FORMGATE sends the field values from a fill out form on a WWW server to a Lotus Notes database based on a Lotus Notes server. The filled out WWW forms appear as new unread documents in the Notes database where they can be viewed and processed using all known Notes features (e.g. macros, V4 agents, @MailSend)
FORMGATE consists of two programs:
The form page on the WWW server must have three additional hidden fields named:
Yes, there is such a page available. You can visit the demonstration form page showing the features and leave a message if you like.
I would consider it a stable software now.
Yes, but there are some restrictions so far:
With FORMGATE it's possible to
let users on the Web contribute to the organizations internal Notes world
regardless where this server is located on the Internet.
There is no need to run the Web and the Notes server on one machine. You can
have your Web server outside your firewall and the Notes server inside. People
from the Web can contribute to the internal Notes world.
FORMGATE may be made available after some still missing finishing touches on the documentation and parts of the implementation.
I'm doing this in my spare time now.
My personal interest in finishing this project slowed down
significantly 'cause Lotus
is now shipping with Notes R4.x Domino - a
full featured web server free of charge. This product incorporates similar
functionality like FORMGATEs form submission
features.
The major diffence is the fact that domino and the web publisher from Lotus
require you to run them on the same machine like the Notes server. If you
can't do this, then FORMGATE
might be your or your internet service providers (ISP) solution for
form submissions to Notes databases.
You can still send questions and suggestions regarding
FORMGATE over the gateway.
This might help to motivate me finishing the last things left to do. I'm
particular interested to hear from you what kind of feature(s) you'd like
to see build into the system that haven't been addressed by either
FORMGATE or any other product
out there in Cyberland.
However, there is a beta version 0.98a of
FORMGATE on my harddisk right
now. It runs on a Notes V4 server under SunOS 4.1.x or Solaris 2.x - that's
the fgserver module as a Notes Add-In server task.
The Web cgi-bin module called fgclient runs on SunOS 4.1.x,
Solaris 2.x, Linux, and SGI Unix Web servers.
If you are really interested in trying out one combination of this Web/Notes
server set mentioned above - send me an email and I see what I can do for
you...
It was also planned to have support for the file upload feature of the
new Netscape 2.x client. This would make it easier to submit complete
information (e.g. Word[Pro] text documents or spreadsheets from the external
users Web browser to the internal Notes database/document world.
Due to the availability of SSL HTTP servers like Apache it might be worth thinking about a secure module for FormGate that takes full advantage of those capabilities...we'll see.
I've been working on form upload features for FORMGATE recently. It will be possible to submit even more that one file to a Notes document using this gateway. Due to the fact that I have to change the internal protocol between client and server to make this possible it might still take some time until I have a working version supporting that feature.