I’ve been working over the last few days with a couple of relative newcomers to the on-demand application software space. One is bpm and the other webforms. Of course on-demand software isn’t anything new per-se and we all use it everyday. The Google search engine is, after all, an on-demand service.
However, my use of these two applications, and the need to get the two to work together, has caused me to take stock of my understanding of the space. I know this is going to sound dumb, but I was both surprised and slow to realise the significance of httpfox telling me about the POST requests being made each time I completed a field on my first hosted webform (which was embedded into another web page). It just hadn’t occurred to me that the data was going back to the form provider!
I guess this was because in my mind I was using form design and provisioning services not data management services. I didn’t want or need the form vendor to have the data – that needs to go to the bpm provider – but only temporarily, since the bpm service will route it to a persistence service.
So, I now have a few possible routes I can take. The first is download the form code (if that service is provided). This means I’m using a form design service. Since I’d not ever need to persist the form with the service this is something that I could use for gratis within my 3 form limit. But not much of a paradigm shift for software.
The second is to POST the data back to the form provider and then in turn POST to the bpm. However, this is going to be a bit tricky. The bpm service, whilst Atom based, doesn’t offer a documented REST api, and then there are the difficulties with authorisation that I fear haven’t really been worked through. And I’m not sure the webform vendor is geared to this.
The bpm service provides a simple field in which to paste html/javascript to create basic webforms (inline CSS etc) and has a webforms designer on its route map. But why? I want to use the best in breed services available to build out my processes, I don’t want a closely coupled integrated stack of ‘jack of all trades’. I want loose coupled, composite on-demand service based processes and service providers who are prepared to help me get there.
On-demand webforms:
Formdesk / FormLogix / FormSpring / Frevvo / Icebrrg / Wufoo / jotForm / Sidewalk / The Blue Form / The Form Assembly
On-demand bpm:
Cordys and here / Appian / RunMyProcess / Skemma / Lombardi / Intalio / ProcessMaker / Eccentex / Integrify / Pega /
