The Podium (Blog)

The newest and most powerful version of TheFormTool, TheFormTool PRO v2.5, goes to our beta-tester volunteers from around the world on Thursday.

Version 2.5, knows as “Cinch” to insiders, represents a quantum increase in power over earlier versions but retains TheFormTool’s signature simplicity, where any user can expect to be productive within a few minutes and easily productive within the hour.

To TheFormTool’s already impressive list of features, Cinch adds four major items:

Grid adds an ability to add related information horizontally in addition to the traditional vertical format. This will greatly simplify data input. It will also allow the selection of individual data related to a name, product or other subject, and also aggregate data related to an individual descriptor, dramatically increasing TheFormTool’s breadth of power.

Sublists allow the development of complex relationships and the selection of group-based data. With this a user can include only some of the items in the list. The sublist of buyers shown here includes individuals and excludes corporate entities.

Item in a Sublist allows a user to choose a single piece of information from a subgroup of a list based on its position in a Sublist.

Compound Conditions adds true Boolean logic to TheFormTool PRO toolkit. In this example, this condition shows text if (a) none of the buyers are individuals AND (b) the price is less than $10,000.

The two clauses of the compound condition are shown at the top of the screen.  They are edited by selecting one and then using the controls in the bottom part of the screen to make changes.  An author can also select the AND and change it to OR or XOR.  The buttons to the right of the clauses let an author add/delete them, rearrange them, or use parentheses to control the order of operations.  There is no limit to the number of clauses that can be contained in a compound condition.

An author can also use compound conditions when creating sublists or can even create compound conditions whose clauses refer to sublists that in turn contain their own compound conditions.

TheFormTool PRO v2.5 is the most powerful version of TheFormTool ever created. It follows in the proud tradition of other powerful releases, Math a little over a year ago, and Derived Answers after that.

Power users of TheFormTool will be delighted, but so will those who value TheFormTool for its simplicity, it’s ease of use. TheFormTool remains the most user friendly and powerful document assembly and forms automation software in the world.™ 

TheFormTool PRO v2.5 will be available in several weeks, for free, to current owners of earlier versions of TheFormTool PRO.

Related articles

• This One’s a Cinch!
• Contest Closed: Enter “Name That Update” to Win
• Almost here!

UPDATE: Congratulations to Lee in Utah on a terrific name for TheFormTool PRO v2.5 and a runaway win in our “Name That Update” contest!

We’re in need of a name for a major update, TheFormTool PRO v2.5, due out in a few weeks. So, we’re running a contest. We want YOU to come up with a great new name that describes what TFT v2.5 will mean to its owners!

Enter below for a chance to win this complete package:

• $5.00 Starbucks giftcard
• $20.00 Amazon giftcard
• An early peek at the update
• One free license for TheFormTool PRO (for you or a colleague)
• One PRO PLUS package ($495)
• A free hour of consulting or form generation ($150), and
• One “TheFormTool” logo dress shirt  (priceless!)

Second Place Winner:

• $5.00 Starbucks giftcard, and
• $20.00 Amazon giftcard

Three Third Place Winners:

• $5.00 Starbucks giftcard

Here’s a little bit about some of the new features and functionality coming out with TheFormTool PRO  v2.5:

• When the Question & Answer Table includes two-dimensional blocks of information (like names, addresses, and phone numbers for a set of people), the form author now has the option of arranging those blocks horizontally for compact and simple data entry.
• Fields can directly access any item in a list or table, either by sequential number or by its characteristics.
• It’s easy to extract a sublist of items from a list or table. For example, the finished form could include a list of adults, a list of females, and a list of people who are not named John or Jane.
• New logical operators (AND/OR/XOR) allow easy creation of compound conditions. For instance: include this paragraph if the account balance is over limit AND the due date has passed OR the client is in bankruptcy.
• You can now set all aspects of a field/list/condition in a single pass, and every type of field/list/condition can be re-edited and fine-tuned at any time.

Here are a couple of specifics features worth illustrating:

• A table can include checkboxes (Columns 3 and 5), dropdown boxes (Column 4), and multi-line entries (Column 2).
• Various areas in the form can use either the entire list of items in the row or any portion thereof.

For example, in this illustration, which you can expand by clicking:

• In the first paragraph, Myra and Bridget are excluded from the list of attendees
• In the list of addresses, Jeremy is excluded because he’s not a shareholder
• The list of officers extracts only officers from the grid
• In the signature, the President’s name is extracted from the table

Here’s how to enter:

To give us your idea for a name for Version 2.5 of The Form Tool, enter the contest via email or Facebook below. Then, share our website link on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus for even more entries in the giveaway. Each entry increases your chances of winning!

So, enter above for a chance to win this complete package:

• $5.00 Starbucks giftcard
• $20.00 Amazon giftcard
• An early peek at the update
• One free Form Tool license (for you or a colleague)
• One PRO PLUS package (worth $350), and
• A free hour of consulting or form generation

~ The Team at TheFormTool

We’ve posted the new features included in TheFormTool PRO v2.5, Cinch, on the Updates page. It’s quite a list! What’s truly remarkable is that all these new features, functionality and power have been created without moving away from TFT’s commitment to ease of use.

It’s amazing! We expect it to be available to you late this month.

“Bob on the Service Desk” neglected to mention that Cinch is going into beta testing next week and is expected to be released a few weeks after that. He will be punished severely for his error.

Users of TheFormTool PRO have enjoyed 16 major upgrades and assorted updates as well as scores of largely transparent bug fixes.

What’s new?

To be useful, new technology needs to meet three standards. It must be powerful, simple and cost-effective.

Cost-effective

While fanaticism in defense of simplicity is an admirable virtue, every product’s longterm staying power is defined by its unique intersection of power and simplicity and cost-effectiveness, the three legs on which every value stool stands.

First-time purchasers often focus solely on purchase price as a proxy for cost. For consumables, this is generally good enough. Even the most intensely driven cost accountant rarely adds the price of incidentals such as bread, crackers, or celery to the price of a jar of peanut butter in order to determine its total cost over the jar’s useful life. The answer is not helpful, it adds little to the decision.

For durable goods, though, a longer perspective is at least useful and often essential. Given two automobiles of equal price, most consumers will delve further to look at other items that might drive their “lifecycle costs”, the total expense an owner can anticipate over five years of ownership. Perhaps one car gets 12mpg and the other 30mpg, or one has a 12 month warranty while the other offers 60 months of paid maintenance with the purchase price. In some cases — helicopters and Bentleys come to mind — the periodic costs can significantly exceed the purchase price. A razor is a more prosaic example, where nearly its entire lifecycle costs are purchases of the blades rather than the price of the handle.

So too with software. Too often, new software requires all kinds of additional costs whose only description is in the fine print or after-sale literature. How often are we faced with operating system updates that require upgrades of memory or storage hardware? Or programs that need the newest chips or connections to run as touted? Perhaps the most egregious examples are the products that are so complicated to install that they suggest purchasers call in professionals to get them up and running or are so complex to operate as to support legions of consultants making a living maintaining them.

In TheFormTool’s own little part of the universe, document assembly and automation, we’ve noticed a pattern: the most complex products are also the most expensive in terms of both purchase price and lifecycle costs. In fact, it’s not unusual to see some legacy software offerings run up lifecycle costs that are 20- to 30-times as great as those experienced by owners of TheFormTool. The greatest loss, though, is the time and convenience sacrificed when a tool becomes too complex for its operator to manage, when a user has to wait for support for every glitch, or change, or modification. Those are costs that are hard to measure but too large to ignore.

I wrote a month ago how pleased I was with Parallels 8. It is a massive improvement over its historic competitors that allowed me for the first time to enjoy TheFormTool while using my MacBook PRO.

Now there’s an even better alternative. CrossOver by Codeweavers sets a new standard as an elegant and efficient way to bring TheFormTool to a Mac.

CrossOver beats Parallels, Boot Camp, and VMware by not being what they are. The historic big three host a virtual Windows OS within Mac OS X. CrossOver on the other hand is simply a program that enables some, but not all, Windows programs to operate in OS X. It’s the difference between night and day on the one hand, and turning on or off an electric light. The first is an enormous task, changing an entire environment; the second is much simpler.

Parallels 8 is stable, powerful and all-inclusive. It allows the user to install a full-featured Windows OS, within which one can install pretty much any Windows program. The two operating systems then operate in parallel, separate but equal, strangers living under the same roof, with their own rules, storage and communication needs, security and memory requirements. Parallels will “get by” with two gig of RAM, but really prefers four; on my machine it also set aside 18 gigs of disk space for virtual memory. When operating it sucks up CPU capacity and its memory leak is impressive, gobbling up my machine’s entire RAM in just a couple of hours.

CrossOver, on the other hand, installs just like any other Mac program. It weighs in at under 200 meg and imposes only a modest load on the CPU. It’s memory requirements and leakage are nominal, similar to any of the other programs running at the same time.

Rather than allowing for installation of a Windows environment, CrossOver creates a software shell, they call it a “bottle,” in which Word 2007 or Word 2010 for Windows can function, where all of Word’s features and functions work just as they would on a Windows machine. The difference is that it’s doing so within a Mac window on a Mac desktop in a Mac OS.

There are major advantages for people like myself who need only a limited number of Windows programs:

CrossOver doesn’t need (or provide or allow) Windows communications tools; it uses the Mac’s own systems for Internet connectivity, emails, printing and storage. I find this safety feature an incredible advantage.

There is no Windows system to catch a social disease; no need for Windows security. All the Mac commands and capabilities are nearly seamlessly available. One can choose whether to save documents within the Windows-type structure CrossOver creates within the bottle, or put them directly into the Mac HFS.

With CrossOver, there’s no need to purchase a copy of Windows; just CrossOver and the specific software you wish to run, in my case Word 2007 and Word 2010, which operate completely separately in independent bottles.

There’s no dividing line separating two completely different operating systems to navigate when moving files between programs.

Because users don’t need to buy Windows or its essential protective software, CrossOver’s cost to purchase and operate is substantially less than the alternatives.

Using Mission Control, I’ve set up a “Word for Windows” desktop that allows me to switch back and forth between typical Mac uses and Word for Windows in less than half a second.

In six weeks of very intense usage, there have been no difficulties. In fact, I had enough confidence in TheFormTool operating in CrossOver to use it as the main demonstration tool in our recent webinar for TFT’s power users.

Installation is not as simple as I’d wish, but on our second machine it took less than 15 minutes.

Here are the specific steps to take, starting with going to CrossOver’s specific page for TheFormTool at http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=10978

See UPDATES, below!

Note: Some of these installation downloads seem to work much better with Firefox (which I’m not using for the moment while they work through its Java issues), than with either Chrome or Safari.

#1 Install CrossOver (at this point, only version 11.3! See below for a source.)
#2 Install Word from a CD
#3 Install VBA Runtime 6 (CrossOver>Configure>Install Software>Runtime Support Components>Microsoft Visual Basic 6 Service Pack) in the Word Bottle you’ve just created)
#4 Install TieFile for TheFormTool. Go here http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=10978 to get TheFormTool Tie File by clicking the green button.

#5 Select CrossTie as the Installer

#6 Select “Choose the Installer File”

#7 Find and select TheFormTool PRO “zip file” you’re going to install. Make certain to select the entire zip file.

#8 Confirm that TheFormToolPRO.zip has been selected for installation

#9 Select the proper “Bottle” for installation. Normally, this will be the bottle you’ve created for your Word installation, as in “Microsoft Word 2010″ or Microsoft Word 2013″

#10 Click “Install”

The whole process should take less than 15 minutes.

We put up with two screen warnings every time we launch from scratch.

In addition, we see a display of Word’s hidden code for underscores (#38), none of which cause us any issues.If you can live with these, you should be fine.

Codeweavers is working through those issues. When they’re solved we’ll be recommending CrossOver to any Mac user who would like to use TheFormTool right now. If you’d like a head start, feel free. I think you’ll like it… a lot. CrossOver is in use by 600,000 worldwide.

Codeweavers allocates support based on votes from its paid users. When you’re all done, please remember to vote for TheFormTool so that it can move off the Bronze badge. You can vote at http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=10978;details=1.

Your vote will help assure continued product improvement, which will help us all.

You can test the setup at low or no cost by downloading a trial version of CrossOver, installing Word 2007 or 2010, and installing the free version of TheFormTool.

You can see this arrangement actually running on our video, “The Power and Economics of an Intelligent Document.” The demo starts at about 7:30.

UPDATE: Sadly, CrossOver v12.0 will not yet support TheFormTool. While Codeweavers works to correct their program, users of TheFormTool who wish to plug ahead can use CrossOver v11.3, which works as described above. You can download a copy of CrossOver v11.3, here http://theformtool.com/provision/crossover-11.3.0.zip.

UPDATE #2: With suggestions from Jane Merrill, I’ve expanded the steps necessary for installation and added screenshots of the various stages.

UPDATE #3: Several of the comments, below, add much comfort to the process. I encourage you to read them carefully before attempting a CrossOver installation.

Good luck!

After several thousand visitors, it’s occurred that we ought to start re-arranging The Forum, TheFormTool’s community resource for self-help and great ideas. Please do drop in, take a look. In particular, give Helpful Hints a fresh look. Perhaps even add a great idea or two!

We’re asked fairly frequently if Word 2013 supports TheFormTool. The easy answer: it certainly does. Owners of Word 2007 or Word 2010 who are looking to move to the newest version can do so in confidence that their work created with TheFormTool will move with them, seamlessly and effortless.

I received a most unusual email Sunday afternoon.

It was from a fellow named Quentin Solt from Warwick, a small town about 100 miles northwest of London. Quentin and I had first met by email the previous Thursday morning when our online store didn’t behave properly and he needed a bit of help purchasing TheFormTool.

On Sunday, he had a different need. He was just finishing up a new document for presentation to a client and having trouble with a sophisticated Conditional Sections command. The issue was relatively straightforward to diagnose and fix, and a corrected document was on his desktop in less than two hours, ready for use first thing Monday morning London time.

What has made Mr. Solt so memorable is his document: a 60-page, 20,600-word, fully automated and very intelligent third party sales financing agreement he crafted within a day of his purchase of TheFormTool. With a few hours of part time work, he eliminated the hunt & peck and cut & paste normally needed to find and fix 287 variables embedded in the document and replaced them with 47 simple, straightforward questions.

There is no better example of TheFormTool at work, no better illustration of its trademarked tagline, a learning curve measured in minutes, not months.^®

Although it happened only once, the memory is vivid. Knowing that a fight was brewing, I slipped a can of spinach into my school uniform pants pocket, to be opened and eaten just before hostilities broke out. With that I could be confident that sudden surge of energy would power me to a quick and painless victory. After all, it performed reliably for Popeye, delivering countless victories over Bluto and eventually Olive Oyl’s heart and hand. Unfortunately, to speed the process, I opened and replaced the can. The humiliation of spinach leaking down my leg, coupled with with the terrible taste of the now-linty vegetable made a lasting impression.

All unnecessary, as it turns out. The relationship between spinach and Popeye may have been a mistake, nothing more than a copy and paste error first made in 1870.

According to Samuel Arbesman in his book, The Half-Life of Facts, German chemist Erich von Wolf made an error on the iron content of green vegetables while transcribing his notes, giving spinach an undeserved bump as a super source of iron, to ten times its actual level. Arbesman credits that mistake as the cause of Popeye’s creators’ decision in the 1930s to name spinach as his source of super-strength.

While Arbesman’s story itself proved apocryphal, it’s a lesson TransAlta, the large Canadian power generator, would have appreciated before it took a $24 million hit caused by its own cut and paste error. Certainly, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, the prestigious NYC real estate law firm, would appreciate the point as well, as their client has been ordered to pay $16 million for the mistake their lawyers made that has been described as a simple “scrivener’s error.”

How many errors are acceptable from your lawyer? Your doctor?

A 2009 survey by a federal agency described professionals’ presumptions of a 24% error rate generated by copy and paste mistakes among medical practitioners. It almost makes you want to review the medical orders for yourself.

A friend engaged in an acquisition that is scheduled to close next month is using a specialized boutique firm for legal counsel on the transaction. By his count, the “final” documents sent to all parties for signature included more than 20 material errors, including an incorrect purchaser’s name, location, and purchase price. When my friend pointed out what he considers a significant error rate, his lawyer described the mistakes as inadvertent “typos” and nothing to be worried about.

The day is here when “typos” in documents prepared by lawyers should be unacceptable and the practices which allow or even encourage them considered both unprofessional and unehtical. Lawyers – and others! – who continue to use antiquated production practices in the place of powerful and accurate alternatives will risk being tagged for malpractice.

What’s to be done?

Two hundred years ago, lawyers’ clients were an exclusive group composed of the top 1%: land owners, industrial barons, large banks, governments. Clients’ expectations and lawyers’ business models were in harmony: hand-crafted service at bespoke prices. Today, the business of law has been democratized as clients have morphed into retail customers, while the practice of the profession strains to remain an art.

The overwhelming majority of today’s clients would no more afford a lawyer who hand-crafts all of his or her work than they would want to purchase a Patek Phillipe, a Vacheron, or a Rolex Submariner wristwatch. They may be beautiful works of art; they are certainly expensive; but no one will confuse them with the accurate timetellers made in the highly automated workshops at Citizens and Timex.

The sooner lawyers turn to technology to replace cut and paste in their actual work product, the better off they and we will be.