CMS Forms basics

Last updated on November 22, 2024

This section provides an orientation or refresher to CMS Forms and Orbeon. It covers things like application screens, buttons, and controls. It also includes information on some functions and processes to provide context for making your own decisions around building and maintaining your forms.

"Orbeon Forms" or "CMS Forms"?

Throughout this manual you'll see references to "Orbeon" and "CMS Forms" and may be wondering why and which you should use.

Orbeon Forms is a commercially-supported open-source application for building, publishing and processing forms. It serves as the foundation for CMS Forms. When working with forms, you'll mostly be doing so in Orbeon, so we refer to it by name, and you can too. We'll also guide you to Orbeon's own documentation for additional details about functions and options.

CMS Forms refers to the broader implementation and service around form building. This includes things like:

  • Designing and maintaining custom architecture and high-availability infrastructure
  • Integrating and aligning forms with CMS Lite and the website
  • Establishing and standardizing technical and business practices around forms
  • Configuring system properties at government, ministry, and individual form levels
  • Providing in-house user, business and technical supports
  • Sponsoring the development of new features and enhancements in Orbeon

We refer to CMS Forms when we're talking about this larger perspective and functions or processes outside of Orbeon itself.

In this section: