What forms solutions does Lotus offer on Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
IBM has one core forms offering available on AWS:
Lotus Forms Turbo Developer AMI: A no charge AMI that can be used for development
purposes, proof of concepts, testing, training and sales demonstrations. Read the AWS Customer Agreement and relevant License Information for usage/restriction details.
We intend to offer a production ready Lotus Forms Turbo AMI later this year.
What does Lotus Forms Turbo AMI help me with?
Lotus Forms Turbo provides an out-of-the-box eForms solution to automate ad-hoc forms based processes, without IT involvement. Some of the scenarios where it can be used are:
Survey: Structured information from a group of respondents for scenarios like Market
survey, Employee satisfaction survey, Census, Site visitor survey, Service quality
survey and Instructor assessment.
Request for submission: An invitation to submit a proposal on a specific opportunity
like Request for proposal, Request for quote, Request for information.
Approval: Route a document for approval like: Vacation request, Change request,
Expense report, Request for transfer, Purchase request, Request for promotion.
Application: A set of documents submitted with intent to select one or more amongst
them in scenarios like Employment application, Grant application, Bid or proposal.
Notification: A means of delivering notification and recording information when a
business event occurs in scenarios like Court filing, Notice of separation, Change of address, Performance appraisal.
Transaction records/orders: A record of an agreement between parties usually involving
the exchange of value for scenarios like Receipt of payment, Employment contract, Purchase agreement, Non-disclosure, Land title and Record of employment.
Feedback/review: A process of disseminating and collaborating on information,
observations or opinions for scenarios like policy and procedure development, clinical
study, status report, technical note and trip report, meeting minutes.
For more information on features and benefits for authors, end users, administrators
and developers please see Lotus Forms features and benefits .
What capabilities does Lotus Forms Turbo include?
Lotus Forms Turbo includes a Web based forms composer, browser based forms viewer, a database to store forms and forms data, simple routing capabilities through url addressable forms and automated aggregation of forms data for reporting, analyzing and exporting data.
Do I need technical skills to develop forms in Lotus Forms Turbo?
No. Lotus Forms Turbo is designed to be used by line of business without IT involvement. LOB can create, save, send, submit forms and analyze submitted data.
What's new in Lotus Forms Turbo 3.5.1
Lotus Forms Turbo 3.5.1 includes a number key new features, including: Integration with
WebSphere Portal Server, improved design, dynamic sections, survey items,
pre-populating results from a remote server, improved export to Microsoft Excel and
CSV format and more. Learn
more about what's new.
What are the restrictions for forms developed in Lotus Forms Turbo?
Lotus Forms Turbo currently supports Web based single page forms. These forms do not support digital signatures capabilities.
If your scenario requires complex, multi-page / high precision forms with digital
signatures, use the Lotus Forms product. Lotus Forms is currently available through IBM’s passport advantage or via business partners only.
On which platforms is Lotus Forms Turbo Development AMI supported?
Lotus Forms Development AMI is currently only provided on Linux SLES 10 SP2. The AMI comes "as is".
How do I size my AWS infrastructure requirements?
As a general rule with AWS you can choose from a number of AMI Instance Types.
For Lotus Forms Turbo AMI the following instance types are applicable:
For single user development purposes you can use a Standard:Small Instance.
For test, production/live purposes you can use one of the following instance types:
Standard instances: Large and Extra Large
High-CPU Instances: High-CPU Medium Instance and High-CPU Extra Large Instance
To determine which Amazon EC2 Instance Type is applicable you will need to perform a sizing exercise to determine the CPU and the amount of RAM required for servicing your desired performance load. This will need to be matched with a relative Amazon EC2 Instance Type.
Can I cluster my Lotus Forms Turbo AMIs for performance/load balancing?
No, at this point, Lotus Forms Turbo AMIs can not be clustered.
Can I have a fail over scenario with Lotus Forms Turbo on AWS?
No. However, generally when you set up these AMI instances on AWS you choose AWS's Elastic Block Storage (EBS ) as the storage option. EBS provides a persistent store. In the event your live AWS instance fails you can start a new instance and reuse the existing EBS storage to bring your server up as it was at the time of failure. You site will be down from the time it fails to the time the new AMI starts and you reconfigure the AMI. This will be a number of minutes and dependent on your specific instance’s configuration.
Note: you might want to consider using AWS ElasticIP to keep DNS name consistent and more
user friendly. Find more information about Elastic IP Addresses on Amazon.
What demonstration resources are available?
There are a number of demos available online for Lotus Forms and Lotus Forms Turbo:
How do I access my Lotus Forms Turbo AMI from my Web browser?
After you've created a new instance, logged in to initialize it and completed any
post-install configuration, you can then access Forms Turbo AMI in your Web
browser at http://<AMI instance public DNS>:9080/turbo.
Can I have my corporate LDAP / User Directory used with Lotus Forms Turbo?
The Lotus Forms Turbo 3.5.1 product by default provides a basic file-based user directory out of the box, or, it can be integrated with an external LDAP directory. However, there are a few key options and considerations to take into account when using an LDAP directory in the AWS scenario.
As AWS is a cloud based offering, it’s not recommended to integrate your corporate user directory in real time, as this would otherwise give a significant impact to performance and reliability, especially as the link between AWS and your remote directory server would be reliant on the Internet, which cannot guarantee bandwidth and up time.
So there are two core options to consider:
Use Turbo's out of the box user directory and import your user data using Turbo's
embedded WebSphere® Application Server scripting tools. You will need to code/script
the mapping between your user directory (eg LDAP) and the one provided with the product.
Use a 3rd party supported LDAP server hosted on EC2, therefore reducing the
impact of internet bandwidth and reliability by linking to an in house user directory.
Consult the on-line document for Lotus Forms Turbo 3.5.1 on how to integrate an LDAP directory with Turbo.
How do I access the Linux console of my AMI instance?
The AMI instance is preconfigured to allow you to access the Linux console using a secure shell (SSH) and the private key you had to generate and specify at the time the instance was created. This allows you to open a secure console without having to know the root password of the instance. The boot sequence of the instance will present a set of YaST panels once you do log in to take you through license agreements and localization of the image, including changing the password for the root and virtuser user accounts.
If I suspect something is going wrong with my Forms AMI, how do I begin to debug the problem?
If you suspect it is a problem with Lotus Forms Turbo AMI, refer to the trouble shooting section of the Information Center.
We also recommend using the AWS forums to
see if your problem has already been discussed with others, and to solicit the help of
the AWS user community in solving your problem.
How do I monitor the Forms AMI to ensure I am not running out of capacity?
Use traditional Linux tools to determine if the instance has enough memory and disk
capacity. For Lotus Forms Turbo, since it is a Java-based product, you should also
employ traditional Java™ monitoring mechanisms, such as monitoring garbage collection activity using the verbosegc JVM option.
Where do I find more information on Lotus Forms Turbo?
