AEM forms rule editor simplifies authoring of business rules in dynamic forms

Do you ever won­der in a form why you see a field for spouse name when the mar­i­tal sta­tus you spec­i­fied is sin­gle, or get val­i­da­tion errors only at the end when sub­mit­ting a form, or hav­ing to man­u­al­ly com­pute your total fam­i­ly income? Shouldn’t the form be intel­li­gent enough to fig­ure out these things based on your inputs?

One of the key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors of any dig­i­tal form trans­ac­tion is its con­ver­sion rate, which cor­re­sponds to the rate of form sub­mis­sions. Intel­li­gent and sim­pli­fied form fill­ing expe­ri­ences, among oth­er fac­tors, sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tribute to increased cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and high­er con­ver­sions. As forms tech­nolo­gies are evolv­ing, cus­tomers expect faster turn­around time when fill­ing forms. On the oth­er hand, orga­ni­za­tions strive for greater accu­ra­cy and check for busi­ness val­i­da­tions when cap­tur­ing data.

Cre­at­ing dynam­ic forms with busi­ness log­ic and that adapt to user inputs is a step in the direc­tion that can help busi­ness­es opti­mize their form fill­ing expe­ri­ences and meet con­ver­sion goals.

Adobe Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er 6.1 forms fea­ture pack 1 intro­duces rule edi­tor that empow­ers both busi­ness users and devel­op­ers to build com­plex log­ic as rules in adap­tive forms. These rules are defined to trig­ger actions on form objects and the form itself by eval­u­at­ing con­di­tions based on user inputs. The rules make adap­tive forms dynam­ic result­ing in sim­pli­fied and enhanced form fill­ing expe­ri­ences.

Inter­est­ing enough? Let’s dig a lit­tle in to the salient fea­tures of AEM forms rule edi­tor.

Variety of actions to make forms truly dynamic

In rule edi­tor, you can write rules to dynam­i­cal­ly per­form var­i­ous actions on form objects and the form, includ­ing:

• Show or hide objects.
• Enable or dis­able objects.
• Set val­ue of objects and object prop­er­ties.
• Invokes a web ser­vice to per­form an oper­a­tion.
• Clear the val­ue of an object.
• Set focus to an object.
• Save, sub­mit, reset, and val­i­date the form.
• Add or remove instances of repeat­able pan­el and table row.

In addi­tion, you can write com­plex rules that include mul­ti­ple con­di­tion and action state­ments using AND or OR oper­a­tors. You can also use built-in func­tions and write math­e­mat­i­cal expres­sions in rules to com­pute val­ues and assign them to form objects.

Intuitive user interface to write rules effortlessly

Rule edi­tor is for every­one, whether you are a busi­ness user or a devel­op­er. It pro­vides two modes — visu­al edi­tor and code edi­tor — to help you cre­ate rules.

AEM froms visual editor

The visu­al edi­tor mode of rule edi­tor empow­ers busi­ness users to write rules them­selves. It reduces their depen­den­cy on devel­op­ers to write code for them to add dynam­ic behav­ior to forms. The visu­al edi­tor is sim­ple yet pow­er­ful inter­face that allows busi­ness users to sim­ply drag-drop form objects and select oper­a­tors to quick­ly write com­plex rules. In addi­tion, rule edi­tor auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­ates JavaScript code for rules writ­ten in the visu­al edi­tor. You can switch from visu­al to code edi­tor to view the gen­er­at­ed code.

The fol­low­ing dis­plays a rule in the visu­al edi­tor to show the Spouse Salary field only when the val­ue spec­i­fied in the Mar­i­tal Sta­tus field is Mar­ried.

AEM forms code editor

Devel­op­ers who are pro­fi­cient and com­fort­able with writ­ing JavaScript code can take advan­tage of the code edi­tor mode to write rules. In this mode, you can write new rules or mod­i­fy exist­ing rules in the code edi­tor.

The fol­low­ing shows the auto-gen­er­at­ed code for the rule cre­at­ed in visu­al edi­tor shown above.

Easy management of rules to bring peace of mind

Rule edi­tor pro­vides an inter­face where you can view rules and per­form actions like cre­ate new rules and view, sort, delete, and edit exist­ing rules.

Backward compatibility to preserve your existing scripts

If you are an exist­ing AEM forms cus­tomer and plan­ning to upgrade to AEM 6.1 forms fea­ture pack 1, you must be won­der­ing what will hap­pen to your exist­ing scripts post upgrade. Well, there is good news!

All scripts cre­at­ed in exist­ing AEM forms ver­sion will be retained in the new rule edi­tor when you upgrade. You can view and mod­i­fy them in the code edi­tor. Note that the Scripts tab you see in pre­vi­ous  ver­sions is replaced by the AEM forms rule edi­tor in fea­ture pack 1.

I hope you are enthused by now to lay your hand on the cool new rule edi­tor and geared up to cre­ate dynam­ic and delight­ful expe­ri­ences for your form users. To get start­ed with using rule edi­tor, see Using Rule Edi­tor Help.

Here’s wish­ing your cus­tomers a delight­ful form fill­ing expe­ri­ence!