About Form Templates

Form Templates define how forms are displayed when a user logs in to Aptify and opens a new or existing record from a particular service. The appearance and order of fields and tabs on a form are defined by the template specified for the user. Templates may be global (shared by all users and groups who have permissions on a template) or may be specific to a group of end users or an individual end user.

All forms in Aptify fall into one of three categories:

• Generated Forms: Entity forms that were created automatically by the Aptify Baseline Form Template Generator. The form template for the Cultures service is an example of generated Form Template.
• Forms Created within Aptify: These forms are created by a developer using the Aptify system. In some cases, these forms begin as generated forms but are then modified as necessary to add additional functionality (such as a Topic Codes control) to a form. In other cases, a developer creates a blank template with tabs and uses the Visual Designer to place fields on the form. The form template for the Companies service is an example of a Form Template created in Aptify.
• Viewer Forms: These are forms that are designed entirely by a developer within Visual Studio .NET. These forms specify a Viewer plug-in at the entity level. Entities that have a Viewer plug-in do not use the Form Templates service, and administrators cannot edit the form within Aptify. The form for the Archive Runs service is an example of a Viewer form.

Administrators and users can modify the form appearance for Generated and Modified Form Templates. A Viewer Form can only be modified in its source code. Therefore, this topic deals with Generated and Modified Forms only.

This topic covers the following sub-topics:

• About the Baseline Form Template Generator
• About the Form Template Services
• About the Form Template Hierarchy