Its be just over 6 months since my first blog on Forms
2.0 and I am excited to share the latest updates.
Decommission of Support for Forms 1.0
Support for forms 1.0 will be decommissioned in
the June 2025 update. So it’s time to
get planning for the move to 2.0 and its an easy update.
Enabling Forms 2.0
There are no migrations steps, as the Administrator simply
update the settings as below;
Navigate to Application > Settings
And from the dropdown menu
against Forms Version select Forms 2.0 and
Click Save and you are good to go! If
you have recently implemented there’s a good chance this will already be set to
2.0
Big News - Formatting styles are no longer limited
just to SmartView they now replicate back onto the form in the browser
This is a big step forward and our customers are
loving the new look!
How to set up the Formatting in SmartView
The below screenshot is the standard view of a data form in the browser prior to any formatting, pretty bland right!
Allow me to show you how we can enhance this form for
a more polished look……..
Step 1 - Log into SmartView
Navigate to the desired data form from the SmartView Panel
& double click on it to open the form in SmartView, the below screenshot is
the standard view pre-formatting
Step 2 – Apply Custom styles
To begin formatting from the FCCS toolbar ribbon you
will see a Formatting section as show above and below, From the “Apply” drop down menu, select Custom
Styles
And your Data form will remove any formatting and look
like this;
This is your chance to unleash your creativity!
Use all the excel formatting, yes even fonts to design
your data form with company branding etc., with exception to the numbers as they
take on the formatting from the user preferences, for example I have formatted
my form as per below;
Step 3 - don’t forget to save your masterpiece
Click Save 
From the formatting ribbon, to preserve
all your creative efforts.
Step 4 – View the form in the browser
Previously this formatting was only visible when
opening the form in SmartView, but now it saves back to the form, so if I go
back to my browser and open the form this is how it looks! I hope you agree this
looks pretty nice and a big improvement, well done Oracle!
Worth noting: If you have formula
columns which are blank the formatting doesn’t apply to that column so add some
text and it should format nicely!
Please vote for my Idea in Customer connect to add improvements
the formatting
An enhancement that would be super helpful would be
the ability to save headers or standard formatting for totals etc., so that when
you create a new form you could simply tick a box to apply the formatting style. If you have high volume of forms this would
be a big time saver, I have created an idea in Oracle Customer connect, please
vote if you think this would be a good additional feature.
https://community.oracle.com/customerconnect/discussion/844398/data-forms-2-0-standard-headers/p1?new=1
Happy formatting - may your forms be flawless!
Until next time ………
up to vote and raise the awareness for Oracle product
development to consider these ideas.
