Lightning Tools
Forms Studio
WHY CHOOSE LIGHTNING TOOLS FORMS STUDIO?
Lightning Tools Forms Studio is specifically crafted to elevate your SharePoint list-based solutions by transforming simple lists into dynamic forms with built-in automation, triggered actions, and scheduled actions. Ideal for organizations leveraging SharePoint lists for data management, it enables you to build, package, and deploy sophisticated form solutions across SharePoint sites seamlessly. Designed within the intuitive Lightning Tools Forms Studio and securely deployed to your Microsoft 365 tenant, it keeps all data stored and processed within your environment, giving you full control and peace of mind. Whether you’re handling employee requests, customer feedback, or project tracking, Lightning Forms Studio empowers your SharePoint lists to do more.
- Powerful forms for SharePoint Lists: Build powerful, automated solutions directly on your existing SharePoint lists.
- Streamlined Deployment: Easily package and deploy your list-based forms across SharePoint sites within Microsoft 365.
- Secure Data Handling: All data stays securely within your Microsoft 365 tenant, ensuring compliance and control.
Lightning Forms Studio empowers you to design and build robust SharePoint list-based forms with enhanced functionality and flexibility. The form designer allows you to customize styling, improve layouts, and add expressions for field calculations and validation, creating a seamless experience. You can leverage a variety of actions to automate workflows—whether through action buttons, form load actions, scheduled actions, or event-triggered actions. Choose from a wide range of actions, including sending emails, generating QR codes, and sharing items, all designed to streamline processes. Your solutions can also be easily packaged and deployed across multiple SharePoint sites, providing consistency and efficiency.
- Customizable Form Designer: Add styling, create efficient layouts, and set up calculations and validation in fields.
- Flexible Automation: Choose from action buttons, form load actions, scheduled actions, or event-triggered actions for workflow automation.
- Wide Range of Actions: Perform tasks like sending emails, generating QR codes, and sharing items directly within forms.
- Event-Triggered Actions: Automate processes based on list item events, such as when a new item is added.
- Scheduled Actions: Set actions to occur at specific times or intervals for scheduled task execution.
- Reusable Solutions: Package and deploy your form solutions to multiple SharePoint sites with ease.
Lightning Forms Studio operates as a cloud-based design environment hosted in Microsoft Azure, providing a secure and scalable platform for creating SharePoint list-based form solutions. Within Lightning Tools Forms Studio, you can design, build, and customize your form solutions with advanced features and automation options. Once your solution is complete, it is packaged as a SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solution package, which ensures seamless integration with your SharePoint environment.
This SPFx package is then deployed to your Microsoft 365 SharePoint App Catalog, allowing your form solution to be securely distributed and used across your SharePoint sites within your Microsoft 365 tenant. All solution data is stored and processed within your Microsoft 365 environment, ensuring data compliance and maintaining control within your organization’s infrastructure. This architecture combines the flexibility of Azure-hosted design capabilities with the security and scalability of Microsoft 365 deployment.
Discover how to build powerful SharePoint list forms & automation with ease
Lightning Tools Forms Studio enhances the experience of building and managing SharePoint list-based forms by incorporating Lightning Forms as the core design engine. With Forms Studio, you can design and refine your forms at your own pace in an intuitive, centralized environment. This setup allows for seamless switching between different forms and views, making it easier than ever to organize and optimize your design process. Once your forms are perfected, you can publish them to your SharePoint sites when you’re ready, giving you complete control over the timing and flow of your form deployment.
- Enhanced Design Workflow: Easily switch between forms and views for more streamlined design and management.
- Flexible Publishing Control: Design and refine forms at your own pace, then publish when you’re ready.
- Centralized Design Environment: Work in a single, user-friendly studio that leverages Lightning Forms for powerful, effective form building.
<p”>Lightning Tools Forms Studio brings automation to the next level by incorporating Lightning Tools Actions alongside advanced features like Triggered Actions and Scheduled Actions. This robust functionality allows you to automate tasks and workflows within your SharePoint forms effortlessly. Use actions to respond to user interactions, initiate automated responses based on list item events, or schedule actions to occur at specific times or intervals, giving you complete control over how and when actions are executed within your forms.
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- Comprehensive Automation: Includes Lightning Tools Actions for a wide range of customizable automation options.
- Triggered Actions: Automate responses to list item events such as item creation or updates.
- Scheduled Actions: Set actions to run at specified times or on recurring intervals, enhancing workflow flexibility and reliability.
Lightning Tools Forms Studio offers an extensive selection of actions to make your SharePoint list-based forms even more powerful and versatile. In addition to the actions available in Lightning Forms and List Actions, Forms Studio includes advanced options like Document Generator, which allows you to automatically create PDFs and Word documents. With further capabilities such as permission and sharing management, QR code generation, and more, you can easily automate complex workflows and enrich your forms with just a few clicks.
- Document Generator: Automatically create PDFs and Word documents based on form data, perfect for generating reports and summaries.
- Permission & Sharing Management: Control access and share documents directly through actions in your forms.
- Enhanced Utility Actions: Generate QR codes, send emails, and streamline form-driven workflows for a fully automated experience.
With Lightning Tools Forms Studio, you can set up actions to trigger automatically when a list item is added or updated, enabling hands-off, responsive workflows. Triggered actions are perfect for scenarios where immediate follow-up is needed, such as sending an email notification when an item is modified. For instance, in an Expenses Form, a triggered action can send an email to notify the relevant team when an existing claim is updated, keeping everyone informed in real-time without manual intervention.
Ideal Use Cases for Triggered Actions:
- Automated Notifications: Send emails or alerts when list items are added or modified.
- Expense Claims Workflow: Instantly notify reviewers when a claim is updated.
- Seamless Task Management: Update lists and notify users based on real-time form data changes.
Lightning Tools Forms Studio goes beyond form design by allowing you to add pages, set permissions, and incorporate additional artifacts such as images, creating a fully customized solution. Pages provide an ideal space to add visualizations and insights, like charts and reports, using the Lightning Tools Data Viewer, which can be based directly on your SharePoint lists. Once designed, your complete solution—forms, pages, and supporting artifacts—can be seamlessly deployed to your chosen SharePoint site(s), providing a cohesive, ready-to-use experience across your organization.
- Custom Pages: Add informational pages to display charts, summaries, and list-based insights.
- Permission Control: Set user permissions for enhanced security and data management.
- Rich Media Support: Include images and other artifacts to enrich the user experience within your deployed solution.
With Lightning Tools Forms Studio, creating and deploying your form solutions is simple and efficient. Each solution is packaged as a SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Package, complete with customizable details like an icon, screenshots, and a version number to make management easy and recognizable. Once your package is ready, it can be deployed to your SharePoint environment, ensuring a smooth rollout across sites with all the features and customizations you’ve designed intact.
- Customizable Package Details: Add an icon, screenshots, and version number to clearly identify each solution package.
- Seamless SPFx Integration: Each package is formatted as an SPFx Package, ensuring full compatibility with your SharePoint environment.
- Easy Deployment: Deploy your packaged solution to designated SharePoint sites, enabling immediate access and functionality across your organization.
Streamlined Deployment Directly from Lightning Tools Forms Studio
Lightning Tools Forms Studio simplifies the deployment process, allowing you to push your SPFx solution package directly to any SharePoint site within your Microsoft 365 environment. With built-in deployment capabilities, you can quickly select and deploy your form solutions, pages, and custom artifacts to designated sites, all from within Forms Studio itself. This approach enables a smooth, efficient rollout without needing to navigate to the SharePoint App Catalog, making distribution easier and more controlled.
- In-Studio Deployment: Deploy directly to any SharePoint site without leaving Lightning Tools Forms Studio.
- Targeted Site Selection: Choose specific SharePoint sites for deployment, enabling precise and targeted distribution.
- Consistent Functionality Across Sites: Ensure that all features, permissions, and customizations are uniformly applied with each deployment.
This table provides a side-by-side comparison of Lightning Tools’ products: Lightning Forms, Lightning Tools Actions, Document Generator, and Lightning Tools Forms Studio. Each product offers unique functionalities designed to enhance SharePoint capabilities through form customization, automation, document generation, and comprehensive deployment solutions. The comparison covers primary functions, customization capabilities, deployment options, SharePoint integration, Graph API integration, and ideal use cases, helping users choose the best solution for their SharePoint needs.
Feature |
Lightning Forms |
Lightning Tools Actions |
Document Generator |
Lightning Tools Forms Studio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Function | Create and customize forms on SharePoint lists and libraries. | Automate actions on SharePoint lists and libraries, like sending emails and updating items. | Generate documents from templates with data from SharePoint lists and libraries. | Comprehensive solution that includes form design, automation, document generation, and packaging of SharePoint elements. |
| Customization Capabilities | High level of customization for form fields, layout, and appearance. | Customizable actions and triggers; integrates with the list command bar and web parts for flexible UI. | Customizable templates that can pull specific data fields. | Combines all customization options from Lightning Forms, Actions, and Document Generator, allowing for packaged solutions. |
| Deployment Options | Deployed on individual SharePoint sites as needed. | Actions can be configured as buttons on site pages, or as list command bar buttons in SharePoint lists allowing for actions to be run against multiple list items. | Create documents or convert documents from SharePoint list forms, list command bar buttons or document libraries. | Allows packaging and deployment across multiple SharePoint sites; supports templates and SharePoint permissions, pages, and more. |
| Integration with SharePoint | Fully integrated with SharePoint for list and library forms. | Integrated into SharePoint list command bars and side panels for quick action access, and as an SPFx web part. | Works within SharePoint, accessing list/library data to generate documents. | Full integration with SharePoint; deploys packaged solutions including permissions, pages, actions, and forms across sites. |
| Graph API Integration | Limited to SharePoint data usage. | Limited to SharePoint data usage. | N/A | Microsoft Graph API support for actions, Teams creation, and other Microsoft 365 functionalities. |
| Ideal Use Case | For users who need to enhance SharePoint forms with custom fields, validation, and improved UX. | Suitable for automation within SharePoint lists, especially for email notifications, data updates, and document management. | Best for organizations needing PDFs & Word Documents for sharing, printing, or storage. | Ideal for enterprise-level deployments requiring integrated forms, automation, document generation, and deployment across multiple sites. |