Creating an e-mail questionnaire?? 1

[JayE]

Dear Sirs,

I am looking for a product which will enable me to create questionnaires containing check boxes and free-form fields for our customers/prospects to fill in to tell us what they think of our products and services.

Confidentially is important (ie. we are looking for direct person-to-person contact), so we want to be able to e-mail the forms to our clients/prospects for them to complete online and then return to us, also via e-mail. This way the form goes directly from the decision maker at our clients/prospects to the MD who will be reviewing the input. The ease of opening/completion and returning the form is of the essence - we want them to be able to click on a button or a hyperlink to return the form with no fuss whatsoever.

Can Adobe 5.0 do this? or is there another product in the Adobe range for this purpose?

Your prompt response would be appreciated, as my bosses are keen to complete this survey project within the next week !

Regards,
Jay Evans
Simply Drinks Ltd

 

[guava65]

Acrobat 5.0 is capable of doing this with ease.

What is important to remember is that you don't need to keep sending the form. All you have to do is send that form Data.

Here's a scenario I think your looking for:

- You post to the we or email a questionaire (in .PDF format)
- Client pulls it up and fills in the form
- Client presses the submit button
- You get the information (in .FDF format)
- You import the .FDF into the master Questionaire
- You print the data or save-as on your own system.

The submission can be done by placing a button on the form and making the button event email the form data to you or whom ever will be reviewing the material.

Another nice feature is that since you name the fields, you can make them as easy or cryptic as you'd like in order to thrwart pirates from stealing the data. You can also password the master questionaire so that only the priviledged few can open and import the data in a format that makes sense. This is definately not high security but you can make it difficult for the lookie-loos to make sense of your infommation.

I've got a good book that is simple to understand and will help you make fast progress. I don't have it with me but if you want I can post later with the name of the book with the ISBN number.

Good luck.

Aloha,
cg

 

[ajking]

would this work if the client only had acrobat reader 5.0?
I would also be interested in details of the book
tia

 

[guava65]

Yes, the end-user only requires Acrobat Reader 5.0 or at least the version of Acrobat that you have.

Book Information:

Title: Creating Adobe Acrobat Forms
Author: John Deubert
ISBN: 0-321-11221-0
Published by: Adobe Press

Good luck
Aloha,
cg

 

[JayE]

Hi,

This sounds like EXACTLY what we're looking for, provided it will work with all clients who have Adobe Acrobat Reader and the submit button works for all of our clients whatever e-mail software they use (most will use MS Outlook, but we can't be sure).

I will try and find the book you mention, or a local Adobe Acrobat expert who can help us get started with Acrobat forms (I've only ever opened up PDFs with the Reader software).

Regards,
Jay/UK

 

[jjatcal]

If I understand this correctly, you are saying that I can add a button to a PDF questionnaire (or I guess any type of document right, an application for example) that has forms/checkboxes, other controls, and the user will open it in PDF, fill in the form (checkboxes, textboxes, etc) and I can get it in a format that I can import?

Can I import the .FDF format into Access? When they hit submit, do I get that information via email?

Thanks.

 

[Murgle]

Unless I'm very much mistaken, mailForm and mailDoc are only supported in Reader 5.1 upwards - these methods will only work either if there has been no change to the form to be emailed, or if special save rights have been extended to reader.

I take it that the form will have changed, otherwise there would be no point in emailing it back to you, so you would need the special save rights - you would need to buy Adobe Document Server For Reader Extensions to add those rights.

The best way would be to submit via reader to a script on a web server.

Ahhhhh, I see you have a machine that goes Bing!

 

[tgreer]

jjatcal,

With Acrobat Forms (PDFs created with Acrobat, with form fields, javascripts, etc, and a submit button) served over the web:

1) The client needs browser/Acrobat Reader.

2) The Form author can choose to have the form data submitted as FDF, or HTML, plus some other choices.

3) The web developer writes code to process the form submittal, just like with HTML forms, and can do with that data what they like, including authoring an Access table.



Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com