CMS Forms

A monthly fee is paid at the ministry level so your Forms Management Program can create and manage all your forms on gov.bc.ca.

Your monthly fee includes:

• 5 user licences (additional users can be added for a monthly charge)
• Training and user support
• Participation in a community of practice
• Guidance and coaching
• Unlimited forms and processing
• Infrastructure management

Note that some technical services, such as custom configurations and troubleshooting, may incur an additional charge in some contexts.

The Content Management Framework, including CMS Lite and CMS Forms, is a critical piece of BC Government’s public communications infrastructure and is highly available.

Customer support may be requested 24/7 via the Service Desk and services are delivered during regular business hours.

Due to the complexity and variability of integrations, GDX is unable to support development or troubleshooting of APIs, web services, and the like.

If you need additional support to create, manage or redesign your forms or the associated service content, see the services offered by our service and content design team.

The Content Management Framework is a corporate enabler and STRAs and PIAs are complete and regularly maintained. There is no need to conduct either to use the platform, but you may need to review your STRAs or PIAs if you are connecting systems or transitioning from paper.

Although CMS Forms (Orbeon) technically has workflow capability, this has been disabled to prevent information incidents. GDX cannot view and does not retain any information collected by forms and has limited logging focused mostly on errors.

The default configuration sends form data in an autogenerated PDF and XML file as attachments to an email to a program area. You have some flexibility in adjusting the messaging and process, but some desirable items such as sending data to an API require GDX to create a custom form configuration on the server. Greater self-service options are in development.

As this is a ministry-level service (defined as an organization with a deputy minister at its head), it is recommended that: the Service Agreement be signed by the CIO or equivalent; the fees are paid out of a corporate account; and user access be managed by a Ministry Forms Manager, director of information services, or similar.

Forms are meant to developed, managed, and improved on an ongoing basis. CMS Forms (Orbeon) is best suited to ministries that have a Forms Management Program. Ministries without such programs can still use the platform but may not achieve maximum benefit.

Form authors are required to have training and access to CMS Lite (separate service and fees) before gaining access to CMS Forms. Most forms professionals already have this access.