Introduction

To best understand the Form.io platform, and how you can use it to build your own applications, it is helpful to understand the major components of the Form.io system. While there are many detailed elements and features, the major components of the Form.io system are:

Component

Description

Projects are the main working areas within the Form.io Enterprise platform. They contain Forms, Resources, Submissions, Roles & Permissions among many other elements which reside all within an API endpoint.

Stages are sub-projects that allow the management of project based workflows between multiple environments and teams. These can be utilized for DEV - STAGE - PROD form management workflows, or to separate management of forms between different teams of users.

Teams allow multiple developers to collaborate on the same projects, and to manage the forms and resources between multiple stages within a project.

Resources are used to define an objects and data models within Form.io.

Forms are the primary interface within Form.io by allowing ad-hoc bespoke data collecting through the combination of fields and resources.

PDFs provide a way to upload existing PDF forms, and build webform overlays on top of them so that they can be consumed by Progressive Web Applications. It also provides a mechanism to download submissions as PDF's.

Submissions are the data records that are submitted by filling out a form.

Actions are executed when a form is submitted. Things like Save Submission, Email, Webhooks, and other integrations are configured as Actions attached to a form and are executed in sequential order.

Roles and Permissions

Roles and Permissions provide a way to configure your own user roles within a project, and then to assign those roles to a set of provided permissions attached to a Project, Forms, and Resources. This enables a granular way to control who should have access to submit forms, read submissions, view project information, among other permissions.

The Form Manager is an application that provides non-developers their own simplified portal used to manage bespoke forms, submission data, and the roles and permissions associated with those forms.

The FormView application allows for the launch of a single form to be submitted by end users. This is the application that is behind the "Launch" feature within the Form.io platform and enables both the submitting of single forms as well as the management of the submissions of that form via project Administrator.

Developer Portal Page

When a developer logs in to the Form.io platform, they arrive on their own individual Developer Portal Page. This page is the main page and has a growing amount of general content for the developer. Here you can create a new project, manage existing projects, as well as manage your TEAMs.

Customer Applications

Whenever you see the word Application used within this User Guide, it is referring to the Application that developers are building outside of Form.io.

Form.io major components are created within the Form.io system, and are ultimately used in customer Application implementations. It is important to distinguish a customer Application from the work being completing within Form.io.

When developers are working within Form.io to create major components for their customer Applications, we refer to that work as Projects.

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