Adobe LiveCycle Designer
part of
I downloaded the trial version of Adobe Acrobat Professional 9 in order to try out Adobe LiveCycle Designer to create an interactive online form. I had filled one in previously and had wondered how it was done as it looked extremely professional and was very easy to fill in.
On opening LiveCycle you can either create a blank form from scratch or select a template from the Wizard. There are a range of templates from purchase order forms and customer satisfaction surveys to HR forms such as personal leave request forms. Part of the wizard asks you for your company details and logo so it automatically personalises the template in seconds which is really handy.
I however decided to brave it and start my form from scratch. There is a handy dotted grid on the on screen form which makes it really easy to make sure everything is lined up and central. After putting my title in a text box I started to experiment with the different tools available.
There is a great range of interactive tools such as a check box, drop down selection list, numeric fields, table forms and text fields. These are all great ways to make the form more interactive and interesting for the user and are fully formed so all you have to do is change the text in the question box.
In the custom tool section you can choose from more specialist items such as a countries drop down list (with all countries filled in for you!!)
All buttons are simply dragged from the right hand menu and dropped where you want them on your form. You can resize them easily to the size and shape you like.
When you have finished the form you can add an ‘email submit’ button which is linked to your email address so that when the form filler clicks it, it will send their response to you. There is also a ‘print form’ button so that the form filler can print a copy for their records.
Below is my finished form ready to distribute.
Once you have finished your form and you are happy with it you can distribute it. You can either distribute it automatically to a mailing list you supply or you can simply save it as a PDF and attach it to an email manually (or print and send it but that takes away the interactive element!)
When the person who has received your form clicks to submit it they will be asked for their name and email address so that you can tell who has responded. There is an option to have responses collected in your inbox or alternatively you can collect them in the ‘responses’ file.
The responses file is created automatically when you distribute your form and has several elements to it. From the responses file you can:
- Check for new responses
- Filter responses to different criteria
- Export info into a spreadsheet file
- Archive responses
- Add new responses
This is a handy way to keep track of all your responses and allows you to collate the information received appropriately.
I found this software really easy to use, if you can use Microsoft Office programs or Photoshop you won’t have any issues using it. It took the same amount of time (if not less) to create the form than it would on Microsoft Word and there is none of the spacing and alignment issues you can have with creating forms in this way.
The form I created was a feedback questionnaire about our new user guides which I emailed to our members. We had a better response than normal which I think must be at least partly due to the interactive element. The interactive PDF forms don’t feel like a hassle to fill in so people are more likely to give it a go and the ‘email submit’ button means they don’t even have to bother saving it or attaching it to an email! As mentioned there is no need to delete previous information or change spacing in tables etc. You can simply click or type in the appropriate box and the form stays the same size and shape!
The finished form looks extremely professional and I definitely think that it is a program worth looking into if you need to create forms or questionnaires at any time.
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