Display Form Activity

Description:

Displays a form in the client application.

Inheritance Hierarchy:

System.Object
  System.Activities.Activity
    System.Activities.NativeActivity
      Geocortex.Workflow.Activities.ExternalActivityBase
        Geocortex.Workflow.Activities.DiplayForm

Function:

The Display Form activity is a powerful way to gather multiple inputs of various types from the user all in one step. This activity provides access to Form Designer where you can create complex forms collecting multiple pieces of information that can be passed to subsequent activities.

In a Workflow:

A form could be used, for example, within a 311 incident reporting workflow. You could create a form that would collect all the details about the incident such as the incident type, the incident details, as well as the name, email, and phone number of the person reporting the incident. All this information could then be used by an activity that would record that information into a database.

Properties:

Name Description

In Arguments

Input Geometry

The geometry that will be used to filter the Query Task (of ComboBox and ListBox). Filter by geometry must be specified in the Form Item.

Region Name

Gets or sets the name of the region where the form should be placed. This argument is only valid for viewer technologies that implement the concept of regions, such as the Geocortex Viewer for Silverlight. Instead, you can use the WorkflowContainerName property.

Workflow Container Name

The name of the workflow container where the visual output of the activity displays.

Use one of the HTML5 Viewer's predefined workflow containers or create a custom container. For more information, see Workflow Containers.

Misc

Display Name

DisplayForm

You can change the name of an activity to one that describes what it does. A descriptive name can make a workflow easier to interpret and maintain.

External Id

An activity handler within a client can reference this particular activity using this external identifier.

Out Arguments

Button Result Value

The text output of the button that the user clicked on the form.

Form Results

All the results for the form items that have an argument name specified.

Other Properties

Design Form

Click to open Form Designer where you can create or edit a form.

Form Preview

In Form Designer, a dynamic preview of the form as you create it.

Buttons

Opens the Button Editor dialog where you add or remove buttons to display on the form.

Input Data

The ID of the Form Item. A collection of DataItems that will populate the Form Item when the form loads.

Runtime Modifications to Forms:

From Essentials 3.9, the Display Form activity contains a new child sequence activity that provides access to the form's object model. This access makes it possible to change the form at runtime. Form Designer usually creates static definitions of forms. However, you often need to modify a form as it runs using values from a workflow, for example, when a workflow obtains a text value at runtime. To present a form that contains that runtime text value you then need to modify your form definition at execution, for example, to add a specific URL or token to a URL as the form executes.

The RuntimeModifications sequence contains a local variable called form that is populated with the live Geocortex.Forms.Client.FormDefinition object. The live object represents the form that is about to be displayed in the client application. You can use activities such as Assign to manipulate any aspect of the form and the items it contains.

The RuntimeModifications sequence does not support client or external activities. If you add a client activity, such as Alert or Run External Command, it generates a validation error.

To modify a form at runtime:

  1. Expand the RuntimeModifications sequence if it is not already expanded.

  2. Click the Imports tab and verify that your workflow imports the Geocortex.Forms.Client.Items namespace.

    If it does not, select the Geocortex.Forms.Client.Items namespace from the drop down list.

  3. Drag an Assign activity from the Activities panel into the sequence.

  4. Configure the To argument of the Assign activity to manipulate a particular item in the form.

    You can use the FormDefinition.Find method to access individual form items by their unique ID. Each form item type has specific properties that can be defined. See the list below for sample, commonly-used properties.

  5. Configure the Value argument of the Assign activity to apply a specific runtime value to the object specified by To.

Commonly Used Properties for Built-in Form Items:

Geocortex.Forms.Client.Items Namespace has a complete list of form items with links to the documentation for each item.

FormDefinition

AutoCompleteBoxFormItem

CheckBoxFormItem

ComboBoxFormItem

ContainerFormItem (Group)

FilePickerFormItem

DatePickerFormItem

GroupBoxFormItem

HyperlinkFormItem

ImageFormItem

ListBoxFormItem

MarkdownFormItem

RadioButtonFormItem

TextAreaFormItem

TextBoxFormItem

TimePickerFormItem

Version Information:

Supported from: Geocortex Essentials 3.4, Geocortex Viewer for Silverlight 1.0, Geocortex Viewer for HTML5 1.0.