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We tested electronic forms products from Delrina, Lotus, JetForm, Microsoft and Novell, testing crucial features such as database and workflow support, electronic mail integration, printing and forms designer capabilities.
Delrina's FormFlow provides the most flexibility and functionality out of the box. It connects to the most mail systems, provides filler support for multiple platforms (including fax) and offers excellent database support. JetForm's forms management capabilities are certainly enticing, but Delrina was a notch above in all other areas.
Delrina's FormFlow 1.1
Delrina's FormFlow has the most robust designer module. It also has the most comprehensive sending options, even supporting form compression. Combine that with support for a broad range of database formats, mail systems and client platforms, and Delrina's FormFlow stands above the crowd. We would like to see more forms management capabilities, however.
Superb Access Delrina's FormFlow offers two ways to access form functionality: the traditional forms designer-comparable to offerings from Lotus, Novell and JetForm-and using Visual Basic or C++ to harness FormFlow's power-comparable to what Microsoft does, but Delrina's C++ support does Microsoft one better. Delrina's FormFlow Software Development Kit (SDK) lets you use more than 300 external calls, and not only lets you connect to any of the mail systems FormFlow supports but also to those it doesn't directly support. The SDK also includes access to fax services.
The filler module is available on Windows, DOS and Unix platforms. In fact, Delrina is the only vendor shipping a Unix filler module.
Form Sending Flexibility FormFlow supports the widest variety of mail platforms including MAPI, VIM, GroupWise 4.0 and Novell's MHS. It was the only product to provide direct MHS support. Microsoft Mail integration was a step above the attachment method Lotus and JetForm products use. When we read the mail message, FormFlow presented a custom form that let us launch the filler module and access the form. However, this did make form viewing a two-step process, whereas Novell Informs and Microsoft Electronic Forms let us view the form by simply reading the mail message.
All the products have some degree of support for sending forms with data (embedding) or just the data (linking), but FormFlow had the most granular sending options for each form, so we were able to exercise more...