Create More Dynamic User Interfaces with Panels

Rob Vignerot

For today’s post, I’m going to continue on our theme of making our forms more dynamic.  However, before I do, I wanted to comment about the release date.  A few of you have asked about when 9.1 will be released.  Bear with us for a bit.  We’ll be making an announcement soon.   However, I will say we are far along in testing, are on 9.1 internally, and have a number of reference sites actively using 9.1 already.

 

A frequently asked question from new customers or form designers is about ways to create collapsible sections in forms.  It has always been very easy to dynamically hide and show sections of forms, but this has always resulted in unsightly gaps.  Efforts to work around this issue end up making the form design much more complex, difficult to maintain, and harder to upgrade.

 

Not anymore.  Metastorm 9.1 will be introducing a new Panel control for forms.  Panels allow process designers to easily group controls that can be hidden and shown with a single rule using our standard “Visibility Depends On” property.  What makes this special is that panels can be docked within forms or other panels.  By using a combination of this docking and visibility, the form designer can easily control the behaviour of the form as sections are hidden or shown.

 

 Here is a sample of what you can achieve using this powerful new feature.

 

Just another way that Metastorm BPM 9.1 is making it easier to create forms that meet your user communities demanding needs.  Keep watching this space to learn more...