Saving/naming forms issue

Does anyone know what I can do about this? My client, a medical practice, is trying to save forms in a rather interesting way. They have charts that are divided up into different sections or tabs such as Progress Notes, Patient Info and more. These charts have been scanned, separated by tab and placed onto a shared network drive for all the employees within this practice to view.
This practice has now gotten into creating new forms using Acrobat, which obviously eliminates the need to create more paper. The problem now is that each employees is saving these forms differently, in different locations as well, and it's a huge mess.
The file name by which they'd like these chart sections to be saved follows this format:

Last Name_First Name_Date of Birth_Section of Chart_Date of Service_Initials of Person Who Created the Form

So, if the patient's name was Jeff Hansen, their date of birth was 7-30-1982, the section was Progress Notes, the date of service was 12-12-1997 and the initials were HM, the file name would look like this:

HANSEN_JEFF_07-30-1982_PN_12-12-1997_HM

With me so far? :-)

What they would like is, after someone's done with a form and they click Save As, they'd like something like this to pop up:

LAST NAME:
FIRST NAME:
DOB:
TAB:
DOS:
INITIALS:

They would then be able to fill out these fields with the appropriate info, with the exception of TAB and INITIALS, which would be drop-down lists.

After these have been filled out an the file name has been created, they now want the form to be saved in a specific folder-the same folder every time. Right now, there's files all over the place on their drive and it's a mess.

Does ANYONE have ANY idea how the heck we can do this? Seriously? Any idea would be ideal? I don't know of how we can create a Save function like this using Acrobat or LiveCycle Designer. Please help!

Sure, that's possible. If I were forced to this set up, I would create a custom menu item or toolbar button. When clicked, it would prompt the user for the information using a custom dialog. After validating all of the inputs, it would call a custom saveAs routine that would be located in a folder-level JavaScript file on each user's machine. It seems like some of this information might be contained in form fields in the form, so you may be able to prepopulate the custom dialog with some data.

All of this can be done with JavaScript. Have you done much JavaScript programming in Acrobat? Are the forms in question created with Acrobat or LiveCycle Designer?

George

Unfortunately, I have little to no experience with JavaScript, as does my client. :-) I am aware of how JavaScript can be beneficial in situations like this. Where would I begin in order to tackle this issue?

Besides hiring a consultant to help you out? Seriously, a lot of what you want is somewhat advanced, and it needs to be done particularly well given the nature of the data you're dealing with.

If you want to get started with learning Acrobat JavaScript (and assuming the forms are created in Acrobat as opposed to LiveCycle Designer), the first thing to do is get a copy of the Acrobat JavaScript reference: <http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.html>

A good online source for learning more is <http://www.acrobatusers.com>, Thom Parker's articles in the JavaScript Corner in particular. He also runs a subscription-based web site where you can learn more.

George