TeleForm is a complete software suite that interprets forms and documents from scanner, Fax Server, email or the Internet and convert the Alpha/Numeric Hand-print (ICR), Machine Printed Text (OCR), Shaded Circles/Squares (OMR) and Bar Codes to all Industry Standard Databases.
TeleForm’s Form Designer, is the application where you define the visual layout, field attributes, validations and your data export requirements. While the Forms Designer looks easy enough, many clients ask us to build their forms for them to speed the design process and to ensure accuracy – for a fixed fee.
If the design process is done right, the form when printed will often look good on paper, but not capture the data you’re looking for – and isn’t that why you use or are thinking of using TeleForm? Success or failure of your scanning project starts in the Form Designer. A good eye toward aesthetics and readability certainly make the form pleasing to the eye, however that’s only half the battle. Often end-users overlook the first decision in the Designer module, which is which form type should you use to process the forms … Traditional Forms (this is the old method -but still works fine – although a bit clunky), VersiForms (we like this one), and Existing Forms (when the paper has already been printed and distributed to your form fillers). Actually before the decision comes in to play you’ve got to decide if you want to process a Form, a Document or a Package. Don’t worry too much about that decision … we’ll cover it in another Blog later.
data is easy once you’ve got the hang of it, but each field type has many (and I mean many) property setting that ensure the data is captured the way you want. Always test – test – test your forms in a controlled setting to ensure you’ve got it right. We always test our forms using Non-Form Data Entry within Verifier before we even print anything (we like to save paper too!). Performing this test first confirms how the data presents in the export you’ve defined.
comb, OMR, ICR, bar code, single & multiple choice, image & capture zone and others – you gotta get it right or look out. You’ll also want to ensure you’ve specified the field order, tabbing order, field naming convention, field types, field lengths, recognition set-ups, validations, page identification, recognition enhancements, data export and more. We’ve been building TeleForm forms for years and choosing the ideal field type is instinctual for us, so much so that we can build it fast so that it’ll work the way you want – probably for less than you could do it yourself.
Here's a few tips if you're going to build the forms yourself
- Fingerprint every page of your form to make it identifiable to TeleForm
- Use logos, lines, boxes to help with page identification and field registration.
- Use unique form numbers to help differentiate pages.
- Use sequential page numbering for page linking
- Move that form id where it’s most visually pleasing
