Our next release of the Active Wizard will be 4.0, and it will mark the beginning of some big changes for the Active Wizard.  Our overall architecture direction is to move to a web services model based on OpenContent.  While this change is more of a back-end update that regular users won’t notice, it will have a big impact on the product’s flexibility in the overall architecture.

As part of the switch to OpenContent, we’re also adding Adobe Flex components to improve the overall look and usability of the application.  As part of this effort, we’ve developed a “lite” version of the Active Wizard.  Active Wizard Lite (AWLite) allows a user to fill out a form using the Adobe Flex interface.  Currently AWLite follows the streamline model of the Active Wizard – users are launched directly into the form, and after the form is filled out, it is submitted and the user receives a confirmation page.  The current iteration of AWLite is based on OpenContent’s Filesystem/Database services, so no Documentum instance is needed to run the form.  AWLite will support Documentum in the future, but for now, we wanted to keep AWLite as slim as possible.

We’re currently using AWLite in the D6.5 Upgrade Guide on our website.  If you’d like to see how AWLite works – check it out! Simply click the  “Download the D6.5 Upgrade Guide” link to launch AWLite.  As an added benefit for those of you who are planning a migration to D6.5, after completing the form you will receive TSG’s D6.5 upgrade whitepaper.

Here’s a screenshot of the Active Wizard Lite interface for the D6.5 upgrade guide:

Active Wizard Lite – Embedded Mode

We’ve recently completed a project for a leading university medical center where we implemented an Active Wizard form for Chemotherapy Notes/Orders.  As part of this project, we updated the wizard so that the Adobe Flex interface that runs Active Wizard Lite could be embedded into the full Active Wizard interface.  So, when a user is editing a form, the Adobe Flex version of Active Form is displayed:

This form had a number of fields that required rich text – namely the ability to enter superscript text to support formulas.  To enable this functionality, we added a WYSIWYG answer type.  Clicking the answer background launches the rich text editor:

Once the user is finished, the results are displayed on the form:

Overall, we’re very exited about the coming updates to Active Wizard 4.0.  If you have any comments or ideas for functionality we should include we’d love to hear them!