Interactive Form Use 

There are many reasons for including forms in a Web Dynpro application. Most embedded forms are used for printing and archiving and therefore do not have to be made available in interactive form. However, the Web Dynpro framework still allows you to use embedded PDF forms interactively. Using a PDF as an input template for a Web Dynpro application can be especially useful when a user is familiar with the appearance of a form and, for reasons of recognition, you would like to also make this form available in the system. An example of this is a tax return form. A further use case for interactive forms relates to legal considerations. It may be necessary to store not only the data content of a form, but retain the form and the data together as a unit for future reference.

 

Releasing the Interactivity of a Form

In the default system settings, a UI element of the type InteractiveForm is non-interactive – that is, the checkbox of the enabled property is not checked. If you wish to use a form interactively, you must check the enabled property checkbox.

 Note that you must only check this checkbox if your application is to be used interactively. Selecting the checkbox means that the Active Components Framework (ACF) is used for rendering in the client (generally the browser of the user) and must therefore be installed. The ACF is installed centrally from SAP NetWeaver AS, normally automatically when a relevant application is first called. However, it is possible that a user may not have sufficient authorization for the local installation of the ACF-CAB files. In this case, the user cannot display the form. If a form us used without checking the enabled checkbox – that is, non-interactively – the ACF is not required for rendering.