Workplace Forms Integrated with Workflow-Xpress on Domino

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 at 12:58PM
Adam Brown in Domino, Forms, IBM, Lotus, Software Development

I am just starting a project for a client to integrate IBM Workplace Forms with a Lotus Notes/Domino database. We have purchased a nice new IBM X-Series 346 server with plenty of memory & disk. I plan to install Linux as the host operating system and then utilise VMWare Server so that I can run up a few different installation options. At this point the first server will be a Windows Server 2003 Standard Edn.

The plan is to implement Workplace Forms Server Express onto a server running Domino. The Domino server will serve out the clients public web site where customers can fill in a Workplace Form (Loan application for example).

Once the Form has been filled in it would be submitted to the server  and saved as an attachment to a Lotus Notes document. I plan to parse the Workplace Form and then populate corresponding fields on the Notes document. Users within the clients Notes environment would then be notified that a client has submitted a form. They would be able to read the details parsed into the Notes document and if they have Workplace Forms Viewer installed they could open the actual form attached. If they don't have workplace Forms Viewer I thought I could add an option to launch the form in a browser via the Workplace Forms Server.

In a step based approach it will work as follows:

• The end-user fills in the form, using the Workplace Forms WebForm Server ( Translator ) or the Workplace Forms Viewer, and clicks the [Submit] button
• The data within the form -and- the form itself are posted into Domino using a J2EE servlet running on the Domino server
• The servlet parses the form, and extracts the data into a NSF.
• The servlet also stores the form as an attachment to the Notes document
• By integrating ISW's Workflow-Xpress with the NSF, the business-user receives an email notification, advising them of an update ( this is a Domino application trigger driven by Workflow-Xpress)
• They navigate to the relevant database, and view the data stored within the database schema
• They also choose to open the form by clicking on the attachment; alternatively, they click on a button which invokes the WebForm Server ( Translator ) and passes the form ( as an XFDL file )

and that is basically it.

So as I progress I will update here on.

Article originally appeared on Adam Brown - Collaboration Blueprint (http://www.collaborationblueprint.com.au/).