About Web Forms
What are Webforms?
A new concept for the Coast Guard Auxiliary, where members report administrative mission hours ("99" hours) using a web browser to fill out an online form. It's as easy as ordering from an online bookstore.
What Are the Advantages?
Webforms uses an ordinary Web browser rather than special sofware on your system. There are no paper forms to fill out, no PDF files, nothing to print, nothing to mail. Your reported hours get transmitted to your IS officer electronically.
But that's not all. The online form allows you to enter data whenver you want to – day by day – or all at once, say at the end of the month. And you can create reports for any period you wish.
One Active Form or Many
Most users will generate one new form each month (using a simple NEW button), and either fill it out every few days, or at the end of the month. The day-by-day method is a bit easier, because you are then using the Webform system itself as your daily record – not the back of an envelope or other log form.
But you may have several open and active forms, if you wish to keep different types of activities in separate reports. It's up to you!
Pushbutton Submit - Email Confirmation
When you have entered all the data you wish into a Webform, you simply push a SUBMIT button, and you are done. You get a receipt you can print. But better, you get a copy of your report via email. Paperless.
Designed for Busy People
If your form looks similar each month, you can set up one form as a template, and simpy use the COPY button to clone it every month. But the best feature is called "My Webforms". Once you have started a NEW report, and SAVED it one time, you may open it with one click, by simply bookmarking "http://my.webforms.cgaux.org/7029". Reporting hours could hardly get easier.
Constant Improvement
Webforms is the first of the Auxiliary's Agile Software Projects, where we develop new ideas and let you use them before the development is done. This way, you become a part of the project, and your feedback becomes part of the product.
Disclaimer
In return for the "early look", you occasionally have to be patient. Sometimes it takes several thousand people pounding on a system to uncover a special case. If you stumble on one of these, just let us know via "Feedback", and we'll do our best to fix it quickly, and post a workaround under "Known Issues".
Thanks for using "your" system. We think you'll love it.
Informtion Technology Engineering (ITE)
1 March 2011