Last blog I told you how you could get a "Greenhouse" account that gives you access to a cloud-hosted build-without-coding environment for constructing and deploying data-centric IT solutions. The product is called IBM Forms Experience Builder (FEB), and I want to spend some time on this blog giving you a better sense of the solutions you can create.
The solution I'd like to cover is a bit more advanced than a "Hello, World" solution; maybe I'll do one of those in the next blog. But the first thing I wanted to be able to do was use my account to enable myself to share solution files with you over time. Every FEB solution has a body of code that represents it. You can export the serialization of any solution as a file so that it can be imported into another account or onto another FEB server. So, I wanted to create a FEB solution that allowed me to share FEB solution files with anyone. I created that "Simple File Sharer" solution and then used it to share the "Simple File Sharer" solution file. You can get the file here (requires Greenhouse account login).
Once you have the solution file, you can import it into your own FEB account within Greenhouse and then use it to share files, especially any sample FEB solutions.
The Simple File Sharer solution uses ordinary features in the form (user interface). I just dragged and dropped a table item, and then put a name, description and upload component into the table. I also dragged and dropped a textual label so I could provide some basic instructions for users of the solution.
The Simple File Sharer solution uses some more interesting FEB capabilities to implement behavioral features around the form user interface.
- I used the Access panel to indicate that only one user, yours truly, could create a new database record or update a database record.
- Often, once a user has used a Form to create a database record, subsequent visits to that Form should allow the user to update the record rather than creating a new record in the database. An example would be a vote or a survey response. You don't want the same person voting or answering the survey more than once. In my case, I wanted to restrict myself to one database record because I always want to update a single list of shared files, not create a new list of shared files each time I fill out the form. Regardless of your use case, you can do this by going to the Forms tab, clicking the properties of the form, going to the Advanced tab and then checking "Limit to single submission per Authenticated user".
- I used the Stages panel to add an Update stage to the solution so that database records can be updated after their initial creation.
- I used the Access panel to add a "Reader" role, and I assigned "all authenticated users" to that role. Then, in the Update stage, I gave only Read access to the Reader role. So, as soon as you do a Greenhouse account login, you can use the link I provided to read from the database record I created that includes the table of files that I've shared.
In conclusion, the Simple File Sharer solution may only allow me to create a record, but it still ends up demonstrating a number of FEB features that you would commonly use in solutions that allow multiple users to create and edit records. In the future, I'll share more solutions with you that highlight various FEB features that contribute to creating interesting solutions. Remember, it's not about just forms; it's really about the whole solution you can wrap around forms, including automatic database storage, access control, lightweight workflow stages, and even configuring web services-- all without coding. And that's what makes IBM Forms Experience Builder a platform-as-a-service capability that everyone from a line-of-business users up to an IT professional can appreciate!
