The code included here is for a generic agent that will cope with any form sent to it, using the FormMail scripts. You might wish to customize this to perform additional validation and processing or to handle different form-to-mail software. There's no reason why this agent shouldn't send off an acknowledgment email back to the original browser user, though many form-mail scripts can also handle this process. Doing it in Notes can be very simple, since the design of the message can be accomplished by creating a custom Notes form, as below in this stripped down example:

The generic agent shown has two major drawbacks, with similar choices in solving them.

First, the generic agent can't know the datatypes of fields it receives. Everything must be saved as text. If you design a custom agent to specifically match a certain HTML form, then each field can be determined as being date, numeric, string, rich text, etc. Alternatively, you could pass the datatype of each field as hidden fields in the original form, e.g., a field called PRICE matched by a hidden field called PRICE_TYPE with a value of CURRENCY. This latter approach preserves the generic nature of the agent.

Second, the document created will retain the Memo form of the original email. You could choose to adapt the agent to hard-code the name of the Notes form that the memo will be converted to or that a new resulting document will use. However, you can also set this--as the Notes fields--on the original HTML form itself. All that's required is to create a hidden field with the name "Form" and the fixed value of the form name. This will then be passed via the email to the Notes agent and saved as a field along with the other values.

A variation
A variation on this technique can be used where you do have a Domino server on-line and want to tie in non-Domino intranet or Internet sites that have Web forms. In this case, similar code to the agent above could be used to write a Domino Web agent that mimics the form-to-mail scripts, and the address of this agent is used to replace that of the existing CGI routines used to handle the form submissions. In other words:

Conclusion
Domino developers have something unique to draw upon, a twin heritage of collaborative system design, with both the World Wide Web and the even older Lotus Notes groupware history. Although Lotus has intertwined these two strands successfully in the form of the Domino server, there's no reason why Notes and Internet-savvy developers shouldn't blend Notes and the Internet in various other ways to suit their differing situations.

Ron Herardian is CEO & Chief Systems Architect at Global System Services (GSS). You can reach Ron via email at rherardi@gssnet.com, or via his web page at http://www.gssnet.com.