Lightning Tools Lightning Forms vs. Quadient Inspire

Overall, there are many use cases for which Lightning Forms provides a slick, easy to develop and extremely useful solution. Request forms that need to be actioned and inspection forms are the scenarios that we have used them for so far, which have seen a lot of success. We have decided that other scenarios that are perhaps more sensitive, for instance forms that may contain special category data relating to our customers, are less appropriate given the permissions/licensing constraints of both SharePoint and Lightning Forms.

Scenarios where Quadient Inspire is well suited - When we want to create some content which can be reused, as we create blocks in Quadient which has some data in it, and these blocks can be reused. When we want to create consistent content and want to deliver it through omni-channel medium in large volume, as Quadient Inspire makes delivery of large volume communications possible, and it does so in mere seconds. Scenarios where Quadient Inspire is less appropriate - sometimes it feels like editing in a Word document is easier than Quadient Inspire, e.g., when we need to add bullet points in the content.

Incentivized

• Simple user interface - users of the forms intuitively aware of how/where to input information. This is in part due to being able to show or hide different questions or areas of the form, and making them required or not, based on previous answers.
• Low/simple code - building complex forms with automation and multiple dependencies or lookups is relatively easy once you get started. You have the power of JavaScript to use and do some quite clever things if you can get to grips with it - a lot of solutions are only a Google away.
• As it is based on SharePoint, it integrates perfectly with the rest of the M365 suite. Things like PowerAutomate enhance its functionality even further.

• Highly flexible data ingestion
• Clear and powerful workflow design that makes support easy to understand as teams evolve
• Great internal debugging tool that simplifies and accelerates the development cycle
• Powerful scripting structure available at nearly every aspect of data management, composition, and finishing allowing for specialized requirements not available in the standard toolset to be met

Incentivized

• The styling of the form can sometimes be slightly awkward to use depending on what you're looking to do. For instance, if I was looking to highlight fields that users have missed (left empty), I would need to set up a validation for that question and then set a style for that particular field for when it is invalid. When you have a large and complex form with lots of dependencies, this is awkward.
• Support for complex and niche issues is slightly lacking in my experience. I submitted a helpdesk ticket for help with a strange issue I couldn't figure out, which took several weeks to get a response to. Because it is niche, it's more difficult to find an answer by searching the internet. Luckily, knowing there is likely to always be a fix if you find the right place/use the right formula, I manage to resolve the issue with some trial and error.
• It is disappointing that Lightning Forms does not integrate with the MS Lists app. Having the ability to access the form through the list app would add in a lot of useful functionality, including a better experience for users when taking photos to add as attachments.

• Within CJM: Not easy to share maps with a large group of people, still needs to be done on an individual basis which is time-consuming.
• Not able to unload all file types into maps. It would be great to have video.
• There are a lot of third-party suppliers that make up the full services in Inspire. This limits the development that Quadient can do to.

We are using Quadient Inspire products since last 5 years. And we are able to achieve everything with respect to the customer's needs and desired output. Quadient is adding new very important features every day that make document structure very easy for developers and end users. We would like to stick with Quadient for a long time.

It is very user friendly both to me who is building the content (with little background knowledge of coding etc., other than what I have picked up from using products like PowerAutomate, PowerBI, a bit of html etc.) and to end users of varying levels of IT proficiency. This has been extremely important as we have used the forms to make relatively large process changes, and need to have our users on board and seeing that it is actually easier than it was before.

There are parts of the product that are extremely easy to use, but it can be hard to build it up to get to that point. I'm a power user and I know I've only barely scratched the surface, but the transactional users barely have to lift a finger to get their letters out. There's a lot more that can be done if I had the time and resources to devote to improving our letters more and there are times when the interface is in my way as to meeting those goals, but by and large, it's a swift and easy to use program.

I am giving this rating because Quadient products are highly available. Most of the time all Quadient products are available. In some cases Quadient always follows the planned schedule and maintenance. They always inform all the partners and clients a day or two in advance so that the clients can work accordingly.

I want you to rate the performance of the Quadient Inspire 9 out of 10. Because every time we work with Quadient products I never feel any sluggishness and any performance issue. Along with this, one thing that we all should understand is that the performance of any application also depends on the computer hardware. So along with the software application, your hardware should also meet the minimum requirements.

Some support has been okay, but in one instance of a fairly complex problem, the support team were not able to provide me with a fix within a few weeks, before I was able to find a workaround myself.

Overall Quadient team is very responsive and willing to come to the table and provide valuable information and resolution for problems. What tier of support you have would defiantly impact the experience you have. Had some challenges with a few members of the support team , but when brought up with the vendor it was quickly resolved

Incentivized

I had a couple of weeks of training back in 2005 on the Quadient premises in Hradec Kralowe. The instructor was just great! Besides showing as normal functionalities, he went so far to solve our concrete challenges. He actually encouraged me to become a "real" programmer. I have written my first lines of code in Inspire (GMC PrintNetT) and never looked back.

Quadient offers online training for all of its products (paid service). You can choose your pace and go through the material and then solve real challenges. At the end, you can choose to take a final assignment and get certification which is a really good thing to do. If you get stuck, the training team will answer any of your questions and give you guidance.

As you consider your digital transformation, think of the people who may object. They have valid criticisms, valuable insights and information critical to your success. Quadient’s advice is to build a strong internal team and confront these questions early. When everyone understands the project from their perspective, the project has a better chance of success.

We were using Microsoft Forms, SharePoint Lists and PowerAutomate to attempt to do much of what we are currently doing. Functionality is very limited in comparison. The ability to make questions required based on previous answers was a massive improvement from normal SharePoint List forms and has greatly improved the quality of data. Also just the very visual display and customisation is much better.

The above drop down would not allow me to pick the similar products that I have used previously. Planet Pres : Good in its time. Now very slow compared with Quadient. Compart: As quick... If not slightly quicker than Quadient. This does not counteract how difficult this software is to use. It has no GUI interface and even advanced programmers struggle to use it. Both of these products are inferior to Quadient when it comes to implementing within a normal organisation.

Not really. It's not cheap, but it's a great value for what you get. This is enterprise-level software and the cost reflects that. The pay-per-page aspect makes sense too. We get a lot of sheets included in our contract and we use them all. It's a good contract with pricing that makes sense.

I am giving this rating because Quadient products are very reliable. Quadient products can be deployed across multiple departments and sites as needed. We can integrate Quadient products with other applications and tools in a very effective, efficient and flexible way. We can deploy Quadient products in Cloud as well.

The PSO team is very involved and knowledgeable. Some times there are availability issues due to the number of companies they are supporting but they do their best to deliver on time. PSO cost aren't cheap, but they deliver a big bang for the buck especially on critical projects or involving them in strategic approaches/decisions.

Incentivized

• We changed the process by which site colleagues report repairs on behalf of customers. Instead of emailing them into a shared inbox, they now report them using a lightning form. We have seen a great improvement in the time taken for our team to log the repair issue from the time is arrives with them.
• We anticipate that streamlining our void property reletting process by using a SharePoint kanban board view with lightning forms (providing a single platform for all things void) will reduce avoidable days vacant and therefore reduce our void loss.

• Since purchasing Inspire we have won many business opportunities as it enables us to create documents we couldn't do before, for example: Council Tax Bills.
• It is a lot faster at processing than our previous software. We had one job we had to extract addresses from, it was 56,000 records from a 5.5million line text file. Our previous software took 26 hours to pull out the addresses, Quadient Inspire took 43 seconds!
• We are able to automate processes through Inspire via CLI batch files, where a job would normally take 30 minutes to set up and process, a bit of time spent on the workflow and automation script means we can just double click a batch file for repeat jobs and the print file is created in seconds.

Incentivized