How ONLYOFFICE forms changed over the year: fields & settings, recipient roles, free library
In January 2022, we released the brand-new ONLYOFFICE forms (OFORMs). Curious to see how we further enhanced them? Read this blog post.
Brief intro
The first version of ONLYOFFICE forms was released on 18 January 2022 as a part of the version 7.0 update.
With ONLYOFFICE forms, you can automate your electronic document workflow by creating various kinds of model documents such as legal agreements, contracts, reports, admission forms, questionnaires, etc.
It’s possible to collaborate on forms in real time, share the ready ones and fill them out digitally.
OFORM & DOCXF
Since standard formats were not enough to bring all our ideas into life, we introduced our own.
DOCXF is a format developed by our team for creating form templates. It’s a file extension based on DOCX which allows building forms either from scratch or using an existing DOCX file.
OFORM is our native format for online ready-to-fill-out forms. It is an OOXML extension which is now used in all ONLYOFFICE solutions, including web, desktop, and mobile.
Fields and settings
Initially, we introduced the following basic fields for form creation: text field, combo box, drop-down list, check box, radio button, and image.
In the version 7.2, we added email address, phone number, and complex field. The latter allows you to combine several basic fields to build a custom one and create unique field presets that can be tailored for any task.
The latest update of the editors also brought new ready-to-use fields to create forms more quickly and request corresponding data from your counterparts:
- Date & Time with multiple display options,
- ZIP code,
- Credit Card.
Extended field settings available in ONLYOFFICE forms allow you to adjust the field properties to build the form exactly as you need it. For example, you are able to add tips and placeholders, allow multiline entry, specify characters limit, use tags to simplify form creation in the automatic mode, etc.
With the version 7.2, we added an ability to allow usage of any specific symbols and set the needed format: None, Digits, Letters, Arbitrary Mask, and Regular Expression.
Collaboration
What’s really great is that you can build forms together with your teammates. For example, you have to compose a sales agreement and need help form your colleagues from different departments. It’s exactly the case. You can create such a form all together in real time or switch to the Strict mode and work on your part privately showing your changes to other co-authors after saving only.
You can also leave comments and mentions, review and track changes, as well as communicate right in the document to discuss the creation process. Just use a built-in chat or plugins – Telegram for chatting, Jitsi and Rainbow for making audio/video calls.
Recipient roles for field filling
Starting from version 7.3, you are able to create and manage various recipient roles for field filling.
For example, you can create roles of legal advisor, seller and buyer in a sales agreement and set its own color for each role.
Then, you assign the created roles to each field to indicate which of them should be filled out by each participant.
This way, users will be able to visually identify which fields they should fill out depending on the role-matching colors.
In the future updates, we are going to extend this functionality by adding an ability to set recipient roles with restrictions as well as e-signatures. It means that, for example, only users with the corresponding role will be able to fill in the required information into your business agreement, while other participants will be not allowed to interact with the fields but only sign or approve the document.
Filling out & PDFs
When your form is ready, you can share it with other users choosing the corresponding sharing option in the file menu. Users with the granted permission are able to fill out the shared form online, locally or on their mobile devices.
Moreover, you can export your form to PDF to fill it out using any available PDF editor.
Free forms library
To give you something like an entry point and save your time, we created a form library with ready-to-use templates. At the moment of the first release, the library contained only several dozens documents in English.
Over the last year, we extended our library and divided the files into categories for more convenient navigation (such as Business, Healthcare, HR, Office, Sales, and others). For now, there are more than 1000 templates available in 7 different languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese.
You don’t need to register or install any additional software — just take the provided forms, fill them out online or download in the desired format.
Moreover, we integrated the OFORMs gallery into ONLYOFFICE Personal, a free online office suite for individual users.
Forms in integrations
ONLYOFFICE forms became available for integrated instances directly after the first release: Nextcloud, ownCloud, Alfresco, Confluence, Jira, Liferay, Redmine, Plone, HumHub, Chamilo, and Nuxeo.
Over the year, we also added the functionality for creating and filling out forms to our official Moodle plugin. Learn more
