Patent ID: 7730410

Claim:
A computer system for customizing form elements under development in a form building application, comprising: a processor executing program instructions, the executed program instructions instantiating: a form builder component configured to receive an identification of a user of the form building application, the form building application providing a graphical user interface for manipulating a set of form elements under development, the form elements including an element for global attributes of the form including the layout of the form, the form building application configured to display the set of form elements separate from the form, the form elements indicating authorization for the user to develop the form element when the form element is accessible to the user, and to enable access to the user for developing a subset of the form elements according to an access manager, and authorization rules permitting the selection of form elements wherein the authorization rules identify the subset of the form elements accessible to the user independent of any data in the form elements via a lookup table separate from the form, the lookup table containing the authorization rules, and the access manager component configured to retrieve the authorization rules associated with the user's authorization to develop the set of form elements using the user identification and configured to enable access to the user for developing the form elements according to the authorization rules.