HP 3000 Manuals

HP DeskManager Customization

Sending and Receiving Forms 

Forms that are to be sent in HP Desk are normally installed for general
user access.  However, they can also be either MPE files (VFORM or VFAST
files), or HP Desk items (for example, items in the Work Area or Filing
Cabinet).

Forms are implemented by a special item type called a Form Package.  Such
packages are special cases of ordinary HP Desk packages and as such can
only contain a forms file plus one or more batch files.  HP Desk
specifically disallows the creation of other types of items while the
user is in a Forms Package.  The creation of a forms package can be
accomplished through the use of the CREATE, SENDFORM or ROUTEFORM
commands.

If a user receives a forms message and wishes to reply by filling in the
form, the REPLYFORM command should be used.

AcknowledgmentLevel 6 

By making use of a special feature of the SENDFORM and ROUTEFORM
commands, you can conduct surveys using pre-defined forms and then
collect the replies together for easy processing.

When a forms message has been created, the user may set an acknowledgment
level on it just as with any other message.  However, since this message
is a forms message, it is possible to use acknowledgment level 6.  This
then causes the Mailroom to deal with the forms message in a special way.

The Mailroom puts a forms reply header into the Pending Tray and attaches
a forms package to it.  The first part of this forms package will be the
original form itself.  As replies (generated by the recipients of the
message using the REPLYFORM command) arrive back in, HP Desk collects the
batch files from each reply and attaches them to the forms package in the
sender's Pending Tray.


            

Once all the replies have been received the forms package is transferred
to the sender's In Tray.  The message in the In Tray contains the
original forms file plus all the batch files that were sent in the
replies to the original message.  It is now possible to process each
batch file independently to get the data from them.

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation