At the IBM Digital Experience Conference, Marty Lechleider and Dave Hogan talked about how Blue Cross Blue Shield Tennesee is using IBM Forms Experience Builder (FEB) to create apps in IBM Digital Experience. Marty started with an overview of what’s new in FEB.
FEB provides an easy way to build data entry forms using drag and drop, easy configuration, multi-page forms, etc. Rules can be included to guide a user through a multi-page form, which is very wizard-like. Rules can also be used to make dynamic forms that can change based on the data needed for the form. This allows business users to create and manage their own forms (apps) and work collaboratively with others.
FEB is a complete web app running on WebSphere and DB2, so it is fairly simple to install and set up. FEB can be called from a number of sites, so one instance can serve many users. Developers can customize and extend FEB with HTML/JS/CSS and REST/Web Service integration.
A new feature in FEB is settings to enable dynamic rendering for various device sizes. Rules can also be used to tailor a form for specific devices. Another new feature is the ability to fill in PDFs based on data entered via a web form. The Service Catalog makes it easier to map forms to common or custom services.
Dave Hogan from Blue Shield Blue Cross Tennessee then took over and talked about how they use FEB to build applications for their company. The application serves as a Kiosk running on an iPad in their brick-and-mortar store in Nashville. The form application provides both English and Spanish options.
By using FEB, BCBST was able to get the store application in a very quick time frame that met marketing’s goal. The total time for the application took only three weeks to develop and put into production.
FEB includes built-in reporting which makes it a good end-to-end solution for an application that collects data and needs to display the results quickly.
In addition to the store application, Dave is using FEB for polls on their intranet. They are also looking at other uses of FEB for building mobile applications quickly.
