s just one form (used multiple times) and one workflow.

Try a Leave Approval Workflow

ashishdeshpande — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:05:40 +0000

We’ve noticed that many customers are using frevvo for HR-related workflows. Using frevvo’s brand new Spaces, I’ve created a short demo of a simple Leave Approval workflow so you can easily try it out and get a flavor for using frevvo workflows.

Want to learn more:

Check out this Tutorial on creating a Leave Approval workflow.
Evaluate Live forms for free.
Contact frevvo.

EZ web sites with frevvo Live Forms Spaces

ashishdeshpande — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 23:06:38 +0000

It’s always been easy to embed frevvo forms and workflows in your web pages. But some customers, especially SaaS customers don’t have a web site or don’t want to go through the hassle of creating one. Now, with frevvo’s brand new Spaces feature, you can create a professional looking web site in minutes with just a few clicks and add your forms and workflows to it.

See how easy it is: watch this 3 min video.

You can learn more in the documentation or, of course, sign up for a free account to try it out.

Pick Two

ashishdeshpande — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:18:16 +0000

Sometimes we run into prospects who want us to do demos for them, provide customer support on the phone to help with POCs or answer questions, keep improving the product etc. all for $30/month, which is what some other products cost. Of course we can’t. Why not? As usual, Sheldon says it most eloquently.

Attaining all three is simply impossible. Our local coffee shop Willoughby’s sells a great product and has great service but the prices are high. It’s worth it to us. WalMart has decent products and great prices but I’m sure you’d agree that their service is terrible.

Which two did we choose? You guessed it: a fantastic product and great customer service … at a reasonable price. Thankfully for us, many many customers agree! I hope you will too.

Task List Improvements

ashishdeshpande — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:39:09 +0000

As customers use workflows, they’ve been telling us about some improvements they’d like to see. We’ve made a few changes with more on the way soon.

Task List Improvements

We’ve added some shortcuts to the top for the most common searches.
Click on “Recent” and you’ll now see a list of items that are pending for you to take action, forms/workflows that you have saved as well as workflows that you have recently participated in so that you can quickly check the status of, say, a pending Leave Approval request. This is the most commonly requested item.
Click on “Saved” and you’ll see a list of forms & workflows that you have saved and are waiting for completion.
With one click, you can now discard saved forms that you are no longer interested in.
Tasks on your task list are also color-coded so it’s easy to see the status of a task: red ones are aborted, green ones are submitted and amber ones are pending.

You’ll see these changes in v4.1.5 (later this month). Going forward, we’re working on several other improvements:

Saved searches. You’ll be able to search for tasks using certain criteria and save a shortcut that you can reuse in the future.
View other people’s tasks. Today, you can only view a task if it is pending for you or if you have participated in the corresponding workflow. But, that’s usually not enough. Maybe there are a dozen Leave Approval processes pending throughout the company and HR wants to view the status of all of them.
Read-only view of the current state. It’s like a paper form moving through the organization. I know it’s waiting for someone else to take action but I’d like to view the current state.

Any more ideas? We’d love to hear them.

Custom JavaScript in forms

ashishdeshpande — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:00:54 +0000

We keep getting asked this question: can I create my own custom JavaScript that gets called when something happens in the form e.g. a control value changes or something is clicked.

You can do that in frevvo using a custom theme. It’s definitely unusual to provide custom JavaScript in the theme which is supposed to be for customizing look & feel only. We’ll be moving this out of the theme in an upcoming version.

In any event, you can associate JS handlers for any event associated with any control in the form e.g. a valueChange event. When the value of the control changes your JS function will be called. For details, please see the documentation on this at http://docs.frevvo.com/docs/index.php/V4_Integration#Custom_JavaScript

It’s very important to remember that this JavaScript runs in the client browser and functions defined there cannot be used in rules, which run on the frevvo server.

Don’t stop me now – Google Doodle

ashishdeshpande — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:58:14 +0000

Wow! It’s not often that our blog has personal items but today’s Google Doodle (Sep 6, 2011) is totally worth a look.

I loved Queen and Freddie Mercury was one of the most amazing talents I’ve ever seen. It’s great to see Google honor him on what would have been his 65th birthday. Dr. Brian May also guest posts a wonderful memorial on the Google Blog.

Like a great comet, he left a luminous trail which will sparkle for many a generation to come.

If you haven’t seen it already, go take a look now.

Square 9 Softworks FreeForm video

ashishdeshpande — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:33:20 +0000

Check out this awesome new video from our partner Square 9 Softworks about their FreeForm product. Thanks S9S and we’re looking forward to a long and healthy partnership.

Delays due to Irene

ashishdeshpande — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:12:21 +0000

We’re experiencing significant delays due to Hurricane Irene; power/phone/Internet to our main CT office is out. Most of our homes are in the same boat. We’re doing our best with alternate locations, cell cards etc. to respond to customer support, emails, phones etc. but it’s slow going. The frevvo SaaS service and customer installations remain unaffected by this.

We really appreciate your patience and hope we can get back to normal soon. Thanks to so many for your kind words.