About CMS Forms

CMS Forms is a platform for creating digital web forms integrated into the government website. It allows you to create a modern, accessible, and mobile-friendly experience for citizens while supporting manual processes and readying yourself for digital transformation.

With CMS Forms you can:

• Create a modern experience for citizens
• Personalize forms and notifications
• Generate PDF and XML copies of completed forms
• Receive form submissions and attachments by email

With the support of your developers, you can also:

• Send the submitted data to another application through an API
• Connect forms to external data sources to bring information into a form

You’re not limited to ‘typical forms’ either. You can also create things like:

• Calculators and service navigators
• Knowledge checks, quizzes, and exams
• Contracts and agreements
• Licenses and permits
• Form letters and emails

In some cases, we’ll need to do something on the servers to change what buttons appear, where data is sent to, or how your form processes the data.

CMS Forms is a separate application from CMS Lite, but the two work together.

• Forms are built and managed in CMS Forms
• A form page is created in CMS Lite to embed the form
• Form testing and release is managed through CMS Lite, just like content pages

This means that you can:

• Test a revised form without affecting the one currently in use by the public
• Link to a form the same way you would a content page, preventing broken links
• Schedule release of the form for a specific date and time in the future
• Let the system handle the “look and feel”

CMS Forms is primarily intended for public-facing forms, so you currently cannot:

• Deploy forms on the intranet or other sites
• Use authentication services like BCeID or the BC Services Card
• Collect, store, and process the data directly in CMS Forms

We expect to remove these limitations as business rules and technology change.

Access to the CMS Forms platform is provided and managed at a ministry level.

• Learn why CMS Forms was built 
• Learn how it supports your digital transformation
• Assess your ministy's readiness to take advantage of CMS Forms
• Start the onboarding process

Once you're onboarded:

• Learn how to choose and manage users
• Get support for CMS forms
• Keep track of the latest enhancements and features 
• See what's coming down the road