With the 1.x Form Tools releases, the ways you can view and export the data are very limited. At the foot of the submission listing page you see a section with "HTML/Printer-friendly" and "Excel" options - these two hardcoded options are the only ways to export the data. Boo!

With Form Tools 2, this is now handled by a shiny new Export Manager module, included and enabled for all new installations. This module provides you wish considerably more control over how to view and export your data. The screenshot to the right shows the 4 export groups that are included in a fresh installation. (N.B. the XML and CSV options are included, but disabled by default, so you won't see them until activating them). The power lies in the fact that you can now define as many formats as you need. Need an RSS feed of your submissions? No problem!

The screenshot to the right shows the Export Manager main page. As you can see, the various ways you can export your data are organized into "Export Groups". There are four groups defined. Export Groups simply let you group related ways to present the form information. So if you needed multiple CSV export types (like with different delimiters, for example), you could add them to the "CSV" group. Then, in the user interface on the submission listings page, you'd see a single row for CSV containing the multiple export types within that group.

Out of the box, you will not need to modify or configure the Export Manager. It's been developed to function in almost exactly the same way as the existing releases. The power lies in the fact that if you need to modify or customize the export types, you can!

Functionality

Here's everything the Export Manager does, in a nice condensed list.

• Define as many ways of exporting the data as you need.
• Customize the export types in ANY way you want. Quite literally, you have control over every character that appears in the export types. The export types are generated using Smarty templates, which let you embed your own logic to precisely control the presentation of the information This means you can add your own CSS, HTML, javascript, add your own website styles, generate the XML with precisely the node/attribute structure you require - pretty much anything!
• Group the export types into "groups" for easy management.
• Permissions: as with many other aspects of Form Tools, you can control who sees what. Providing access to an XML feed of the form submission data might be very handy for a technical user, but not for anyone else. With this in mind, export groups have three levels of permissions:
  • Administrator Only
  • Public - everyone sees it
  • Private - only show the export group to a particular client or clients
• Three options for generating the content: display in popup (you may customize the dimensions), display in new window or create a new file on the server.
• Complete control over the filename naming of the downloaded files.
• Option to specify headers to be sent along with the file (e.g. to let the browser to know what file format with which to render the file)
• Option to customize the export group icon, action button ("Display", "Generate") and name
• You can customize what folder on your server the generated files are created.
• All export groups and types are compatible with language packs and themes. But if you only plan on using the export types and groups in a single language, you can just enter the various labels and content in the (single) language of your choice.

And that's all folks! I'll post more screenshots of the various components as they are finished.