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Fill out Government forms with Laserfiche Forms

posted on February 10, 2017

I spoke to Xiuhong Xiang about the possibility of adding some government forms to LF Forms. I would like to propose a way to do this and enable us to capture signatures natively in forms.

Let's take the I-9 Employement Verification Form that HR is required to file for employees.

As you can see the template for this form is very specific and the format and fields as well as the layout must not be changed. 

https://www.uscis.gov/faq-page/i-9-central-electronic-form-i-9#t17083n47014

 

This form is doable with heavily modified CSS to change what the form looks. My question is whether Laserfiche team could help us out by making this and some other government forms into "output templates". Meaning, we would have all the fields on the form as normal in classic theme, but when form is Signed and Submitted it would output into the i-9 form template instead of in native Laserfiche Form template which looks exactly like the form we filled out.

 

This would eliminate the need to use Workflow to "Fill out PDF" and solve the Signature problem as currently the only way to add signature would be to use a third party (like DocuSign or other) or print out the form and sign it.

 

Again the i-9 form is just an example but there are other government forms the community could benefit from.

 

Please let me know if this is possible and thank you for consideration!

 

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replied on February 12, 2017

Some clarification to what you said, no where does it say that the layout cannot be changed. It says specifically that it can be done "as long as the resulting form is legible; there is no change to the name, content, or sequence of the data elements and instructions; no additional data elements or language are inserted". So as long as you follow those rules, you should be able to recreate the form in Laserfiche Forms and gather a signature without having to transfer it to the PDF supplied by the government. The same goes for many other government forms.

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replied on February 13, 2017

Hi Blake, isn't the "or sequence of the data elements and instructions" pretty much same as layout?

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replied on February 13, 2017

The key is in the wording. The sequence is the order of the fields on the form. So you could still order them the same way.

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replied on February 13, 2017

I would be interested to check with a government official and a sample form if they would accept it. Have you or has anyone reached out to government official to ask this question?

 

The other question is if the electronic Signature (write, not type) is considered legally binding.

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replied on February 11, 2017 Show version history

Hi Lidija,

This sounds very possible. I do something similar with clients as well, because I present the user with a tabbed-layout form and save the data using a standard linear-layout (which is then sent to the user). The procedure is to create two forms; one for the user to see and a second for system to save with. On the "save to repository" task, just select the second form for the option: Save a form with current process data.

If I understand your requirements, the query about formatting and styling with CSS has been addressed here on Answers. Eric Anderson gave a great tutorial and Kris Hyman discovered a different solution was required in 10.2. After working with the helpful people at Laserfiche, during Empower, he's planning to create an updated tutorial for 10.2.

-Ben

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replied on February 13, 2017

Thanks Ben, but that doesn't seem to really solve the issue of the forms that have to be very specifically formatted. Wouldn't it be better if Laserfiche could implement BP Library for "output forms" - standard government documents?


This would take the coding out of equation and the code wouldn't break after upgrades.

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replied on February 13, 2017 Show version history

Hi Lidija,

Yes, it would be great for specific governtment forms.

What would be better for me would be to be able to drag'n'drop forms formatting for output forms. I'm in the UK (so US govt. forms would not be useful) and deal mainly with private sector (so every contract will require different formatting anyway).

Given I have access to technical skills, I'm happy for coding for now but this is a great a idea, given you've identified forms common to the US market.

Hopefuly more people will respond (hint hint) and LF will provide a solution for all of us!

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replied on February 13, 2017

Thanks Ben, I agree with the drag-n-drop formatting for the output forms so that it would be beneficial to other countries!

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