Modern Forms vs. Legacy Forms

Modern forms, introduced with SBM 11.1, use technologies such as HTML5 and .css properties to achieve greater stability in layout and less reliance on scripting overall. Starting with release 5.3, SSM uses modern forms, which make it possible to offer these advanced features:

• Responsive Forms

  Responsive forms enable the layout to adjust to the screen size by wrapping rows to new lines as needed. For smaller screen sizes like tablets and mobile phones, responsive forms eliminate the need to scroll horizontally to view the contents of the form. All scrolling is vertical.

• Required Fields Control

  The Required Fields control appears next to the Actions menu, and helps users easily identify and satisfy all the required fields on a form. This control displays the total number of required fields on the form and maintains a running count of empty required fields that remain as users begin to enter data.

• Expand Control

  The Expand control appears next to the Actions menu, and enables users to navigate to a section and expand it, while collapsing all other sections. Users can also expand all sections on the form.

• Restricted Display of Transition Buttons

  The form header displays up to three primary transition buttons that represent the usual path through the workflow. The rest of the transitions appear in the Other drop-down list to reduce the clutter on the page, while the item actions appear in the standard SBM Actions menu.

Any forms that you created based on legacy SSM forms will continue to be supported; however, you will not be able to use the advanced features mentioned above.

To convert your forms to modern forms, do the following:

1. Make sure the Enable HTML5 features check box is selected in the Form Options tab of the SBM Composer Options dialog box.
2. Create a new form based on your existing form, and make sure the Legacy mode check box is cleared.
3. Validate the process app and check for form errors.