Adobe launches the form and

Adobe has launched a service for conducting online surveys that the company says that should facilitate the process of their creation and analysis of their results.

"Handling forms and survey is traditionally a very long process times, often involving," said Mark Grilli, Director product marketing at Adobe. "You must use a mechanism for retrieving information and another to do the analysis. We have an end-to-end solution would give knowledge workers which tools they need to get their jobs. "

The hosted service, called Adobe FormsCentral, enables organizations to develop a custom survey form that will be accessible from the Internet. Adobe has tried to make the service easy enough to use so that the task of conducting surveys can be done without IT staff intervention, Crickets, he said.

With FormsCentral, the user creates a form online at the Adobe site, or through a set of templates or designing a form from scratch. The form is based on HTML, making them accessible from any Web browser on any platform. Forms can be customized for each participant, with custom name and a message. Adobe provides a Web address for the finished form, which can then be sent to potential participants.

The service also will compile the results into a spreadsheet, which can be parsed or embedded in another Web page. A dashboard shows a summary of the results. Administration tools are accessible from a Web browser using Adobe Flash.

With this offering, Adobe is entering a market is highly competitive and mature, as FormsCentral will compete against similar services offered by Web survey, SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang, FormStack. However, the company is confident that this service will be valid regardless of the competitors.

"We have a unique approach to analysis. Many other solutions to abdicate analysis for an internal tool, "said Crickets.

Instead of downloading the data from the survey resulting in a spreadsheet, a user can search, sort and filter the response data directly into the Adobe service. Multiple participants are permitted to analyze data at the same time, bringing a collaborative service feeling. The service also allows multiple participants to collaborate in the design of the module as well.

FormsCentral is not Adobe's first foray into the world of digital and electronic forms. PDF of the company, of course, be used as a digital form that allows the user to enter information into data fields. And LiveCycle suite of workflow tools company offers a feature set of analysis and design-electronic form.

As a hosted offering Internet-based, however, FormsCentral is suitable for measuring one set most geographically participants that they are easily accessible with the LiveCycle enterprise-focused.

The service will be offered initially only in English, even if the company plans to offer other languages in the near future.

Prices for the service, available Monday, comes in three levels. A free trial includes the ability to post a form and receive up to 50 responses. The subscription service, "Basic", for US $ 14.99 per month, includes the ability to post five shapes and allows up to 500 responses to the form. The "Plus" service, for $ 199, allows unlimited forms with 5,000 responses to your form.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and General technology breaking news for the IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @ Joab_Jackson. E-mail address of Joab is Joab_Jackson@idg.com