Anyone here have experience with MadCap Flare? I purchased a copy of Form Designer Beta, and now I'm looking for a way to use it to add a form into a Flare project.

So, to better explain my need, my company recently asked me to add a user feedback form to each of the 100+ topics in our online help center. With Form Designer, would it be possible to create a form that not only allows the user to rate a topic, but also enter feedback that will automatically include the URL for the topic page it is being sent from? This will help us to know what topic may need improvements.

If you're unfamiliar with Flare, it uses masterpages to generate the styles and structure for the various types of pages in the output. If this would work, I could essentially insert the form code into the topic masterpage and it would automatically add it to every topic when I build the project. My concern is whether or not the javascript generated by Form Designer has a method of detecting and sending along the correct topic address since it will be auto-generated from just one page. (Hopefully this makes sense. If not, I will try to further clarify.)

Thanks!

Hi Joel,
At $1,448.00 I would say that is out of reach of most website budgets.
I could see a corporation being able to swing it for local intranet use.

Hi Eric, thanks for the reply.

I actually already have MadCap Flare, and use it daily. The company I work for provided me with a copy. Problem is, it doesn't have any built-in features for creating a feedback form, which is a shame at that price point. I'm hoping the Form Designer app can help me with this project.

Do you know how to code the back end scripts and an any validation you may need?

That's something I'm not all that familiar with. Do you know of any good resources that'll help me learn what I need to do?

https://myphpform.com/

Thank you Eric! I'll give this a read and try it out.

Best approach would be to include topic name or id in an additional form field, using some extra Javascript. If your CMS generates a URL for each topic (page), you could catch the URL (location.href) and copy it into an extra hidden form field.
If all topics share the same URL, then you will need your Javascript to find the name or id of the current topic somewhere on the webpage that your CMS generates.

$1.500 is not that expensive for a comprehensive CMS

Thanks Hennie.
That's exactly what I am looking to do. Fortunately, Flare does generate a URL for each topic based on the file name. I'll experiment with it to see if it'll work.

If you can't use url variables than use $_SESSION variables or set a hidden variable and POST it.