A Closer Look at the Auto-Generate Method for the Print Version of Your Adaptive Form

Continuing our conversation on the different ways that Adobe Experience Manager can solve your print problem for your Adaptive Forms, I would like to take the time to focus on the Auto Generate Document of record feature first. This method is the fastest to implement and is the most restrictive in the level of customization available for the final print ready document.

The auto generate document of record can be used without any configurations to your system or any development time. From the properties of your Adaptive Form select the Generate Document of Record option from the form model tab and save your changes. This will flag to Adobe Experience Manager to look at the structure of your adaptive form and pull each of the element into the print version of your form. It will also turn on the Document of Record tab within the authoring tool for this specific Adaptive Form.

This tab allows the author to customize how the auto generated print version of the form will appear. There are not many options that are available for customization, but content creators are able to customize, the logo, the form title, the text for the header, the text for the disclaimer the font family for the print form and the accent color to be used.

Authors are also able to specify at the field level what items should appear in the auto generated print version. By default, every element will appear in the document. The system will look at the content hierarchy and recreate the same order for the print version. The position of the fields in the print version is dictated by the auto-generated template which in the default forces every element to a new line.

When editing the properties for a form element there is a section called Document of Record for each individual element. Here authors can specify details for the specific elements, mostly to exclude from the document of record but this varies based on the element type.

This methodology does allow you to create a print version of the Adaptive Form very quickly but is lacking in the style of the output. If there are no requirements for the print layout specifying the high-level customizations may be enough for your print requirement but often this is not the case. Next time we will look at the benefits of creating a custom document of record template to expand the customization of the auto-generate document of record functionality.