Orbeon Forms 2021.1.4 PE

We just published the Orbeon Forms 2021.1.4 PE maintenance release!

For details, see the release notes.

You can download the latest version of Orbeon Forms from the downloads page.

We hope you enjoy this release!

Quickly navigate to fields in large forms

When editing a form in Form Builder, you might want to make a change to a certain field, but, with large forms, just locating the field in the form might turn out to be more time consuming than you'd like it to be. If you know the label for the field you're looking for, and all the sections are opened in Form Builder, you can use your browser's search feature (ctrl-f or cmd-f). But if you only know the field's name, for instance because you saw it referenced in a formula, or you keep many sections closed, the browser's search won't help.

For this, Orbeon Forms 2021.1 introduces a new feature: Search Controls, which you access with keyboard the shortcut ctrl-j on Windows, Linux, or ChromeOS, and cmd-j on macOS or iPadOS. After you select a field from the dropdown, the dialog will close, the browser will scroll up or down to the field you selected, and if the field was in a closed section, then Form Builder will open that section.

You can also check the Open Settings Dialog checkbox if in addition to navigating to the field you'd like Form Builder to directly open the Control Settings dialog for that field. If opening the Control Settings dialog is what you do every time you navigate to a field, you can check that box, it will stay checked, and will save you from having to do an additional click every time you navigate to a field.

For more on this feature, see Quick control search in the documentation.

Orbeon Forms 2021.1.3 PE

We just released the Orbeon Forms 2021.1.3 PE maintenance release!

For details, see the release notes.

You can download the latest version of Orbeon Forms from the downloads page.

We hope you enjoy this release!

Improvements to variables in formulas

An important feature of Orbeon Forms are formulas. They allow you, as if the case in spreadsheets, to perform calculations of values and much more.

Some formulas can refer to the current value of form controls using a variable notation, with a dollar sign followed by the name of the control. So if you have a form control called price, you can refer to its value in a formula with $price.

However, until Orbeon Forms 2021.1 included, this variable notation didn’t work everywhere. You could use it for:

• Validation Constraints
• Visibility, Read-Only, Initial Values, and Calculated Values

The good news is that Orbeon Forms 2022.1 will feature enhanced support for variables in formulas. Specifically, variables will be supported in the following places:

• Repeated Sections and Grids
  • Minimum Number of Repetitions
  • Maximum Number of Repetitions
  • Freeze Repetitions
• Control Settings Templates
  • Label
  • Hint
  • Help Message
  • Explanatory Text
• Number
  • Prefix
  • Suffix
• Service Response
  • Source of control value
  • Source of choices, including label, value, and hint
• Dynamic Dropdown and Dynamic Dropdown with Search
  • Resource URL

For example, assuming controls named state and city, a zip Dynamic Dropdown Resource URL might be expressed as:

/service/zips?state-abbreviation={$state}&city={$city}

This, in fact, was a top request for enhancement from Orbeon Forms users!

Variables in the Resource URL

Note that, as with other uses of variables, if you rename a form control, dependent formulas are automatically updated as well. For example rename state to us-state and the expression is automatically updated to:

/service/zips?state-abbreviation={$us-state}&city={$city}

We hope you will enjoy this improvement to Orbeon Forms in Orbeon Forms 2022.1!

Orbeon Forms 2021.1.2 PE

We just released the Orbeon Forms 2021.1.2 PE maintenance release!

For details, see the release notes.

You can download the latest version of Orbeon Forms from the downloads page.

We hope you enjoy this release!

Orbeon Forms 2021.1.1 PE

We just released the Orbeon Forms 2021.1.1 PE maintenance release!

For details, see the release notes.

You can download the latest version of Orbeon Forms from the downloads page.

We hope you enjoy this release!

Orbeon Forms 2021.1

Today we released Orbeon Forms 2021.1 PE and Orbeon Forms 2021.1 CE!

This release includes improvements to Form Builder and Form Runner, including the ability to test PDFs, to export and import forms in Excel and XML formats, and much more.

For details, see the complete release notes.

You can download the latest version of Orbeon Forms from the downloads page.

We hope you enjoy this release!