Forms and Drupal

Earlier this week, members of University Relations and ITS held a “Forms Forum.” Staff from several departments came together to discuss the plethora of forms that exist on their current websites. Our goal: to gain a better understanding of user needs and talk about future solutions with the implementation of Drupal. Following are notes from the meeting that may be useful to the rest of campus as well.

Regarding Forms

  • As departmental sites are migrated into Drupal beginning in early July, solutions for unique issues will be solved on a case-by-case basis.
  • In a few cases, iframes can be utilized as a band-aid solution until tailored solutions can be developed after October 1.
  • When a form is needed to collect information without connecting to another system or database, Form Assembly is recommended.
  • Cosign can be used to authenticate UMIDs, but not through Form Assembly.
  • ImageNow forms are available through AIMS, but these require a Java applet.
  • Departments that need forms to connect to databases should work with ITS to explore custom web applications. While these applications can’t be developed during the transition to Drupal, ITS can help explore other solutions.
  • Web applications should be built using CakePHP in order to keep things consistent across departments. CakePHP can be injected into pages in Drupal and will be stylized as determined by the CSS.

Resources

June 14, 2013 Comments Off on Forms and Drupal , ,