nTreePoint Web Forms - Considerations
The purpose of this document is to provide various issues that should be considered when evaluating online forms software and how nTreePoint Web Forms addresses these considerations. No product is perfect for every organization, but we try to provide a balance between ease-of-use, manageability, features, and technology so that nTreePoint Web Forms can help as many organizations as possible to empower their users to create and manage online forms and data.
Architecture
One of nTreePoint Web Forms' primary strengths is that it is an end-to-end solution. From the automatic generation of the form that users fill out all the way to the data store for form data, organizations do not need to fill in any holes in the form creating and data management process. Some other products will give you part of the solution, but not the full solution.
When developing online forms, regardless of the product used, the following steps are required (although not necessarily in this order):
- Form Design: This is where the user defines which fields will be part of the form, question layout, how many pages the form will span, etc.
- Data Validation: This is where the user creates the logic to define required fields, required formatting, rules and skip logic, etc.
- Data Storage: After data is collected and validated, it needs to be stored somewhere. This data store needs to be designed and developed using one or more technologies (relational databases, XML files, proprietary formats, etc.).
- Data Transfer: This is the process of moving the data from the form through the various application layers until it is in fixed storage, as well as getting data from fixed storage back into the form for editing (or into a separate read-only area).
- Security: This involves all the issues around who can fill out a form, who can edit data, who can view data, etc.
Many products provide the tools for one or more of these steps, but developers are needed to fill in the parts that are not offered. For example, non-technical users can create forms in products like Adobe Acrobat, but they will not have a data store nor the application logic to move the data in and out of that data store.
nTreePoint Web Forms provides the solution to every step in the process, even though users don't see how it happens or need to know how it happens. An additional benefit is that when users create forms, normalized data models are created within the database. This means that not only can the data be accessed easily using standard SQL for more advanced needs, but since the data is normalized, advanced queries can be run on the data without needing to know about a proprietary data format or without needing to convert the data to a different format first.
Client Software
With nTreePoint Web Forms, there is no need to install software on your users' desktops to create forms and manage data, or to fill out the forms themselves. By centralizing the application on a server running over the Web, the need to manage multiple client installations is eliminated. Users only need a Web browser on their desktops to be able to use all features of the product. Some software solutions require users to install software on their desktops before creating forms and managing data. Other solutions even require that users who are just filling out the form must install software on their desktops. This is not always particularly negative, as is the case with Adobe Acrobat, where the reader is free and quite ubiquitous, but in the case of solutions like Microsoft InfoPath, each user who needs to fill out the form must also have a copy of the software (which is NOT free).
Although the software itself runs on a Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 box, end users can use nTreePoint Web Forms from any platform, whether it be Windows, Mac, or Linux. The backend system is completely transparent to them.
Centralization
By providing your users with a single point of access for creating forms, managing data, and filling out forms, you provide them not only with consistent way to do so, you also provide administrators and support personnel a single application to manage and maintain. Additionally, since the application is run from a server instead of requiring the installation of software on multiple desktops, application maintenance and upgrades are handled at single point, significantly increasing the efficiency and reducing the complexity of running an online forms application for the entire organization.
Multiple Users
Since nTreePoint Web Forms runs from a server, multiple users can access the software, create and manage forms, and manage their form data from a single installation. Administrators can define different levels of permissions at the user or group level. Users can be given their own sections where they can manage their own forms, give different people access to their forms and data, and even create subsections that can be given to other people within their groups or departments.
Licensing
The licensing for nTreePoint Web Forms is based on a per-server model, not a per-user or per-form model. This means that your organization pays a single price for the nTreePoint license regardless of how many users are creating forms, how many users have access to the forms, how many times the forms are being filled out, or how many forms are created within the system. With many products that required special desktop software to create the forms, your organization must incur an additional cost for each new user that is using the software. With nTreePoint Web Forms, once the license is purchased, you can add users to the system and allow them to create their own forms without worrying about additional costs.
