10 ways AEM Forms is better than Google Forms – Part 2

… Continued from Part 1

6. Email Notifications

Email notifications at any step of the form intake process – not just after final submission, is a very powerful feature for any Forms Automation solution. AEM Adaptive Forms uses AEM Sling based SMTP mail integration to send notifications. Email recipients could be either explicit email fields within the form, programmatically extracted from form fields or pre-determined by the Form creator.

Google Forms provides some basic email notification features but at this time does not have as advanced features as AEM Adaptive Forms.

7. Advanced form routing & Workflows

Consider a HR Onboarding process which tracks an applicant from the interview process, background checks, employee onboarding, benefits registration and so on. In a typical organization, there are several players and departments involved as the applicant/ employee makes the onboarding journey. If you consider the amount of information that needs to be carried from one step to another – scaling this across an organization is a nightmare without having some sort of automation at work.

AEM Adaptive Forms, with it’s powerful workflow and user-authentication features in place is a game changer in this respect. Forms can be routed between parties securely via AEM Workflows. On top of that, the workflow steps can be put together by non-technical folks using simple drag and drop tasks, all from within the browser.

8. Integrations

Enterprise applications do not exist in silos. Most best-of- breed solutions involve applications connected to each other via API calls. In that sense AEM Forms is a modern application that uses OSGI and Webservices to integrate Form data with other applications.

For example, a lead generation AEM Form can post the data as easily to a CRM system or back end Oracle HR. In addition, secure systems can encrypt form fields in transit before posting to other systems – ensuring data privacy, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) rules and PII (personally identifiable information) sensitive data is securely stored and retrieved.

9. Data Privacy & Ownership

Security and Privacy are key to protecting user and company information in today’s world. Google Forms, by their own acknowledgement is not entirely secure by default. In fact Google advices that Form Creators post an explicit Terms & Conditions on all forms to prevent litigation. Data is typically stored in Google Cloud or Google Sheets without much flexibility.

As mentioned earlier, AEM Adaptive Forms when hosted on premise can store form data in secure systems. When Adobe Forms are hosted on Adobe Managed Services Cloud platform, you can encrypt form fields at the browser itself, ensuring that data is stored securely.

For organizations that are committed to Microsoft Azure Cloud, AMS on Azure can use Azure IDs for single sign on and form access.

10. Document of Record Generation

After submitting a form, your customers generally want to keep a record, in print or in document format, of the information they have filled in the form for their future reference. This is referred to as a Document of Record (DoR).

AEM Adaptive Forms can generate DoRs automatically from online form submissions. These DoRs can be persisted in PDF format or even in Adobe XDP format (less common).

In addtion, Forms can specify how the DOR can be generated – either sent via email or downloaded from Adobe’s Form Portal (a feature that is integrated with AEM Forms).

Together with Part-1 of this post, we discussed 10 powerful ways in which AEM Forms supports enterprise organizations. If you have any questions about how AEM Forms can be leveraged for your organization, do not hesitate to contact us!