Versitech Limited

e-Form is an end-to-end solution that provides a convenient and secure way for form issuers and users to handle application forms electronically. Forms are downloaded and filled in using the e-Form Filler. Completed forms are submitted back to the issuers as XML (eXtensible Markup Language) document for effective processing.

The form layout is defined by an underlying PDF (Portable Document Format) document. On top of this layout, input elements, such as text-fields and pull-down lists, are added onto the e-Form for users to enter information. In addition, it allows users to digitally sign and encrypt the completed forms using their digital certificates. The basic concern of authenticity, integrity, confidentiality and non-repudiation of electronic data exchange are addressed by employing PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) technology. e-Form consists of three major components:

e-Form Generator
e-Form Filler
e-Form Processor

Why should I use e-Form?

Re-engineer process and increase productivity
Make use of technology and leverage the Internet channel to re-engineer outdated/inefficient processes, to reduce cost, improve customer satisfaction and increase overall efficiency.

Convenient:
Nowadays, the Internet has become an integral part of our daily lives. e-Form offers your clients the ability to provide information through the Internet to increase customer satisfaction. Ensuring accessibility for people anytime, anywhere. Unlike paper-based data collection, e-Form processing is fast, simple and easy to use. Beside the normal form filling application, e-Form also enables you to define the attachment of your choice in compulsory or optional mode. It avoids clumsy paper-based procedures such as collecting the paper-based printed form in person, manual routing and processing of information, data entry efforts required for re-keying information into your computer systems, and receiving inaccurate and incomplete data etc. e-Form simplifies and increases your business flow, adding value to your organization.

Highly Secure:
e-Form offers a secure means to address the basic concern of authenticity, integrity, confidentiality and non-repudiation by employing PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) technology. When creating an e-Form, you can establish the signing sections to define the signing sequence. To further enforce security, one e-Form can contain several signing sections. Each signing section will require one signature when the e-Form is filled. As well, in order to support multiple signatures from different parties covering the same set of data or other signatures, signing sections can be defined within another signing section. Verification of all the signatures in an e-Form can be triggered and completed by a single button click; meanwhile, you can choose to further investigate signers' details from their public certificates.

Save time and money:
To improve the quality and value of the information collected, e-Form reduces data processing time and ensures data consistency since no re-keying is necessary. A reduction in the high costs of paper-based information gathering procedures, including manual processing, pile ups of forms, filing processes as well as printing and storing paper-based forms, is achievable. This means that valuable resources can be reallocated to other areas of need to better meet your organizational goals.
NET Result: improvement in business bottom line and customer satisfaction.

User Friendly:
With its intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI), e-Form is simple to use and user friendly. The application itself is Windows-based and software functions can easily be called up from its menus, toolbar or shortcut function keys. Help facilities are also provided to guide you through the e-Form application. Moreover, the form you see on screen is identical to the paper-form. The comprehensive collection of input elements is easy to use and the increased visualization effect actually makes it easier when generating or filling inthe form. Depending on the host platform, e-Form supports display, input and printing in Chinese, English or other languages. These additional features helping contribute to its user-friendliness.

Reduce paper usage:
Organizations and individuals can take the lead in making a difference to environmental protection by reducing paper wastage. By using electronic form e-Form to collect and validate information, you can actually visualize the form on screen and since it looks exactly like the paper form, it may not be necessary to print out every page for the purpose of record keeping. e-Form can be managed and kept on your hard disk or server for storage. In this way, less paper wastage results and your organization actively contributes to saving our trees.

Are there any competitive products apart from e-Form ?

Yes, BUT hardly the same class and features.

-	e-Form does not require any PDF engine on both side of form generation and processing dataflow chain. e-Form uses W3C standard for data processing.
-	Only available from e-Form, different sections can have different attachment files signed by different people with their private keys.
-	Competitors mostly have online forms using HTML format and cannot do offline and save form filling like e-Form
-	Unlimited e-Form usage per license and high availability/performance.

What are the "killer features" of e-Form as compared to competitor?

1.	Pure Java implementation = Platform independence
2.	XML implementation = Flexible data structure and back end processing
3.	Leverage on popular Acrobat PDF file format
4.	PDF viewer embedded in e-Form for form filling and form generation.
5.	Section-based/logical e-Form digital signature, and signing sequence = emulation of real life work flow and data flow
6.	Validation of data input and digital signature verification
7.	Forms that have failed the business rule validation and verification are filtered by processing module - avoiding interruption to enterprise host and un-productivity host usage.
8.	Turnkey solution - portable to most legacy system and minimum host application impact.
9.	User friendly and offline form filling capability/convenience
10.	Enabling form submission through web or email.
11.	Seamless backend integration with Domino Workflow as well as other Web Services by employing the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) standard.

What are the potential business applications?

-	Government G2B (e.g. file company returns), G2G, G2C
-	Banking B2B, B2C (registration, application, redemption, ... etc)
-	Education (examination, registration, application, book purchases administration, library)
-	Legal/Accounting - legal and professional documents transfer between banks, firm and clients.
-	Secure Form printing business
-	Documents transfer between financial institution and brokers/enterprises (trade reporting).
-	Electronic cataloging

What are the Financial parameters and business model need to consider?

Business driver and key performance factors for financial model include:

-	Time for current manual/semi-manual process and new e-Form process
-	All transaction cost of current process vs. new electronic process
-	All cost of supporting current vs. new operation
-	Conversion cost of each manual form into e-Form.
-	Customer satisfaction and retention benefits
-	Potential to attract new customer base and the resulting revenue/business
-	Ability to expand new e-Form application to other services which may create revenue stream or reduce further cost
-	Ability to align with business partner to offer aggregation of services with mutual benefits (e.g. between banks, lawyers and end user)

How much does it cost?

For e-Form Filler, it's free. For e-Form Generator and e-Form Processor, please contact our sales agent, for the best price that we can offer in a flexible way to meet your business needs.

Any customer legacy system which is most suitable to use e-Form?

No particular requirement - there is no limitation since form data is submitted as XML file and can be translated directly to talk to most legacy systems/platforms.

Any customer legacy system which may hinder the deployment of e-Form?

Not applicable. Works well with legacy system which interface using Lotus Domino Workflow and Web Services using SOAP.

10.

What is the system requirement for e-Form?

The minimum hardware requirements for the e-Form Generator/Filler are:

1) Intel Celeron Processor
2) 256 MB Main Memory

For better performance, the recommended configurations for e-Form Generator/Filler are

1) Intel Pentium 4 Processor or higher
2) 512 MB Main Memory or more

The e-Form Generator/Filler have been tested on the following operating systems

1) Microsoft Windows running 2003/XP/Vista/7
2) Fedora Linux Core 7 or above
3) Apple Mac OS X 10.5 or above

Additionally, e-Form Generator/Filler requires the following software component:

1) Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 and above

11.

Why e-Form Generator requires a PDF file to create a new form?

PDF is the most popular file format used for universal file exchange, capturing all the elements of a printed document as an electronic image that you can view, navigate, print, or forward to someone else. PDF faithfully captures and preserves the original document's font, color and layout. Normally, a form layout file should be imported into the e-Form Generator before any editing is undertaken.

12.

What can I do if the imported PDF file cannot be displayed properly?

Use Acrobat Distiller 5.0 to re-distillate a PDF file if it cannot be displayed properly. Before processing the distillation, please click "Settings" from the menu bar and select "Job Options...". Then go to the "Fonts" tab and check the "Embed All Fonts" check box. Afterward, click the "OK" button to accept the setting. Select the source and destination file that you want to distil from the "File" menu and the distillation will start.
Also, you can use Adobe Acrobat, select "Print" and choose "Acrobat Distiller" as the printer. Then click the "Properties" button and go to the "Adobe PDF Settings" tab. Click the "Edit Conversion Settings" button, go to the "Fonts" tab and check the "Embed All Fonts" check box. Finally, click the "OK" button to accept the setting and print the document to a new PDF file.

13.

Why e-Form uses XML file format?

XML is the universal format for structured documents and data. XML is license-free, platform-independent and well-supported. Documents in such formats are human-legible, easily created and processed. Also, it supports the use of the Unicode (as defined in ISO/IEC 10646) standard for internationalized character sets. With the platform independent nature of XML and PDF documents, the generated e-Forms will be portable to all platforms. XML file data is easily separated from the PDF template and extracted for processing.

14.

How secure is e-Form?

The security backbone of e-Form, the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system, makes it possible for you or your client to use the evolving PKI as a tool for securing communications and transactions. The PKI module embedded within e-Form provides cryptographic functionality of commonly used algorithms, such as signature generation and verification, data encryption and decryption. Also, it contains a collection of digital certificate manipulation functions that support the PKI established by all Certification Authorities (CA). The module is compatible with industry standards X.509 version 2 and version 3, and RSA's PKCS#1, PKCS#5 and PKCS#12.

In summary, your business is protected by identification, authentication, authorization and non-repudiation for each e-Form transaction over the internet and it is usually legally enforceable by local e-commerce law.

15.

How can I know that the signatures of the form are valid or not?

Use the verify function and it can show you all the information of the signatures of the form.

16.

How do I know that I have filled in all the necessary fields in a form?

In the e-Form filler mode, use the validate function and it will show you if there are any missing fields.

17.

How can I control the signing sequence of a document to suit my business?

e-Form supports multiple sections signing, signing sequencing and file attachment so as to emulate normal business workflow process.

In order to support multiple signatures covering the same set of data, signing sections (together with other logical sections) can be defined within another signing section. When filling the e-Form, signature generation on outer signing sections will not be permitted unless all the inner sections are signed. Thus, the signing sequence definition can be controlled through this nested approach.

18.

How can I modify a form after it has been signed?

Use the undo signed e-Form to remove the signature. This function gives you with the ability to undo the signing operation made to an e-Form template. You need to acquire permission to carry out this function by presenting the private key (i.e. the PKCS#12 file and password) that was applied in signature generation.

19.

When end user submits the form, any restriction on the attachment?

NO. The attachment can be a a jpeg image, word document, zip file, ... etc.

20.

How can I submit a filled form?

A filled form can be submitted through e-mail or through a web browser.

21.

Why I get the error "License Error for Form Generator" after I submit a form to the server?

If the form processor receives a form that is not created by a form generator of the same organization, it will display such error. Please make sure that when registering the form generator and form processor, their organization name must be the same.

22.

Can I retrieve the data from the forms submitted and forward it to my existing computer system?

Yes. The e-Form processor can be configured to forward the received forms to Lotus Domino Server or through a SOAP interface to any other applications.

23.

What is Certificate Center?

e-Form certificate center is a password protected area that allows you to administer and manage your certificate key store. Certificate key store is a system area where personal certificates, trusted CA certificates, and certificate revocation lists are stored. By using the e-Form certificate center, you can import or export a trusted root / CA certificate into or from the certificate key store. As well, you can manage CRLs stored in certificate key store. Detailed information of the selected certificate or CRL can be viewed using the certificate center viewing function.

24.

What is the use of PBE and other algorithms in enveloping e-Form?

The purposes of the PBE algorithms (PBEwithMD5andDESCBC and PBEwithMD2andDESCBC) are for temporary saving and encryption of the form. The e-Form Processor does not expect to accept forms using such methods for encryption. In order to submit an encrypted form to the e-Form Processor, the form must be encrypted using DES/CBC/PKCS5-Padding or DES3/CBC/PKCS5-Padding algorithm that requires the public key of the recipient (the organization that the form is going to be submitted to) for encryption.

25.

Why Chinese characters cannot be displayed in text field and text area?

Only the font type "dialog", "dialoginput", "serif", "sanserif" and "monospaced" can be used in order to display Chinese characters properly. Because these font types are mapped properly to Chinese font glyphs by the underlying operating system, other common types, such as "Time News Roman" and "Arial", are not.

26.

What are the basic knowledge/skill sets for customer to implement this system?

For system integrator/customer, the technical requirements include J2EE programming (servlet and JSP), XML, and web services. Understanding and control of customer's host environment would be a plus.

27.

What is e-Form Processor? And what the functionality do e-Form Processor has?

The e-Form Processor is a gateway for handling e-Form submission. The Processor is configurable to facilitate document routing to various backend systems such as i-Secure Data Archive, Domino Workflow server, and SOAP messaging server. Upon receiving an e-Form, the processor will decrypt the submitted data (if it is encrypted), validate the form's data and verify the signatures and corresponding certificates in the form. e-Form processor supports multi-channel submission, which includes secure e-Mail using S/MIME and secure web services using SSL. For all the received e-Form, the processor will forward the validated e-Form to the corresponding backend system for further processing. After that, a digitally signed acknowledgement will be sent back to the submitting party.

28.

What is e-Form Validator?

The e-Form Validator is a program to check data integrity of the submitted forms, such as cross-field validation, mandatory field validation, �K etc. e-Form Processor provides a set of API for system integrators to develop validator programs for implementing any customer-specific business rule validations.

29.

Where will the submitted form be stored?

If an e-Form passes all the checking, it will be forwarded to the defined backup system. Note that the processor will not store the submitted form, it only routes the form to the backend system. A set of e-Form API is available for developers to integrate their own back-end systems. With the power of JAVA, you can extend the backend systems to work with different applications, such as IBM DB2 and Oracle database.

30.

How to manage the e-Form Processor?

In order to manage the e-Form Processor, you should have a good understanding on JAVA programming and web application concept. The log files found in [formProcessor Home]\logs and that of your application server are very helpful to assist you in determining any configuration problems.

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